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Collected Item: “Year of the Switch”

Give your story a title.

Year of the Switch

What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?

Photograph of a Nintendo Switch

Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.

Almost as if Nintendo had made a contingency plan for the pandemic, Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out on the Switch around the same time "quarantine" had started. For a lot of people (including myself) it was their only way of having some semblance of normalcy, of a normal life. I personally began to understand the true value of being able to go fishing with my dad without fear of getting sick, and the value of being able to talk to other people and hang out on a sunny patch of grass without the stifling masks and social distancing. For a while, the game gave us what we needed, and it's honestly been impressive to see how far people have come with it. I know that it was an invaluable tool for me to hang out with loved ones, including my fiancee, in every way except physical. Maybe the same goes for others.
This specific game system has been the respite of many people, not necessarily with Animal Crossing, but with other titles as well. I don't think i've ever seen that many games come out for a system within less than a year, and i've been gaming since I was six.
I'm asthmatic, so i'm pretty limited in what I can do, so having this teeny little game system has been almost a saving grace for my mental health. Almost. Lol. There's probably something ironic about the fact that you start the game on a desolate island and you make the most of it while still being totally isolated from other islands, and being an figurative island yourself, far away from the reach of others. But you make the most of it.

Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your story. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?

#Nintendo, #isolation, #fear, #yearning, #islands

Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)

Nintendo

Give this story a date.

2020-03-20
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