I'm a little late to the party as I've just discovered the fantastic world of YouTuber Pickitup's ska covers! K.K. Slider himself would be impressed by his ska-jazz cover of the Animal Crossing: New Horizons theme. Now, if that's not your thing, Pickitup's got a huge catalog of other ska/[insert music genre here] covers on his channel Ska Tune Network that are sure to delight.

From his Patreon:

I have been given this gift and love for music, and i've chosen to do the most important thing I can possibly think of with it, and that's to create ska covers of various songs.

This entire journey began on christmas of 2016, when I jokingly posted on facebook saying I should make a bad ska cover of a christmas song, and everyone encouraged me to actually do it, so I did it and people loved it, so since then I've been using my resourses to record myself playing guitar, bass, trumpet, trombone, saxophone, keyboard, and sometimes unconventional instruments like viola, ukulele, euphonium, and honestly anything I can get my hands on to create covers of songs I find interesting or songs other people tell me I should do!

Here's another fun one: A ska-punk one of Billie Eilish's "Bad Guy."

screengrab via Ska Tune Network Read the rest

Nintendo staffer Rob Heiret and his colleagues worked on the localization of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, translating its Japanese dialogue and culture for an English-speaking audience. Well, on Sunday, in a long and insightful Twitter thread, Rob shared some thoughts about their work on the game, and the story behind its sea bass joke... which he wrote. If you're not familiar, when you catch a sea bass fishing in the game (and it's a common catch), this joke appears in a pop-up,

"I caught a sea bass! No, wait — it's at least a C+!"

Cute for a few yuks, but can grow tiresome, as he admits:

If you've played the game, you're tired of the sea bass joke. I get it. *I'M* tired of the sea bass joke, and I wrote it. But here's a secret about the sea bass joke:

It was originally "I caught a sea bass! Well...maybe a C- bass...)

He goes on to explain:

And when we were workshopping the fish jokes, someone pointed out that, as a joke people were going to see many, many times, generally along with disappointment they didn't catch something better, maybe it would be better to spin it positive. Make it a C+ instead.

He furthers:

From a comedy-mechanics perspective, it's the same joke, relying on the homophones "sea" and "C" to change how you perceive the description of the animal (and, let's be honest, it would work better as a verbal joke than it does in print, but that fish has sailed).

A San Diego-based Disney fan has made "happy haunts materialize" on his Animal Crossing: New Horizons island. Player Weary Bones (who goes by the Twitter handle @capuchinokappu) has re-created the experience of the Haunted Mansion as his in-game home, and it's nothing short of A-MAZING. It must have taken him weeks to make this. The level to detail is impressive — a real dedication to a worthy concept!

Take a look:

My HAUNTED MANSION in Animal Crossing New Horizons is finally finished!!!

I made this spooky video of it to celebrate, I hope you guys like it :’)#acnh #hauntedmansion 👻🦇🕸 pic.twitter.com/hx3qvhPdyv

— Weary Bones 🦴🎃🦇 (@capuchinokappu) May 2, 2020

Incredible, right?

He has since added the attraction's gate:

I would like to inform everyone that after acquiring the ‘Jail Bars’ recipe, the Haunted Mansion now has a very spooky gated entrance pic.twitter.com/4bhUGRH3uy

— Weary Bones 🦴🎃🦇 (@capuchinokappu) May 7, 2020

By the way, if you're looking for that wallpaper, it's called "Corridor of Doors" and it's available here. You can follow Weary Bones on Twitch.

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A quick note about the game, from my perspective: At the beginning of this shelter in place, my 15-year-old asked for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and a Switch Lite to play it on. I obliged, not knowing that I would soon be swept up into this great quarantine escape. Before this, it had been about 16 years since I've played a video game regularly (Sims). Now, every time I play, I find something new and joyful. Read the rest

Nintendo released a video this morning highlighting some of the new content that will be available in a free update being released on April 23. The new content includes a Nature Day, May Day, two new merchants, and a new fine arts wing for the museum.

Image: YouTube Read the rest