Written by. Nick Mosier based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2022-05-19 17:07 JST)

One Animal Crossing: New Horizons player has deciphered just what is being said on a TV program featured in the game.

In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the furniture available in the game includes items such as LCD TVs, wall-mounted TVs, and an apple-shaped TV, which can be watched when players interact with them. There are even different programs to watch depending on the day and time. Commercials and news change depending on the season and weather reports give you the next day’s forecast. It’s quite detailed.

The language characters speak in Animal Crossing is called Animalese and is represented through a processed version of human language. But that isn’t the case for TV programs in the game, which while different from Animalese, are still difficult to understand by listening to it as is. We’ve known that the speech from the TVs varies by program, but what was actually being said had remained a mystery.

That leads us to YouTuber Komugi Neko who deciphered one of these TV programs. Komugi Neko’s content is focused around easter eggs and small details in the Animal Crossing series, and their method for figuring out the speech was to slow it down to 0.5x speed.

In the video above, Komugi Neko deciphers what is being said on the quiz show. If you look at Komugi Neko’s subtitles, it’s clear that the sentences aren’t gibberish, and the content can be followed.

It appears to be the final round to decide the champion of the quiz show, with the grand prize being one million bells and a voucher to move to a desert island. There also seems to be a question related to a piece of music being played. Komugi Neko attempted to figure some of what was said during a part of the cooking show as well.

I (the original author of this article) attempted to decipher another program, but it didn’t go well. Not only is the audio in the TV shows sped up, but it’s also fairly processed, making it hard to accurately hear just by slowing it down. It would likely take quite a long time to be able to comprehend what’s being said.

Komugi Neko’s success hinged on noticing that the speech used on the TV programs was sped up Japanese and then continuing to listen until they were able to accurately hear what was being said.

Even two years after its launch, new discoveries are being made in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Maybe longtime players will find even more discoveries to share in the future.