How To Unlock Animal Crossing Villagers & Backgrounds For Switch Profiles [May Birthdays]

3 years ago Justin 2 Comments

Have you heard? Dozens of new Animal Crossing: New Horizons themed options can now be unlocked to customize your Nintendo Switch profile with villagers, background landscapes, and special frames!

While this feature originally launched earlier in the year, a new assortment of Animal Crossing: New Horizons themed content has now been newly added for May as of May 2nd, 2022 and this article has been updated accordingly. For those unfamiliar, we’ll cover how you can use this feature in detail below.

How To Get Animal Crossing Villager Icons & Backgrounds

You can get started on unlocking Animal Crossing themed villager icons and backgrounds by opening the Nintendo Switch Online app found in a row at the bottom of the console’s home screen. Inside of this application, navigate to the Missions & Rewards section in the side bar, which was introduced in March 2022.

Note that an active Nintendo Switch Online membership is required, which costs $19.99 per year for an individual subscription if you’re not already a member.

Under the Missions & Rewards section of Nintendo Switch Online, you can find various categories of items available to purchase, including ones themed to Animal Crossing: New Horizons ranging in cost from 5 to 10 Platinum Points each.

There are three different types of profile icon elements you can obtain, which are combined together to create an Animal Crossing (or other series) themed icon unique to you for your Nintendo Switch profile:

• Characters are the centerpiece of your Nintendo Switch profile icon with many more favorite characters available through Nintendo Switch Online than the system’s default icon set.
• Backgrounds are both elaborate landscapes and simplistic patterns that serve as the background to a character of your choice.
• Frames are an additional piece of customization you can use to further differentiate your icon and embrace the circular design that Nintendo Switch profile icons are often displayed as.

After purchasing a few of each icon element type, head to your Icon Collection by either navigating to the button in the top right of your screen, or selecting View in Icon Collection on a part in the store. In here, you can begin creating a new icon making use of the Animal Crossing: New Horizons icon elements you purchased.

Nintendo will make some automatically generated suggestions using the characters, frames, and backgrounds that you own — but you’ll want to press the Create Your Icon button at the bottom to access full customization that allows you to combine as you please.

After you’ve finished creating a custom icon with the elements of your choice, it will be applied to your Nintendo Switch profile as your avatar icon and appear across menus both in your own view or when friends interact with you online.

You can save many different created icons over time in your Icon Collection too, making it super easy to swap out for a different design anytime you wish. And as Nintendo continues to release more icon elements over the next year, the possibilities for Animal Crossing: New Horizons profile icons will grow!

Need more Platinum Points to purchase these character icons, backgrounds, and frames? Keep reading later in this article for everything you need to know about how to easily earn Platinum Points on My Nintendo.

Animal Crossing Villager May 2o22 Birthday Rotation

Currently, you can find a rotation of Animal Crossing: New Horizons villagers with May Birthdays available in the Rewards store, which were introduced on May 2nd, 2022 and will remain for purchase up until June 6th, 2022 at 6pm Pacific Time according to Nintendo’s schedule.

The following villagers with birthdays during May are available during this rotation:

• Clyde
• Mint
• Roswell
• Sylvia
• Deirdre
• Paolo
• Tank
• Ozzie
• Curlos
• Bunnie
• Patty
• Cherry
• Ellie
• Biskit
• Canberra
• Ike
• Gayle
• Pekoe
• Olaf
• Sasha
• T-Bone
• June
• Colton
• Peggy
• Deli
• Derwin
• Bruce
• Del
• Renee
• Purrl
• Hamlet
• Marcie

In addition to villagers, five backgrounds and five frames are available during the May rotation — refer to the screenshot below for more details as these items don’t have defined names. These differ from the ones seen in March and April, implying that new backgrounds and frames will be released each month.

March 2022 Animal Crossing Icon Rotation

Previously during March 2022, all of the villagers with birthdays in March were available for purchase, in addition to the five backgrounds and five frames pictured below:

April 2022 Animal Crossing Icon Rotation

Previously during April 2022, all of the villagers with birthdays in April were available for purchase, in addition to the five backgrounds and five frames pictured below:

June 2022 Animal Crossing Icon Rotation

We expect that a new rotation of Animal Crossing villagers with June Birthdays will become available to unlock starting around June 6th, 2022. Either way, we’ll update this article each month to inform you of when new villager icons are released, so check back!

How To Earn My Nintendo Platinum Points

As previously mentioned, you’ll need to earn Platinum Points with the My Nintendo loyalty program in order to exchange them for unlocking these exciting Animal Crossing icons.

Platinum Points can thankfully be obtained with relative ease free of charge though, and shouldn’t be confused with Gold Points that are earned by directly purchasing paid Nintendo products.

Many Animal Crossing players who regularly engage with their Nintendo Switch or mobile games published by Nintendo will likely already have a healthy stash of Platinum Points, but if you don’t, we’ll cover a few of the ways to top up your balance below.

Nintendo Switch Online App Missions

Within the Nintendo Switch Online app, access the Mission Status menu to find four missions that can be regularly completed to earn Platinum Points right on your Nintendo Switch.

• Play Software That Supports Online Play — 30 Platinum Points; complete this mission by playing any Nintendo Switch game that has online play, including Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Resets on Mondays.
• Back Up Save Data — 20 Platinum Points; complete this mission by backing up your Cloud Save Data in system settings. Excludes Island Backup. Resets on Mondays.
• Play Featured Super NES Game; complete this mission by playing the currently featured Super NES Nintendo Switch Online game. Featured game as of May 2022 is Kirby Super Star. Resets roughly every month.
• Use This Application (Nintendo Switch Online); complete this mission by loading up the application that contains Missions & Rewards. Resets on Mondays.
• Play Featured Software That Supports Online Play — 100 Platinum Points; complete this mission by playing the featured Nintendo Switch game that has online play. Featured game as of May 2022 is Splatoon 2. Resets roughly every month.

Promotional Website Missions

Additionally, you can earn plenty of bonus points with some mostly one-time promotional missions accessible on the My Nintendo website! There are a couple repeatable missions too involving signing in to your Nintendo Account online each week, collecting the weekly My Nintendo bonus on the website’s front page, and continuing to receive promotional emails each month.

Mobile Game App Missions

Finally, a few of Nintendo’s mobile game applications offer another way to earn Platinum Points through their own My Nintendo missions. Most notably for Animal Crossing players, the Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp game features 3 missions that can be repeated each week for 180 Platinum Points combined.

Super Mario Run and Fire Emblem Heroes have their own My Nintendo missions as well, but we won’t go into detail for those.

We hope this mini-guide helps you take full advantage of the exciting Animal Crossing: New Horizons character, background, and frame elements to decorate your Nintendo Switch profile in full! This article will continue to be updated as new icon elements are released by Nintendo.

Stay tuned to Animal Crossing World for everything on Animal Crossing: New Horizons, including our extensive Guides section here. Our most popular pages include Bunny Day Event, Cherry Blossom Petal Recipes, Series 5 Amiibo Cards, 16 New Villagers in Version 2.0, All 9000+ New Items In Version 2.0, Redd Art, Sea Creatures, and Villager House Exteriors.

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