Mr. Sean's Ten Favorite Animal Crossing: Happy Home Paradise Clients

Famous Designer Mr. Sean? Who's Mr. Sean? Is he actually a Famous Designer?

Hello everyone and welcome to yet another attempt of mine at re-awakening my blog. I've had ideas rattle around in my head the past many months but not enough motivation to act upon them. I'm currently feeling very motivated to add to my blog and I have been playing the Animal Crossing: New Horizons Downloadable Content called Happy Home Paradise. Happy Home Paradise is a spiritual sequel to the Nintendo 3DS game Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer. In the main Animal Crossing games one of the possible things you as the player can do is decorate your house with different furniture, wallpaper, flooring, and other knick-knacks. Happy Home Designer takes the house decorating game to the next level where you get to decorate houses for the various Non-Playable Character (NPC) animal neighbors that inhabit Animal Crossing. Happy Home Paradise for the Nintendo Switch is similar to Happy Home Designer but in my opinion feels meatier in content. I could be wrong but I only have at the time of writing (August 2022) about seven months left to purchase Happy Home Designer for the Nintendo 3DS and see for myself which game has more content. 

Enough about my worries about time and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), it's time to get to the meat of today's blog post. I've been playing Happy Home Paradise recently and having fun decorating houses for different animal NPCs and have worked on enough houses that I can discuss my ten favorite and my five least favorite NPC clients I've worked for. Today I'll focus on my personal best of the best and who knows, maybe my ten best list will be different in 2023 if I keep at it. This list is not in order of whose houses I enjoyed designing the most but is just a list of whose houses I greatly enjoyed designing.

1: Tipper

Tipper is a cow character of the personality type called snooty. Snooty villagers tend to be very fashion forward and quite judgmental of their neighbors' fashion choices. Tipper wanted her own ranch so I gave her a desert wheat ranch because it looks cool and also I had the idea that Tipper wanted some challenge to accomplish.

2: Nan

Nan is a "normal" goat NPC. Normal is a misnomer and it would be more fair to call Nan a "sweet" villager as normal villagers tend to be the kindest neighbors in Animal Crossing. Nan tasked me with the making of a luxury hotel room. I tried to make the hotel room in the spirit of an actual hotel room, but really spruced up. There usually are not pianos in many hotel rooms.

3: Claude

Claude was my first lazy villager and my first rabbit villager in Animal Crossing: New Horizons back in April 2020. In New Horizons, lazy villagers love food and their bug friends. Claude also happened to be one of my first Happy Home Paradise clients and he wanted a fun arcade. He has great taste in vacation homes and I had to include some gamer fuel provided by the vending machine on the right side of the image. 

4: Audie

Audie is a peppy wolf villager and in New Horizons peppy villagers are obsessed with becoming pop stars. Audie is making a name for herself in the electronic music scene instead of mainstream Top 40 music with her club. Her club is complete with club snacks because those who dance to Audie's beats will work up quite an appetite.

5: Ken

Ken is a smug ninja chicken. Smug villagers are fashion conscious like snooty villagers but are more inwardly focused on themselves to the point of vanity. Ken wanted a dojo for martial arts so I obliged him with one where Armor-sensei (the Samurai Armor item in the background) watches over martial arts practitioners and four zabuton (seat cushions) for guests to observe the action.

6: Agnes

Agnes is a sisterly (or uchi as some Animal Crossing fans prefer) pig villager. She may be a little rough around the edges but she genuinely cares for her friends. As much as uchi villagers seem to get a bad rap for not being cultured, Agnes bucks the trend with her request for a museum full of cultural treasures and knowledge to be shared.

7: Miranda

Miranda is a snooty duck villager. Snooty villagers tend to not be fans of physical fitness but Miranda wants a gym that can kick her butt with a nice workout. I added some variety for potential workouts so her muscles don't get complacent. The Ring Fit Adventure station in the back is worthy of being included in the great gym as it will give you a real workout but with RPG (Role-playing game) elements thrown in such as battling enemies by doing squats or planks.

8: Shino

Shino is a peppy deer whose design inspiration comes from traditional Japanese Noh theater. Naturally her Happy Home Paradise request had to be Japanese themed and with her personality in mind she can be quite the J-Pop star mixing modern day Japan with the old traditional Japan and creating new fusions that are the future of J-Pop.

9: Eugene

Eugene is a smug koala villager whose wearing of sunglasses reminds me a bit of Elvis Presley. His request for a vacation house was a talk show set so with my limited knowledge of late shows from TV I tried to include multiple cameras for multiple angles, a couch for show guests, a live audience section, and a piano represents the musicians that tend to accompany the late night talk show hosts. 

10: Petri

Petri is a snooty mouse villager. In Animal Crossing promotional images she usually is wearing a pair of glasses that conceal her eyes and is dressed in a lab coat because she is a scientist mouse. Petri's idea for a vacation house is a message to her fellow scientists that it is okay to take breaks sometimes and that you don't need to be nose to the grindstone 24/7. Petri's ideal relaxation includes tea and snacks.

Next time on Mr. Sean vs Motivation: My five least favorite Happy Home Paradise clients and their visions.

Mr. Sean Plays: The Legend of Zelda

I'm back and hopefully I'll be a little more consistent in writing up some blog posts. If you have any suggestions for what I should write about, please comment on any of my blog posts or on Facebook, thank you!

So recently while I've been looking for a job since I finally completed all graduation requirements successfully I've been playing a few video games. Titles include The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX. As I was playing these games a few thoughts came to me:

1. I should ask if people like Mario or Zelda better.
2. I should write about my experiences with some games.
3. I should try to speedrun a few more games besides Portal.

So far I've only completed the first thought and was surprised to see that in my Facebook poll that LoZ (Legend of Zelda) beat Mario 62 percent to 38 percent. I expected more people to pick the seemingly more accessible and ubiquitous Mario, but either way one goes, you can't go wrong with playing a Mario game or a Zelda game.

As for the second point, this post will be the first of two discussing my experiences with games. This post will focus on games within the Legend of Zelda series while the next post will focus on Mario games. To any avid gamers out there, I only speak from my own experiences with the games I've played.

So I'll start with the game that started it all for the Legend of Zelda: The Legend of Zelda. Released in 1986 on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), it was touted for a large overworld called Hyrule that the player could explore from the first button press and a less than linear style of playthrough. Even with three hearts and a wooden sword you could travel to a mountain, a lake, a graveyard, a forest puzzle, and most of the dungeons even if you aren't prepared for defeating enemies. My experience with it was through the Virtual Console (VC) release on the Nintendo 3DS, so I never had the awe and amazement a child of the 1980s would have had playing the game for the first time. Anyways, in my opinion, the combat system was a bit lacking in that the sword attack is a basic forward stab and the enemies had to be in the right place at the right time for an attack to land, also the Bubble enemies were very annoying as they were invincible in this game. I recommend playing this game only if you want to see where it all started or if you want less hand-holding. There's also a Second Quest if you find the main quest too easy.

Next I'll discuss The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX. This is a Game Boy Color game that is available on the Nintendo e-shop for the 3DS. The DX stands for "deluxe" which in this case means the game is in color as the original Link's Awakening was in monochrome for the original Game Boy. Instead of traveling around Hyrule, Link is tasked with going around Koholint Island to collect eight instruments to wake up the Wind Fish and there's no Zelda to be saved. To the people who wanted a Zelda game on a handheld console, you could say it was a Dream come true. Although the sequence of the story is a bit more linear than the original LoZ, the large map still allowed for much exploration. Also the soundtrack was good for 8-bit chiptunes.

Now I'll discuss what more than a few gamers claim is the G.O.A.T: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. This was Link's big splash into 3D and gamers and critics alike loved it. I have the 3DS version of the game, so I still have a Master Quest to complete. Anyways, Link starts out believing he is a Kokiri boy since he's only known his home of the Kokiri Forest up until the Great Deku Tree, the guardian of the Kokiri tells a fairy named Navi to guide Link to him. Link learns of his true destiny as a hero and is set off to meet Zelda and gather three stones to open the Temple of Time to retrieve the Master Sword, also known as the Blade of Evil's Bane. Along the way he gathers the stones and makes friends with the rocky Gorons and the aquatic Zora while saving Hyrule from evil. Once Link has gathered the stones and the Ocarina of Time from a Zelda fleeing the evil Ganondorf (the Gerudo form of Ganon), he pulls the Master Sword from his pedestal but Ganondorf manages to infiltrate the spirit realm and only manages to obtain a third of the Triforce he was seeking. Seven years later, an adult Link sets about Hyrule to gather medallions and wake up the sages so that they may defeat Ganondorf. In my opinion, the hype about Ocarina of Time is justified as it is a great game, I enjoyed most of the combat, the puzzles were good, the soundtrack has memorable tunes, and energy ball tennis with Ganondorf is much better with an empty bottle. I may make a separate post specifically for Ocarina of Time, including my progress through the Master Quest.

Finally, I'll end this post with the Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons games. Released on the Game Boy Color in 2001, like Link's Awakening DX, I have the 3DS VC copies of the games. These games depart from the traditional Zelda formula in some ways while keeping faithful to the formula in others. Instead of taking place in Hyrule like other Zelda games, OoA (Ages) takes place in Labrynna and the person to save is the oracle Nayru, the Oracle of Ages, while OoS takes place in Holodrum and Din, the Oracle of Seasons, is the one who needs to be saved. OoA's main gimmick is time travel, similarly to OoT, except in OoA, the key item is a harp rather than the Master Sword as it is in OoT. Even the final bosses are different as instead of the formulaic Ganon, OoA has the sorceress Veran while OoS has Link fighting Onox who isn't what he looks like at first. I have a lot more to say about the Oracle games, but I'll have to save it for a future post.

I have played other Zelda games, but I have either not completed them, or only had access to them thanks to my mom who loves Zelda. Hopefully one day Nintendo will have GameCube and Game Boy Advance games re-released on the Virtual Console or something similar, I wouldn't mind playing some of my late childhood favorites and try games I haven't tried before. If you have any suggestions for Zelda games I should play, please comment on this post or wherever I share this post. Thanks for reading!