After Animal Crossing’s explosion in popularity a couple years ago, I’m sure there are a lot of people looking forward to Jack O’ Lantern’s annual visit. He might not be too terribly terrifying upon first meeting him in Animal Crossing, but he does have a pumpkin for a head. In a game that almost exclusively stars cute animals, that’s kind of freaky at first.

Of course, Jack’s no pumpkin head-throwing terror of the night. Rather, he’s in town to spread the Halloween spirit and reward those who dress up extra spooky. If you want to get all his spooky furniture and emotes, then you’d better save up enough candy beforehand, both for him and for the other villagers you might bump into. If you don’t, a lack of festive furniture won’t be your only problem.

See Jack (and the villagers) love candy. He also takes “trick or treat” very seriously. If you give him a treat, he’ll give you something in kind. If you don’t have any candy for him, then he’ll play a nasty trick on you. This includes giving you a useless item, replacing one of your items with a piece of garbage, or even replacing your shirt with an old, patched thing nobody in their right mind would want to be caught dead wearing. Yeah, running into Jack without any candy really is a scary prospect.

The villagers all follow his example too, and they’re a lot more aggressive about it. They run right up and demand candy or else! If you have none, then you get a piece of junk. It’s annoying, but at least it’s better than having your nice shirt turned into rags. All told though, Jack himself is pretty fair. He’s not so interested in tricks that he’ll chase you down in the hopes of catching you unawares. Nope, he’s content to just get his treats and hand out his cool items. Just don’t waste his time.

Of all the characters in Animal Crossing, Jack stands out as perhaps the only character besides the player that isn’t obviously an animal. There’s nothing to imply it, not even a tail. For all we know, he might just be an actual haunted Jack o’ Lantern. If he is, thank goodness he’s the friendly sort of ghost and not the vengeful sort we see in all the horror movies.

Game events probably shouldn’t have all that much impact on our real-life enjoyment of a holiday season, but it’s still nice to have one more thing to make the holiday special. The risk of virtual tricks aside, Jack’s yearly visit is always a nice little bonus for Halloween, so I’m definitely looking forward to showing-off all my cool costumes to him this year too!

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What do you think of Jack? Do you like his event? How about other Halloween events?

Image by Duck of Indeed