Animal Crossing: K.K. Slider
Before I begin, I know K.K. Slider is a rock-star now and world famous, but when I played the original Animal Crossing Gamecube game back in 2002 he was just a guitar stringin’ dog, singin’ songs by the train station on Saturday nights, often to a crowd of just one person.
I was that person. And he rocked dude.
For those who’ve never played Animal Crossing, K.K. Slider is one of a number of recurring characters throughout the franchise since the original game was released in 2002. He’s a dog with white fur, possibly a labrador but his breed is never established, and visits town every Saturday night usually sometime after 7PM. As an element of the game, K.K. Slider is designed to give the player songs that can then be played on any of the music equipment I acquire in the game either at Nook’s Cranny the local town shop or else via trade with some of the local animals who populate town. The only way to get the song though, is to ask K.K. Slider to play a song. And buddy, this dog has tunes for days.
The original Animal Crossing game featured around 55 songs. To put it in perspective Animal Crossing New Horizons, the latest game in the series available on Nintendo Switch, contains 107 songs.
I have, as a side note, never gotten all of K.K. Slider’s records in any version of the game I’ve played.
The first time I ever encountered K.K. Slider was the first time I ever played the original game; I received Animal Crossing as a Christmas present from my grandmother. My family and I were visiting Pasadena where she lived and celebrating a pre-Christmas event since my family usually preferred to celebrate Christmas alone (Mom, Dad, Sister, me, and no one else). I had brought some of my Nintendo Power magazines with me (along with my GameCube because come on man I can’t go outside and my grandparents main T.V. still had knobs on it) and when my grandmother asked me what I wanted for Christmas there was no question. I showed her the advertisements for the game and explained, as any young teenage boy could explain to a woman who never played a video game, how cool it was going to be. My grandmother nodded her head and listened, but it was my mother who went out with her to actually buy the right game.
Thanks again Mom, you rock.
The next day I received a number of presents, none of them I can remember, and the last one was Animal Crossing. I thanked my Grandmother, and my Mom, and ran to the back bedroom (where the good T.V. was) and started the game.
The screen went black, and I heard a guitar.
A cone of yellow cheap light illuminated a single figure, a white dog sitting on a wooden box and playing a light brown guitar with a splash of yellow ochre along the body. He strummed beneath the light for a few bars; he couldn’t see me or else he didn’t care that I was watching him. I wondered briefly how long this would last when he looked up and said the words:
“So, you’ve decided to move out. Get your own place? See the world? That’s groovy.”
Watching this opening again, years after I’d played the original game (and months since I played New Horizons mostly because I’m terrified Brewster won’t like me anymore) there’s an expected rush of nostalgia. The emotion that hit me was happiness remembering how psyched I was playing that game and discovering this new world that was unlike any video game I had played till that moment. I should clarify that Life simulator games weren’t my usual scene. Some of my later friends and family would regale me with their experiences playing games like The Sims, but I had usually stuck to platformers or real-time-strategy games.
I managed to find this opening clip on YouTube while researching for this essay so I could watch this scene again, and after I watched it (more than a few times) I realized how K.K. works in this game.
K.K. Slider is, above all things, cool. He’s THE cool dude of video games, and he embodies better than most the image of the “solo artist.” Mimicking the icon, or cultural cliche, of the lone-wolf musician who travels from place to place with nothing but a guitar, Animal Crossing established K.K. Slider as one of the most important figures in the player’s experience of the game. The reason for this is simple: everybody loves music.
K.K. was inspired directly from Kazumi Totaka, one of the leading sound designers for Nintendo who has worked on numerous games including Mario Paint, Luigi’s Mansion, Legend of Zelda Link’s Awakening, and of course Animal Crossing. Even the name “K.K. Slider” is derived from his name. In an article in NinetendoLife from 2012, Kai Jackson provides a brief explanation:
He's[K.K. Slider] based on music composer Kazumi Totaka – K.K's Japanese name Totakeke is a contraction of Totaka K. – who has a long and unique history with Nintendo.
Much like the 13 note song Totaka hides in just about all of the games he works on, K.K. Slider appears and disappears from the player just as quickly as he came. Until he shows up again.
Like I mentioned in the beginning, K.K. Slider from this point on can only be found in the game on Saturday evenings. When you first arrive in the village there is a small wooden crate by the steps of the station that will forever remain unoccupied until Saturday night when the player first encounters him. I’d like to say the first time I saw him playing his guitar by the station it was an accident. I’d like to say that because I can’t honestly remember. I was probably playing the game in the late evening, just wandering around looking for bugs (as you do) when I passed by the station and saw the same white dog from before strumming his guitar.
I approached K.K.. He offered to play me a song, if I knew one I wanted to hear. Since I didn’t he played one of his original 55 and then gave me a copy, at no charge.
Like I said, K.K. Slider is one cool dude.
He’s also the character that introduced the core mechanic of the game. Right after K.K. talks about how nice living by your own will be he says to the player:
“…But living by yourself can be a real drag too. Still if you got some really tight friends nearby then you know it’ll all work out. Yeah man, friends are far out.”
Having K.K. Slider tell me that having friends is important and “far out” isn’t just K.K. being the dude that he is. This message is also a well crafted design. The gameplay of Animal Crossing is about social interaction between the villager and the other members of the town. The player is encouraged from the very opening of the game that in order to really enjoy the experience they need friends. Animal Crossing then offers friends galore in the form of elephants, wolves, squirrels, frogs, rhinos, hippos, and eagles all of whom are are on their own unique adventure buying houses, making friends, and decorating their homes with Gyroids.
KK Slider encourages social interaction, and immediately after I’m given a scene in which my character interacts with the blue cat named Rover (who needs a comeback by the way). This is the first real interaction the player will have with one of the numerous animals in the game, and this interaction will shape the physical aspect of the character. Whoever you are when you step off the train will be determined partly through the randomization of the engine, but also by the way you interact with Rover.
Likewise the way I play the game and “succeed” in it will largely depend on how well I interact with the other animal villagers. There isn’t a way to “win” or “beat” Animal Crossing the way there is a way in a game like Batman: Arkham Knight or DOOM. I’m not working towards a long-game end-goal. The experience of Animal Crossing is waking up everyday and playing the game. This is one of the harshest criticisms of the game, usually from game-bros who measure the artistry of a game by how many people you can kill in a limited amount of time (which can be fun to be fair). Each player is going to appreciate games through the lens of their own aesthetic and I’m not here to say whether Animal Crossing’s gameplay is “superior” to any other game because that kind of discourse is about as self-serving as it is self-parody.
Stupid. That’s what I meant to say.
That kind of commentary is stupid.
Animal Crossing, from the first few seconds is about experiencing other people, and forming new relationships. K.K. Slider at first addresses the player as a purveyor of wisdom, but in retrospect he was offering me the player his time. That’s all anyone can and should respect and deserve in any kind of interpersonal relationship. It speaks to the design of the game that it is able so quickly to give the player a summation of the gameplay in just a few moments and carefully selected words.
Almost two decades later I bought a copy of Animal Crossing: New Horizons (mostly so I could go on disgustingly cute digital dates with my girlfriend who has an Animal Crossing Tattoo) and as the game opened I saw a familiar sight. The same white dog under the same bad light strumming his guitar. He offered me, once again, his time and a few choice words:
“Yeah, but take it from a cat that’s been on the road…Being by your lonesome can grind on the soul. You’ve gotta make friends along the way. Rambling this crazy world is squaresville without some pals.”
There are literally millions of people around the planet who have played Animal Crossing and created their own memories, impressions, and thoughts about the structures of the game. Almost all of them are about the connections they have made with friends whether they be villagers or other players. Twenty years and several games later a simple moment of a dog offering me his time and his advice lays a blueprint for how to play a fun game about making friends. K.K. Slider is a wonderful tool for players and designers to remember that teaching players about how to play a game is as much about inviting the opportunity and just giving something a few precious seconds of time.
Joshua “Jammer” Smith
9.19.2023
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