Located in Frisco, Texas, the National Videogame Museum is a magical wonderland of retro and vintage gear preserved from former children’s basements around the world. Unlike most museums, you can touch the stuff, as they explain in their mission statement:
Video games are meant to be played, and that’s the rationale behind every exhibition in the museum. This means that we will do everything we can to give museum visitors the opportunity to actually PLAY as many games as possible during their visit to the National Videogame Museum.
Sounds like our kind of museum. But now we all have the chance to be a part of it forever, through our Animal Crossing: New Horizons islands to the NVM’s Animal Crossing Diaries, where they hope to document the reaction to COVID-19 as it happened in Tom Nook’s little slice of heaven.
It’s no surprise that the cultural moment that Animal Crossing was during a pandemic is museum-worthy: we’ve made celebrities mad for the game (they’re just like us!), Companies from IKEA to LEGO recreating their products in the AC: NH world and creative innovators who design in-game wrinkles, vitiligo and stretchmarks to better reflect the diversity of its players.
You can submit your island and / or answer a few questions to the National Videogame Museum on their dedicated Animal Crossing website, and while there is no guarantee it will make it to the final exhibit, it’s your chance to be a part of the history (and of your lush landscape)!