Official Contests

This is a list of official contests held for the Animal Crossing series. Official contests are contests, giveaways, or sweepstakes officially endorsed by Nintendo.

Animal Crossing Pioneers
On August 7, 2002, Nintendo of America announced a contest whereby 125 teams of two would be selected to receive advanced promotional copies of Animal Crossing. The submission deadline for the contest was August 12th. To be considered for selection, applicants had to submit a written response of 50 words or less explaining why they should chosen as Pioneers. Those selected received a special Animal Crossing disc marked "for promotional use only", along with a 59 block Memory Card and a promotional Animal Crossing calendar. Pioneers received the game a month early and were expected to help Nintendo generate online buzz in advance of the title's release. Pioneers were also given exclusive access to their own web forum where they could discuss amongst themselves as well as provide feedback to Nintendo representatives. At the end of the experience, the Pioneers were invited to an online chat with a few of the members of the game's localization team. An analysis of the standard and promotional game disc concluded that the two were byte identical, meaning that no changes were made to the final version as a result of Pioneer feedback. The promotional copy and calendar have since become collector's items, selling for over $500 together on eBay as of March, 2014.

"Deck Out Your Room" Sweepstakes
On August 30, 2002, Nintendo of America initiated the Animal Crossing "Deck Out Your Room" Sweepstakes. One grand prize winner received the following prizes:
 * A Panasonic Triple Play 27" CRT TV with a built in VCR and DVD player
 * A Panasonic ShockWave portable CD player
 * A pair of Panasonic BrainShaker headphones
 * A Nintendo GameCube
 * Two WaveBird controllers
 * Five Nintendo GameCube Games of Nintendo's choosing
 * A Game Boy Advance
 * Five Game Boy Advance games of Nintendo's choosing
 * A one-year subscription to Nintendo Power

Five first prize winners received a Nintendo GameCube, a copy of Animal Crossing, and a one year subscription to Nintendo Power.

The sweepstakes lasted from August 30, 2002 to October 15, 2002. Those who registered for it received an Animal Crossing screensaver.

Miiverse Art Academy Animal Crossing drawing event
On February 20, 2014, the director of, Aya Kyogoku, announced an event on Miiverse where players could enter drawings created in Art Academy SketchPad. The theme of the event was "The Four Seasons of Animal Crossing". There were five categories; Spring, Summer, August, Winter and honorable mentions. The winning drawings were chosen based on the skill, artistic expression, originality, and creativity of the author. In the end, four entries made it into each category with the exception of the honorable mentions category, which had 12. Some winning entries would later be shared onto social media websites such as Twitter. The event ended on March 16, 2015.

Happy Home Network Design Contest
This contest is held monthly in. Players are given a theme which they would then have to build an in-game design related to the theme. Players can submit and vote on designs during the first half of each month, and the best designs are displayed on the Happy Home Network in the latter half. The prizes for winning the monthly event are special items similar to Distributed items.

US Happy Home Designer Twitter contest
In this contest, players were tasked with posting various house interior and exterior designs created within Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer to Twitter using special hashtags.The first week's entries had to include the interior and exterior of any household within the game. The second week had the players design an interior based on a school theme. Each week would have two winners, four in total. The week one winners would receive a New Nintendo 3DS system with a full game download of Happy Home Designer. The week two winners would receive three Animal Crossing series 1 amiibo card packs. The first week ran from October 5 through October 9, 2015 while the second week ran from October 12 to October 16, 2015.

UK Happy Home Designer Twitter contest
Similar to the contest in the United States, Nintendo UK held a six week contest where players could submit a screenshot of an in-game design based on a theme given by Nintendo UK. The contest began on October 23 and ended on December 3, 2015. Players had to submit their designs through Twitter using the hashtag "MyACHappyHome". The winners would receive one Animal Crossing series 1 amiibo pack and and an official Animal Crossing series 1 amiibo card Collector's Album.