Strange glitch in Animal Crossing: New Horizons gives Marina an endless nose

A player of Animal Crossing: New Horizons encountered a strange glitch that gave Marina an endless nose and caused some additional graphical distortions. The peculiar appearance later spread on social media, amusing many fans of Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Compared to the rest of the industry, Nintendo's contemporary games tend to be technically problem-free. The company's policy of polishing titles to perfection became even more important in the post-GameCube era when Nintendo stopped competing on hardware power with its competitors and instead pursued modest consoles that are not well-suited for poor optimization. The latest Animal Crossing game is no exception, as New Horizons was even delayed to allow for more development time without rushing, ultimately delivering a quite refined experience.

But when it comes to software as complex as video games, there is no flawless experience, as Reddit user bag_of_deer can attest. Recently, this player was greeted with an unusual title screen after starting Animal Crossing: New Horizons, featuring Marina with a seemingly endless nose extending beyond the boundaries of the Switch display. Furthermore, the island that would normally be visible in the background of the title screen failed to load properly, displaying only a few shadow textures in the game.

The unusual appearance amused enough fans to land on the front page of the r/AnimalCrossing subreddit. Numerous players made jokes about how Marina had completed her transformation into Cthulhu and was now "biblically accurate." The fan who encountered this strange glitch did not provide further details about their experience, making it difficult to pinpoint the cause of the issue. There have been only a few dozen reports of issues with the game's title screen since New Horizons launched in early 2020, but most of them are from the release year and do not describe anything similar to this.

Given these circumstances, it is fair to assume that the issue is not widespread and may simply be caused by a damaged texture cache or a rare read error. In August 2022, an equally unique glitch surfaced online, where a player in Animal Crossing: New Horizons was surprised by a moment of fright. Since bag_of_deer's post seemed to be written in a lighthearted manner and no further information followed, it is likely that the player was able to continue their island adventures after overcoming the faulty title screen.

Interestingly, this is not the first nose-related issue raised by the game's fan community in recent months. Back in July, an observant player took to social media to express their regret that Katrina in Animal Crossing: New Horizons does not have a nose.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is exclusively available for the Nintendo Switch.