A year ago, as the United States just started to enter COVID-19 quarantine, two games arrived that so beautifully yet oddly went hand-in-hand. Animal Crossing: New Horizons and DOOM Eternal launched on the same day, March 20, 2020, and brought with them gameplay and memes that made players locking themselves in their homes a bit more bearable. A year later, both games are going strong with fresh content to please fans, new and old.
While Animal Crossing: New Horizons may be the poster child for quarantine gaming, DOOM Eternal still played a huge role in occupying gamers’ time. Both games having the same release date gave birth to a meme that combined the unlikely duo into a cute yet slightly horrifying couple. Given several names such as Doomguy and Isabelle or “DOOM Crossing: Eternal Horizons,” the meme saw Animal Crossing‘s Isabelle and the DOOM Slayer making quite the scene as quarantine gamers’ ultimate power couple.
Originally, the Animal Crossing x Doom Eternal memes started back in October of 2019 on Twitter, and it did not take long for the meme to catch on with fan art and videos of the pair in various cute and/or gory situations flooded the internet. The sheer outrageous nature of the combination just fueled the fire, with the meme peaking shortly after both games’ release.
Memes continued to roll in with fans of both games posting images of the DOOM Slayer purchasing a copy of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, as well as Isabelle and various other Animal Crossing critters getting their hands on copies of DOOM Eternal. When the official Nintendo of America Twitter account posted about an Animal Crossing: New Horizons live stream was scheduled to air on February 20th, 2020, the official DOOM Twitter account replied to them, “will Isabelle be there.” The fact that both developers have acknowledged the community’s love of the DOOM Slayer and Isabelle pairing drove fans into an even higher fervor, unleashing more and more content around them.
DOOM Eternal has had a great year, with a former employee of id Software reporting that Doom Eternal earned over $450 million since its release. As such, it’s hard not to wonder if the additional word-of-mouth marketing of the whole DOOM Crossing: Eternal Horizons phenomenon had a part of that. It certainly did not seem to harm sales at all.
It didn’t end there, with Doom Eternal receiving two major DLCs post release. The latest, The Ancient Gods Part 2, was released just a few days ago. Both DLC follow up the main story of DOOM Eternal further continues to DOOM Slayer’s quest to rid Earth demons and The Dark Lord.
If DOOM Eternal had a good year, then there is no word to describe Animal Crossing: New Horizon‘s year. The game sold over 31 million copies by the end of 2020 alone. 11.7 million of those sales were within the first 12 days of the game’s release. New Horizons could not have released at a better time, with many quarantined in their homes due to COVID-19. The game’s real-time clock, chill atmosphere, and social nature of visiting others’ islands and swapping gifts helped people stay occupied and connected digitally when they could not visit each other physically.
With Animal Crossing: New Horizon’s constant content updates, it was able to keep players occupied for longer than many other games on the market at the time. The game’s slow pace helped to ease the nerves of players and gave them small daily goals to accomplish and share with their friends. Once it came time to start the Stalk Market, the game exploded with new communities popping up online and new friends made daily.
The polar opposite of DOOM Eternal, Animal Crossing: New Horizons filled a different need for gamers at the perfect time. Currently celebrating its first anniversary, New Horizons is prepping for Bunny Day’s return, the first major event the game saw back in 2020.
Opposites attract, and they provide the perfect look into what 2020 was all about. DOOM Eternal may have given time to let loose and shot whatever demon popped up, while Animal Crossing: New Horizons helped to calm the nerves of players, keeping their minds off the horrors of the world for a bit while they socialized peacefully, building communities and making new friends. Just like the DOOM Slayer and Isabelle proved they could each provide each other with valuable life experience, each game provided for quarantine gamers’ needs in different yet complementary ways.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is out now for the Nintendo Switch. DOOM Eternal is now available on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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