Bring the National Science and Media Museum collection home in Animal Crossing

It has been over a month since the National Science and Media Museum temporarily closed as the world comes together to combat coronavirus, but videogames fans can now bring the museum’s vast collection into their homes in Animal Crossing.

Nintendo’s recently released Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a wholesome simulator game that lets you create your dream island, make friends with adorable animals, curate a museum collection and more.

To add even more personalisation to the game, Getty have created an Animal Crossing Art Generator, which turns uploaded images into patterns that can be used in the game as wallpaper, flooring, clothing or pictures. For players missing their museum visits in real life, a new feature has been added to the Science Museum Group Collection website that adds museum objects straight into the Art Generator.

This means players can now add objects from the Science Museum Group’s five sites into their Animal Crossing universe, from the National Science and Media Museum’s terrifying Stookie Bill, to textile trade tickets from the Science and Industry Museum, vintage posters from the National Railway Museum, the Deltic locomotive from Locomotion, and Helen Sharman’s spacesuit from the Science Museum. More information about how to add objects to the game can be found in this helpful blog post.

The National Science and Media Museum’s videogaming fun doesn’t stop there. Each February the museum hosts the Yorkshire Games Festival, inspiring people to become part of the UK’s ambitious and successful games industry. Jack Wentworth-Weedon from the Festivals Team recently posted a blog about the videogames to play during lockdown, whether you are together with friends and family or apart.

In February the museum also hosted A CBBC Games Half Term where visitors could discover how their most loved characters come to life in online games, with coding activities and a chance to play the latest CBBC Games. Both CBBC and the Science Museum Group have a number of online games and learning resources available to help families through the period of lockdown.

Commenting on the museum’s venture into Animal Crossing, Kathryn Penny, Director of the Yorkshire Games Festival, said: “While we’re in lockdown it’s great to be able to bring the Science Museum Group Collection to people in new and innovative ways. One of our key areas of focus at the National Science and Media Museum is videogaming and it’s exciting to see the museum brought to life in a hugely popular game like Animal Crossing. Games like this have many learning benefits for people of all ages and can also be a great source of comfort, especially at times like these.”

For more information, visit: https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/create-science-museum-in-animal-crossing/