E3 2019 Animal Crossing Switch Rumor & Leak Debunking Roundup

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As expected, there’s been a flurry of new rumors and supposed leaks going around this week in anticipation of Animal Crossing for Nintendo Switch’s potential reveal next week at E3 2019.

We’ll just say right off the bat, as indicated in the title, that we don’t believe any of these have even a small grain of truth to them. But since we’ve got nothing else to do while we pass the time before Tuesday’s presentation, we’re going to have some fun today rounding up some of the ones floating around out there, including why we think they’re bogus.

Animal Crossing: Metro Mania Logo

First up, we’ve got a logo for Animal Crossing: Metro Mania, a supposed new title of Animal Crossing for Nintendo Switch. While we’ll give props to this one for being a surprisingly well made logo for a fan creation, the source of the image throws the leak into total bogus territory.

This rumor originates from 4chan as part of a claimed screenshot of Nintendo of America’s social media posting dashboard with all of the upcoming E3 2019 Nintendo Direct announcements queued up and ready to go. The screenshot posted of these scheduled tweets is actually from the TweetDeck software tool, which Nintendo of America does not use.

A quick glance of the account’s recent tweets show that Nintendo of America prefers to use a combination of the regular Twitter web client, the Twitter Media Studio tool, and Meltwater Social. In fact during the recent Super Mario Maker 2 Direct, every tweet was posted using the standard Twitter website, meaning nothing was scheduled using any tools.

K.K. Slider Track Sound Test Video

Next up, we have a video purporting to be a look inside the Sound Test menu of Animal Crossing for Nintendo Switch. This may look fairly convincing at first glance but there are a few notable issues.

Most obvious is the presence of black bars on both the top and bottom of the screen. These are indicative of what is likely a video edited and produced on a computer, and then played back onto a Nintendo Switch using the YouTube app or some other method of playback. A real working Animal Crossing game would not have these black bars visible.

Another oddity is simply the premise of the Sound Test menu to begin with. There’s never been anything resembling a user-facing sound test feature or menu in any previous Animal Crossing game, not to mention any back button to leave the menu. Presumably then, this must be intended to be a hidden developer feature instead of a user-facing feature.

If that’s the case though, why would a developer menu feature such a complex presentation with animated backgrounds and cover art for each track? There’s absolutely no reason for a hidden menu to be presented with such visuals. Not to mention, the size of the cover art images are oddly small for the Switch’s screen and the design of the menu… almost as if they are ripped from Animal Crossing: New Leaf.

We will note that the art for Galactic K.K., a purported new track, does appear to be original and new. However, it’s not at all out of question that someone with artistic talent could easily create the art, and the rest of this leak’s issues lead us to declare it debunked regardless.

Development Update on Animal Crossing for Nintendo Switch Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRcVSU_S2W4

Finally we’ve got another video, this time claiming to be an announcement video about development troubles on Animal Crossing for Nintendo Switch leading to a reboot of development, and ultimately a massive delay until 2021.

There’s not too much to say here as it’s fairly obviously fake, but to be clear, this is an edited version of the Metroid Prime 4 delay announcement video posted by Nintendo back in January. Not to mention, the video is posted by a YouTube account titled ‘Ninrendo’.

In fact, we actually did a fairly similar version of this in the form of an April Fool’s Day article earlier this year!

E3 2019 is almost here…

Anyway, that just about wraps up our roundup today! As you can see so far, we have yet to see any rumors or leaks about Animal Crossing for Nintendo Switch that appear even somewhat legitimate looking. Be careful out there.

Of course if we spot anything popping up in the next few days that we have a decent amount of confidence in, we’ll be sure to share it, but in the meantime stay tuned for Nintendo Direct: E3 2019 to begin on Tuesday at 9AM Pacific Time!

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