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Nintendo gave Animal Crossing fans a deep dive into the features and systems of the franchise’s upcoming Switch release, New Horizons. This presentation today included an interesting tidbit about recovering lost save files, specifically that you can actually do it. However, some bizarre restrictions apply.
New Horizons launches on March 20. This life sim is Nintendo’s biggest release for the part of the year. As in past Animal Crossing games, your save file is important. The experience is all about a persistent world that evolves through your effort and time.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons will not offer cloud saves. Instead, your file is tied to your Switch. And you can’t ever move it to another console. This is bad news for fans who want to play on multiple Switch systems. But it’s also scary. If something happens to your save file or the Switch that you’re playing on, you could lose many hours of progress.
Well, Nintendo reassured fans that, under extreme circumstances, players will be able to recover backed up saves from Nintendo’s servers.
Above: Thanks, Nintendo.
We don’t know how this works. The feature also won’t be ready for launch, so try to be careful and not drop your Switch until it is. According to some fine print, recovering saves will also only be available for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers, and you can only do it once.
You still won’t be able to transfer your save from your Switch to your Switch Lite though. Bummer.
This morning's Nintendo Direct video presentation was full of exciting details about the gameplay and features in next month's Animal Crossing: New Horizons for Switch. But the presentation also confirmed some details about the game's save file management that will be unwelcome news to anyone who wants to back up their Animal Crossing island or play the game on more than one Switch unit.
Like all Switch games, Animal Crossing: New Horizons won't let players simply copy a save file to an SD card for easy local backup purposes. But New Horizons will also be one of the few games that doesn't even allow unlimited cloud backups if you subscribe to the Nintendo Switch Online service.
That means there's no convenient way to access the same Animal Crossing save file across multiple Switch systems. The best you can do is coordinate and use the game's online functions to 'visit' the island from a secondary system.
A note on the European Nintendo site suggests that 'a function specific to Animal Crossing: New Horizons to move users and save data to another console is planned for release later this year. But the US version of the site simply says 'Animal Crossing: New Horizons does not support the ability to transfer your save file from one Nintendo Switch system to another.' We've reached out to Nintendo about this discrepancy and will let you know if we hear back.
Advertisement What if something bad happens to the original save file on your Switch? 'We're planning to offer a service for recovering backed up data from the server in certain circumstances such as console damage or loss,' Nintendo said during today's video presentation. According to the fine print, though, this capability will require a Nintendo Switch Online subscription and can only be performed once.
Par for the course
These save restrictions are somewhat in keeping with the spirit of the Animal Crossing series. The games are supposed to take place in a single, persistent town that progresses and changes throughout the year (that also may be why different users on a single Switch system will play on 'one shared island'). Using save-scumming or external save file modifications to alter that process would go against that artistic intent.
Previous Animal Crossing games have used the character Mr. Resetti to hammer this point home by yelling at players who quit the game without saving. Resetti will reportedly not appear in New Horizons, though, since the game uses the Switch's auto-save feature to track progress continuously.
Issues with save file management aren't exactly new for Nintendo, which didn't have any option for Switch save file backups until over a year after the system's launch (and still doesn't offer local backups). Even on the Wii, save files for games like Animal Crossing Wild World Save File Download Save
Super Smash Bros. Brawl and
Mario Kart Wii couldn't be transferred to an SD card for backup, likely to hinder hackers' attempts to mess with online competition. That's a fact I learned the hard way when my Wii failed unexpectedly, requiring a circuit-board replacement that totally erased anything that wasn't backed up externally, those save files included.While most Switch users are stuck playing on Nintendo's terms here, we will note that players willing to jailbreak their consoles have been able to use homebrew save transfer tools on other Switch games. We can't be sure such methods will work on