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Take a look back at Engadget's favorite Nintendo 64 games
The Engadget staff shares some of their favorite memories of the console on its 25th birthday.
Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley takes root November 4
Lighthearted farming sim Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley will premiere for the Nintendo 3DS in North America next month, publisher Natsume revealed today. The Lost Valley evolves the agriculture-focused gameplay of its predecessors while adding new terrain customization elements reminiscent of Minecraft. The Lost Valley is the first entry in the long-running series to be developed by a new internal team at Natsume; core Harvest Moon series staffers are currently working on Story of Seasons, a successor game hitting the 3DS this year from Xseed. The Lost Valley will debut at retail and via Nintendo's eShop on November 4. Players who pre-order via Natsume's online store will also receive a plush dog (bundled with The Lost Valley's regular edition) or bunny (included with the premium edition) at release. [Image: Natsume]
E3 2014 round-up: Weird tales from Los Angeles
Had you been on the floor of the Los Angeles Convention Center this year, you would have heard one question, echoing from journalist to journalist: "This year feels a little ... weird, don't you think?" It's hard to put a finger on exactly why E3 2014 gave off a strange vibe, but darn it all, we're gonna try. Here are some of the most eccentric, the most peculiar, most "hmm"-inducing stories of E3:
Same sex marriage in Harvest Moon: 'We know what the fans are looking for'
Marriage is an intrinsic part of long-running life sim series, Harvest Moon, but to date same sex marriage hasn't been possible. The newest game in the series, Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley for 3DS, won't change that trend, but future games might, if that's what the fans really want. When I asked the question as to whether Natsume had considered including same sex marriage in a Harvest Moon game, Graham Markay, Vice President of Operations, said, "It's obviously something that we're going to look into as we continue the Harvest Moon series. We're going to look into all aspects of it." He started to express the idea that it's not a cut-and-dried issue, but Hiro Maekawa, President and CEO of Natsume cut him off. "We always listen very carefully to fans' voices," Maekawa said. "Fan voices, media voices. We know what the fans are looking for. We are always carefully listening to fans' voices." Maekawa says he is very appreciative of Harvest Moon's fans, who have kept the game alive since its inception on Super Nintendo in 1996. Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley, which "innovates in a way no other Harvest Moon game ever has," will be out for 3DS this fall.
Natsume plants a seed, grows Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley
Publisher Natsume has unveiled a new Nintendo 3DS entry in its flagship rustic life simulation franchise, dubbed Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley. "Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley is truly evolving the franchise," stated Natsume CEO Hiro Maekawa in this morning's announcement. "But the incredibly exciting thing that really elevates the game is that while it does get back to what everyone loves about the early games, it also innovates in a way that no Harvest Moon game ever has." Though Maekawa failed to mention exactly how the game innovates, the rest of the announcement picks up his slack. According to Natsume, Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley is the first entry in the series to feature a fully three-dimensional setting. Instead of planting crops then letting photosynthesis do the dirty work, players will be able to directly shape the landscape of their farms. Examples offered by the publisher include a farm riddled with canals a la Venice, Italy, and a field full of tulips, like those stereotypically found in Holland. Keep in mind, this is not the same game we revealed last week. That game, Story of Seasons, shares a developer lineage, aesthetic and gameplay mechanics with the Harvest Moon games, though it's technically not an official sequel. Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley is an official Harvest Moon entry, and while it currently lacks a solid release date, Natsume promises to reveal more at the upcoming E3 conference. [Image: Natsume]
Don't call the new Harvest Moon game 'Harvest Moon'
Xseed Games has picked up the North American publishing rights to the next entry in Marvelous' long-running Harvest Moon series, announcing that it will release the sequel Story of Seasons for the Nintendo 3DS in North America later this year. Published by Natsume since its Super NES debut in 1997, the farming-focused Harvest Moon series has seen numerous sequels and spinoffs in the years that followed, including the ongoing Rune Factory subseries. Natsume still owns the rights to the "Harvest Moon" trademark in North America, however, requiring Xseed to rename its upcoming 3DS game Story of Seasons. Despite the new name, Story of Seasons shares much of its development staff with previous Harvest Moon games, including producer Yoshifumi Hashimoto and character designer Igusa Matsuyama. Story of Seasons also retains core series mechanics like crop-tending, animal care, and character growth and customization. Xseed notes that further details will be revealed at E3 next month. [Image: Xseed]
Seven minutes of little-known facts about Harvest Moon
Harvest Moon creator Yasuhiro Wada considers Harvest Moon 64 the version closest to his initial image of the game, and the PlayStation edition, Harvest Moon: Back to Nature was supposed to be an updated remake of 64. Find out what else you don't know in these seven minutes of Did You Know Gaming?
PSA: Hometown Story opens shop, designed by creator of Harvest Moon
A death in the family assigns the title of shopkeeper to its owner's descendent in Hometown Story, a town simulation game for the 3DS designed by Harvest Moon series creator Yasuhiro Wada and scored by Nobuo Uematsu. If braving the hells of retail as a bright-faced youth seems overwhelming, know that you'll have a magical sprite named Pochica to spout advice at you as you manage your storefront. Managing the shop will gradually introduce you to the town's inhabitants, leaving you to decide whether you'd like to help them out of their crises. Gathering items from villagers or the outskirts of town will help your shop grow, granting players a bigger inventory and more foot traffic. If you're considering taking on another life aside from your Pokedex conquest or your stint as mayor, Hometown Story is on display in actual stores this week.
New Harvest Moon en 'root' to 3DS
A new Harvest Moon game is well into production, with Japan expecting to reap the 3DS game in February 2014. Unveiled in this week's Famitsu magazine (via Gematsu and Polygon), the game's subtitle of Tsunagari Shintench translates to something like 'Linking the New World' or 'Connecting New Lands.' We're sure this newest version of the long-running farming sim will have a clearer western name when it makes the journey abroad, although it's only confirmed for Japan so far. The subtitle refers to a new trading station that allows you to purchase from and sell goods to foreign nations. Trading starts small, limited to one country, but as you continue to play the market your global contact list will start to fill up. Tsunagari Shintench also features a safari zone where you can interact with wild animals; according to Famitsu's interview, the game doubles the amount the number of different animals compared to before. Finally, as per previous 3DS entry A New Beginning, the new Harvest Moon supports StreetPass and Wi-Fi letting you trade with and visit other players' farms.
Hometown Story hopes to recapture that Harvest Moon magic
The Natsume booth feels more than a little out of place amid the murder and mayhem that defines the E3 show floor experience. For those weary of the pulsing music, constant explosions and gruff voice-overs blasting from every ear-level speaker in sight, Natsume's display of gentle, colorful games about farming and fishing can feel like an oasis from sensory overload. While they've dabbled in just abut every genre known to man, an unexpected game called Harvest Moon – which hit the SNES long after it withered on the vine – has since become Natsume's strongest brand, with 19 prime series games to date. There's no end in sight for this strangely compelling series, though its creator Yasuhiro Wada has moved on to a new IP called Hometown Story, which he hopes will have the same longevity as the series that introduced the curious addictiveness of simulating mundane tasks years before The Sims.%Gallery-191606%
Harvest Moon celebrates 15th anniversary with PS Plus sale
To celebrate Harvest Moon's 15th anniversary, five classic Natsume games are on sale through the week for PlayStation Plus members, running 50 - 75 percent off.The sale includes Adventures To Go!, Harvest Moon: Boy and Girl, Innocent Life: A Futuristic Harvest Moon and Reel Fishing: The Great Outdoors, each 50 percent off for $7.50. Harvest Moon: Hero of Leaf Valley is 75 percent off, also for $7.50.Series publisher Natsume teases more Harvest Moon games coming to PSN, though it hasn't made any official announcements.
FarmVille in World of Warcraft? WoW Insider's first look at The Tillers
When Mists of Pandaria was first announced at BlizzCon 2011, the developers stated that players would be able to grow cooking mats and herbs on their very own farm in the next expansion. Immediately, players began to speculate on what exactly the words "your own farm" meant in World of Warcraft. Would we be getting our own version of FarmVille in WoW? Or maybe something more like Harvest Moon? Could this mean player housing? No one knew, and the general shortage of information over the months led some of us to wonder whether we'd be seeing the new feature at launch or have to wait for it in a future patch. Now, almost a year after the original announcement for Mists of Pandaria, we can finally put a lot of our questions to rest. Over the weekend, Blizzard implemented The Tillers quests on beta servers, and with them, the new farm feature. So is it FarmVille? Let's take a look. Your adventure in farming begins in Valley of the Four Winds, where you'll be able to start a line of daily quests to gain reputation with a pandaren faction known as The Tillers. Quests revolve around an NPC named Farmer Yoon, a young pandaren who recently traveled to the valley to inherit his late grandfather's farm, Sunsong Ranch. As it turns out, though, Yoon isn't cut out for all the hard work a farm requires, so he enlists you to help him run the farm and win favor with the valley's farming guild, The Tillers.
Start (farm) fresh in Harvest Moon: A New Beginning for 3DS
On the 15th anniversary year of the North American debut of Harvest Moon, Natsume will introduce a new 3DS edition of the farming game with features never seen before – you know, to keep the vegetation from growing stale.Harvest Moon: A New Beginning puts an emphasis on customization, allowing you to build your own character, buy and design furniture for your house, decorate the nearby village, and move stuff on your farm around ... which can't be good for the crops.In A New Beginning, you start a farm up around Echo Village to revitalize the town and bring people and animals back. It'll be out this year, and will be shown off as part of Natsume's Harvest Moon celebration at E3.
Yasuhiro Wada waxes nostalgic about Harvest Moon
Yasuhiro Wada has been engaged in the games industry for over 20 years, but lately he's been more into management than actual game production. With the formation of Toybox Inc, however, he joins the ranks of Japanese developers like Yuji Naka and Keiji Inafune – developers who left top management positions at major companies to pursue more active creative roles at smaller startups. While his name might not be the biggest in the biz, he's responsible for one of the most quietly influential games in the industry: Bokujou Monogatari, known outside of Japan as Harvest Moon.Wada grew up in the countryside, where he dreamed of eventually making his way to the big city. When he finally did get to Tokyo, however, he learned that there are some elements to good ol' country living that deserve appreciation. It was this experience that served as the inspiration for a game idea: A non-combative game that conveyed the simple pleasures of country life. It wasn't an easy pitch, and Wada had to build rapport at his company first with a portfolio of small successes. It took about 2 years to build both the record and the budget necessary to propose Harvest Moon to his higher-ups, but his patience paid off in both development and marketing experience.[Image: GameFAQS]
Does WoW need more minigames?
When I started playing WoW in 2006, I knew next to nothing about it. I had bought a copy to play with my boyfriend but did so while he was out of the country; it was my intent to surprise him with it when he got back. The unfortunate result of this was that I didn't really know what to do on my own and spent most of the time being eaten by murlocs. Back then, the multiplayer aspect of WoW wasn't apparent to me. I had only ever joined groups to complete a few quests and didn't know what dungeons, raids, or Battlegrounds were. Because of this, I often remember thinking WoW wasn't a very good game because it was missing all sorts of basic elements that other games had. For example, I remember jumping in a river and thinking "Awesome, this will be a quick way to get to the southern side of the zone," only to realize a moment later there was no water current in WoW like there is in Legend of Zelda. "This is so lame," I thought.
WoW Moviewatch: Vashjir Harvest Moon
Whoa, trippy. It's occasionally nice to put on some chill background music while you're working around the house. It's even better when that music is accompanied by gorgeous, interesting visuals. I think Vashjir Harvest Moon by Croftzi just became one of my favorite videos for that. Harvest Moon by Dan Stone is fairly compelling trance music, and Croftzi coupled it wonderfully with amazing visuals from WoW's token underwater zone. While I wouldn't have expected to get entranced by another camera-roams-landscape-wandering-samurai video, Croftzi's excellent blending of music and imagery did surprisingly well. This is a pretty fun video. Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.
Classic game postmortems return to GDC
Last year, for the 25th anniversary of the show, GDC featured a series of "Classic Game Postmortems" on games like Pac-Man, Prince of Persia, Another World, and Marble Madness. These new looks at old games proved so popular that the show is bringing them back for the crucial 26th anniversary event.This year's set of classic games to go under the microscope includes Alone in the Dark (with designer Frederick Raynal), Fallout (with designer Tim Cain), Gauntlet (with creator Ed Logg) and Harvest Moon (with producer and former Marvelous CEO Yasuhiro Wada). Forget about all those new games! This is why we really go to conferences.
Inafune, Suda 51 signed for mobile development
DeNA's popular Japanese mobile gaming platform, Mobage, is getting a major boost from some of the nation's leading gaming industry figures. During a press conference held earlier today (as translated by Andriasang), DeNA revealed that five famed producers will develop games for the platform, including Keiji Inafune, who's creating a game titled J.J. Rockets with his new studio Comcept, and Suda 51, who will make a new installment in the No More Heroes franchise. Other contributors include Marvelous Entertainment's Yoshifumi Hashimoto, who is working on a Harvest Moon mobile title, former Sonic Team lead Yuji Naka, who will develop an adventure game with his new studio Prope, and Crafts & Meister co-founder Noritaka Funamizu. Sounds like a pretty great lineup, though we wish the five would also collaborate on a single project. The idea of a No More Heroes farming simulator is, well, the best idea.
Marvelous caps 3DS game development at $1.8M per title
During a recent investor call, Marvelous Entertainment, the publisher best known for its Harvest Moon games, revealed its budget range for 3DS game development. According to the transcription of the call's Q&A session (as translated by 1UP), a Marvelous representative said that, "while costs vary based on game content," the company would spend an estimated ¥50 million to ¥150 million ($600K to $1.8M) on the development of a single 3DS game. Currently, Marvelous has two 3DS projects in the works, a Harvest Moon game and a zoo sim called Animal Resort. Not surprisingly, Marvelous' 3DS spending money is significantly higher than the ¥4.4 million to ¥43.9 million per title (roughly $50K–525K) Japanese companies spent on developing (regular) DS games last year, according to data gathered by TGS sponsor and promotional organization CESA. More interestingly, Marvelous' ¥150-million cap for a 3DS game represents a figure more than double the cost of the last year's most expensive Japanese PSP title, which, while unnamed, cost ¥59.2 million to develop by CESA's account. (The cheapest PSP game cost its maker just ¥3 million.) If Marvelous' budget is indicative of other companies' 3DS game costs -- and, certainly, some of these guys are likely to splurge -- then developing for the platform could prove more expensive than for Wii, where last year's most expensive Japanese project topped out at ¥116 million. In an era when budget gaming is dominating the handheld market, and following the disastrous combination of costly PSP game development and rampant piracy, the 3DS could be as ill-fated as the 3D technology that requires you to wear glasses. Well, that, or it'll just "print money" ... in 3D.
Harvest Moon 64 probably not coming out on Virtual Console
In our experience, there are two types of people in this world: Folks who think Harvest Moon 64 is the best game in the series, and total weirdos. The first group will likely be dismayed to read NerdMentality's recent interview with Natsume exec Graham Markay, who, when asked whether the title would ever make it onto the Virtual Console storefront, responded, "It will not. It will not. And it's not from lack of trying." Markay explained that the code of the original title is "not an easy transfer," later adding "I shouldn't say it's never going to come out, but there's just a really, really, very small chance that it would ever come out." Great, Markay. Just leave that door open. Just keep us hanging onto that one sliver of hope as we attempt to get our fix by pulling 48-hour FarmVille binges. You're killing us, dude.
