reminiscing about animal crossing new leaf's "tortimer island"

2025-09-24

Not really sure as to why I had this sudden trail of thoughts today, but ACNL's Tortimer Island was an interesting time back in the day from what I remember. I originally used it back when the game launched in 2013 all the way until the 3DS and Wii U's online functionality was closed last year in April 2024 (I've got 2000+ hours in the game for a reason!) For those unsure as to what it was, it was an external island you could visit in game after paying off your first home loan to Tom Nook. You meet a new character at the docks called Kapp'n, who lets you travel to it on his boat. There was an offline version of the island and an online version, with you being able to visit three other players in local countries nearby, or far and wide across the globe. Most of the time for me, being in the UK, visiting a local online island meant people from England, Wales and even Ireland! Though, it was lacking a lot of Scots (sad Scottish noises).

When you enter the island for the first time, after jumping on to Kapp'n's boat (if you skip his little sea shanty by spamming the ever-loving shit out of the A or B button, you're a bad person, sorry I don't make the rules! Kapp'n's orders! Let him sing!!) you're hit with the catchy tropical lobby music, along seeing Leilani (Kapp'n's wife), Grams (Kapp'n's mum) and Leila (Kapp'n's daughter). You were able to buy exclusive island furniture which you can access from a little storage unit at the docks back at your town and at the lobby. You could do so with medals! These were obtained by playing Tours, bite-sized mini-games that could range from 3 minutes to 10 minutes, depending on the activity chosen. You could play solo or with fellow players. The hammer tour and balloon hunt were my personal favourites! Playing it with players who were in your lobby was always such a joy!

Getting back on track though, I'm reminiscing about some of the far-away players I encountered during my time of visiting Tortimer's Island online. People from America, Spain, Canada, occasionally Australia (which was very rare), and lots of and lots of Japanese players! It was a shame though, as you didn't have access to a Japanese keyboard, so you weren't able to type back to them (mainly through a translation app on hand on your phone), you just had to hope they knew a little bit of English if they were to chat to you. Most of the time though, they didn't. At least in my experience. I did have some nice encounters with some that did however! We had a brief conversation about some of our favourite foods and what sort of music we liked. Then someone new joined the lobby and decided on disconnecting the lobby for everyone in it.

That was quite a common thing when you visited the island. Some people intentionally disconnected the lobby by turning their internet off on their system, probably due to their preference in players and they couldn't be bothered to leave the proper way as it usually takes longer with all of the dialogue. On older systems (pre "new" 3DS/2DS), there was a little switch on the right side of the unit that allowed you to turn off the wireless there and then, it would then boot you back to the docks at your town. On the "new" line of systems, you would have to homebrew your device and use a program called Luma to turn the wireless off and on in game.

I did encounter a very bizarre interaction on it late at night. One time, and I'll always remember it, I joined to a lobby of two women and a male outside the lobby in the main island area. They had cut down everything on the island, removing all of the flowers and the trees, leaving only two tree stumps in the middle in which they were sitting on. The male was standing in the middle of the women, sandwiched between them, moving his character left and right repeatedly. All three of them were wearing custom t-shirt designs, the ones in which were naked torsos exposing some very low-res breasts and a low-res six-pack for the male. He kept typing things in the chat like "aww yea" and "yes baby", whilst the women were typing "you like that baby" and "mmm". They asked if I wanted to join in on the island orgy! I declined. I just wanted to fish man, that encyclopedia ain't gotta fill itself...!

All in all, I did meet some really nice people on there whilst it was still online, ranging from young to old. A friend of which I met on Tortimer Island, I still talk to on Discord to this very day. Being a teenager myself during this time, I got a really nice insight as to interacting with strangers. Apart from the naked women and men having an island orgy on tree stumps...

I do kind of miss it sometimes. Partly because for myself, it was the first main interaction I had with other online players in which I could type rather than speak. I miss the silly conversations that were thrown up. Absolutely decimating the island with holes from the shovel and making a little maze of sorts. The occasional serious discussions popped up about life events at the time, and then ending said serious discussions with whacking each other with toy hammers.

Thank you, Tortimer Island for being an introduction to virtual online spaces for myself, I will forever be grateful for it.