Animal Crossing New Horizons: Tarantula Hunting
I remember seeing on Facebook, sometime around middle-to late 2020, several of my friends sharing a version of the “Get in Loser” meme from Mean Girls. The caption read, “Get in loser, we’re going tarantula hunting!”
At the time this meme was making the rounds I was busy ripping Imp’s spines out through their backs, which is another way of saying I was playing Doom Eternal. Animal Crossing New Horizons had been released on the exact same day, and while a part of me was excited to play the game eventually, I was fresh from a divorce and shoving my shotgun into the open mouths of cacodemons was the therapy I desperately needed. My girlfriend had gotten Animal Crossing New Horizons, along with the New Horizons Switch Dock and would regularly blow up my phone with announcements of bugs caught, furniture acquired, new neighbors, and which animal she was obsessed with or which ones she hated and wanted to move.
I spent my evenings ripping and tearing; she spent her evenings arranging flower patches and filling her museum with butterflies.
We were, for all intents and purposes, the Slayer/Isabel meme which is still my favorite meme on the internet.
My hesitance to buy Animal Crossing New Horizons wasn’t any console-based snobbery on my end. At the time I just didn’t have a Nintendo Switch; I only had a Playstation 4. Even after buying a Switch however I didn’t get Animal Crossing New Horizons, choosing instead to disappear into Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I know now in hindsight why I didn’t buy the game: Brewster was not available.
Needless to say, once Nintendo announced the coffee aficionado and artist that is Brewster the barista pigeon entered the game I literally scoured my local game shops to pick up a copy.
I had two goals once I pressed my cartridge into the slot and turned on the power. The first was to get The Roost Cafe, and thus add Brewster to my village. The second, was to find that most monstrous and terrifying animal in the entirety of the franchise: the tarantula.
For the record, I consider Phylis, the mean purple pelican from the original Animal Crossing a close second.
She may not have knocked me unconscious, but she made fun of my empty bank account at 1 AM when I tried to make a withdrawal. It was way too early to mock me for being financially inadequate…Phyllis.
The Tarantula was, and is the most fascinating addition to the Animal Crossing videogame franchise in no small part because it is, to date, the only element of the game which comes close to violence. Or at least, the mode of violence one can experience in a video game. Animal Crossing is, to some extent, Lofi the videogame meaning that, like the music genre, it’s designed to create a vibe and inspire relaxation. Yes Tom Nook charges me millions of dollars for basic renovations to my home, but there’s no interest and I can pay him back whenever. Or, not at all. Sometimes the animal villagers want to play a game of hide and seek, and I do not find this a stressful activity. Yes I may catch Sea bass over and over again to the point I begin to question whether or not all life in the ocean has been reduced to this seemingly infinitely reproducing green monstrosity that dangles at the end of my line mocking me and my inability to catch a Red Snapper, but this is a minor existential crisis, and I have at least three of those before lunch.
It’s more like five, but you get it.
Like its previous iterations Animal Crossing New Horizons includes the option to capture insects (and arachnids) to donate to the museum (much to the pain of Blathers the owl who runs the place and does a tormented sweaty dance when you hand him anything from a praying mantis to a ladybug). You can also capture insects(and arachnids) for your home to decorate, or even just for the fun of catching them. This is honestly one of my favorite parts of the game due in no small part because my family owns a pest control company and growing up I became fascinated with insects and arachnids. But catching bugs has, up until New Horizons been no different than catching fish, digging up fossils, buying artwork, finding abandoned furniture and/or clothes.
There isn’t any consequence or negative reaction to the player for pursuing these activities.
Tarantulas are different.
The tarantulas are the first time I have ever “died” in Animal Crossing, or, put another way, the first time I experienced a traditional “failure” in the game. In my defense I only “died” twice. And both times were against a scorpion. By the time I actually faced a Tarantula I had a lot more experience under my belt and I was ready.
Tarantulas (and scorpions, I should have mentioned them more) are found in the late evenings, and usually only appear in areas with few trees and plenty of open space. Once the player observes them scittering about and approaches the tarantula will stop, face the villager, and raise its front legs.
This pose is charming if you’re a bug nerd who loves spider facts, but a tad terrifying if you’re a first time player. In real life tarantulas can and will lift their legs up as an intimidation gesture. The tarantula in Animal Crossing New Horizons resembles a Mexican red-kneed tarantula. This species is what’s known as a “new world” tarantula, which typically means that when threatened then they will raise up on their back legs to increase their size to potential predators. If attacked they will usually, in real life, release urticating hairs which sting their predators allowing them the chance to escape.
I mention all that because I’m a nerd, but also because, frankly, so many games, films, books, and cartoons tend to portray spiders incorrectly and this accuracy was refreshing.
Until it stops.
If the player approaches the tarantula at regular speed the spider will hiss at you for a moment and then, in a split instant it will hop into the air, and charge you. The player can at this moment try to run to their house or a nearby building, but unlike tarantulas in real life, this little arachnid is fast, and sure enough the first time I finally encountered one it caught me.
Again, it was actually a scorpion.
I’m going to keep calling it a tarantula though because it makes more aesthetic sense.
I had a second to process this because my villager immediately crumbled forward, collapsing face-first into the dirt. A little funky piano ditty played while stars floated above my head, punctuating my failure before a Loony-tunes-eque transition screen swallowed me up and I awoke in front of my house.
I didn’t need any on-screen text to communicate what had just happened.
I had died in an Animal Crossing game.
I was, to quote the teenagers, shook.
No actual teenagers were consulted when I wrote that sentence.
It took at least one more death before I would eventually catch a scorpion, and then once the tarantulas were actually around I was equipped on the proper way to catch one. But the damage had been done.
Death by tarantulas quickly became a meme, and fodder for countless streamers who needed something to boost some quick ratings, and in defense of those streamers getting killed by a tarantula was pretty fun. And usually pretty funny too. But it was also an edge in a game that has, throughout its existence, largely avoided anything that the player could typically consider a traditional videogame failure. The closest comparison is maybe the hornets that chase and sting you after you shake their hive loose from a tree and leave you temporarily scarred. In previous games the only way to get rid of the swollen eyelid that marked your failure was to go home, save the game, quit, and then start it back up. But New Horizons now sells sting ointment so not even wasps, arguably the dicks of the insect world, still mean failure anymore.
I interrupt to note that wasps are in fact dicks. But also, leave them alone. They’re pollinators, and unless they’ve set up shop right outside your house, they’ll leave you alone because they don’t like you either.
When I think of failures in video games I usually summon the image of Mario running into a thwomp or a Koopa Troopa. The poor plumber would always freeze, hop up, and then disappear from the frame before the screen goes black. This is a fairly familiar image of video game failure, and one that many people my age probably can easily recall. And since Animal Crossing is also a Nintendo intellectual property I think it will work for this essay. Whenever Mario died in a game I recognised that it was almost always my fault (despite my protests that the A button was sticking(Sure Jan, sure)). I wasn’t quick enough to avoid an enemy npc(non-playable-character), or I wasn’t fast enough to move Mario quickly enough so that he would have avoided the enemy in the first place. The price for my failure was Mario dying, and then immediately respawning so that I could try again.
Dying, or really passing out, from a tarantula bite follows this failure structure. By itself it would probably not be so memorable, but Animal Crossing New Horizons is a game whose aesthetic goal is get the player to just relax and have fun with little to no concerns for “failure.” If I try to catch a ladybug and fail, the bug will fly away and I’ll just have to keep walking around until the game spawns one in a new location. There is no risk for failure, or at least there is no perceived consequence other than having to wait until the next opportunity. If I fail to catch a tarantula properly, then my villager will die.
But, of course, he will also respawn, ready to try again.
Videogame failure is, at its core, a reminder that success is achieved by learning from failure and then trying again until the obstacle is overcome. The tarantula and scorpion will bite and sting the player over and over again, but my villager will always get back up driven by the desire to succeed, and also by the reminder that those suckers can sell for 8000 bells and enough of them will definitely pay for a mortgage. And maybe some coffee at Brewster’s place.
Joshua “Jammer” Smith
12.4.2023
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