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2008's Biggest Blips: Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness
Developer: Marvelous Publisher: Marvelous/Natsume Release: June 8 When it comes to light-hearted, adorable games that make us want to smile, the Harvest Moon games top the list. The formula is relatively simple: grow and harvest crops, woo boy/girl, forge friendships, lather, rinse, repeat. Yet, if playing Harvest Moon doesn't tug at your heartstrings even a tiny bit, you're probably the kind of person that eats babies for a living. Not that there's anything wrong with that (in fact, we have an excellent barbecue sauce recipe, if you're interested). In case you need even more evidence that the Harvest Moon series is full of feel-good games, the two upcoming entries for the DS are subtitled Cute and Island of Happiness. How much sweeter can you get without dying from an immediate sugar coma? Borrowing a page from Lost in Blue, Island of Happiness kicks off with your character and a handful of friends stranded on a deserted island. As the game world changes and the number of buildings increases, more and more people start settling there. The game features 100 different NPCs, some of whom are bachelors (or bachelorettes, depending on whether you start the game as a girl or boy) that you can woo and marry. The game also features 3D graphics and utilizes stylus controls, thereby making full use of the handheld's capabilities. We only wish more games could be as relaxing and refreshing as those in the Harvest Moon series. As far as we're concerned, all games could use a good dose of Harvest Moon in them. To prove our point, we've made a few suggestions of game mash-ups that we'd like to see happen. 1. Harvest Moon meets Contra in Super Seed Is it just a coincidence that one of the heroes of Contra is Lance Bean? If you ask us, this game is just begging for a Harvest Moon infused sequel. 2. Harvest Moon meets Resident Evil in Mansion of Magical Itchy ... Tasty Did you ever stop to think that zombies need a little love, too? Did Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine ever take the time to invite the zombies to a festival, or try to gain some heart points with a platter of fried brains? Maybe impaling people is just the tyrant's way of indicating that he'd really like someone to bring him a kebab. 3. Harvest Moon meets Metroid in Metroid Prime: Gatherers Samus has done enough hunting. It's time for her to switch gears. 4. Harvest Moon meets Castlevania in Dawn of Happiness Castlevania needs to turn that frown upside down. Dawn of Sorrow? No thanks, Debbie Downer IGA. 5. Harvest Moon meets Dementium in A Wonderful Ward Ending up in a mysterious place without knowing why you're there isn't uncommon in the Harvest Moon games. If one of these protagonists ended up in Redmoor Hospital, we're sure they'd spend their time planting crops and making friends with the locals. %Gallery-15230% N+ Back Come the revolution
VC Friday: Harvest a rare SNES game
As eBay darlings go, the SNES version of Harvest Moon isn't quite in the same league as, say, Nintendo World Championships 1990, but it ain't cheap, either; you can expect to pony up around $100 for a copy on eBay. That is unless you live in Europe or Australia, where the first game to make back-breaking toil fun has just popped up on the Virtual Console for a meagre 800 Wii points. Sure, it's only one game, but its quality can't be denied.Harvest Moon -- SNES -- 800 Wii points
Creator of Harvest Moon interested in making a game like Spore
Is anyone else interested in some sort of Spore meets Harvest Moon hybrid? If you are, the future might very well be a rosy place, indeed, because Harvest Moon creator Yasuhiro Wada dreams of making a game similar to Will Wright's creation sim. He recently told Gamasutra, "Eventually, I'd like to make something like Spore, where you create something, and from there, new stuff is going to be created again and again and again ... But you want to be one of the people living in the city, and to be a part of this growing too."Wada also said that King's Story (which was his concept) was originally supposed to be more like Spore than what it turned into. We like how King's Story is shaping up, so we're not really bothered that it deviated from its original idea, but it still would be nice to see Wada's true vision ultimately realized. Hopefully we'll one day see this Spore-like game that he wishes to make.
Demo de Harvest Moon
Ready to learn some valuable life skills for once, we decided to enroll in Harvest Moon A&M and take a class on "Playing Puzzle de Harvest Moon." We were motivated not only by our desire to improve ourselves and learn a trade, but also by the fact that the class is about five minutes long and is, in fact, a Flash game and not a class. Further rumination on the subject brought us to the conclusion that Harvest Moon A&M was a thing we just made up.Anyway, now we know how to play Puzzle de Harvest Moon, even though the tutorial totally didn't prepare us for how frantic the actual round was going to be. Of course-- what's faster-paced than farming? We're quite impressed with the unique design-- it's not often that a puzzle game comes along with completely fresh gameplay. [Via GoNintendo]
What is Harvest Moon: Boy & Girl?
We were looking at PSP's releases, and noticed that a new Harvest Moon game was coming to our handheld. We enjoyed our time with Innocent Life (even though it had its flaws), and wanted to know more about Boy & Girl. The game is covertly being shipped to stores, and it appears that even IGN was caught off-guard when they played the game.Apparently, Boy & Girl is actually a port of two different, but essentially same Harvest Moon games from PS1. From the IGN review: "Our biggest surprise at the office was that Harvest Moon Boy & Girl is actually just a compilation of two original PlayStation games, put together on one UMD. And they're (virtually) the same game, too. Nowhere on the box or within the instruction manual can this information be found. Harvest Moon "Boy" is actually just a rehashed version of Harvest Moon: Back to Nature, while Harvest Moon "Girl" is just Harvest Moon For Girls, which actually could be called Harvest Moon: Back to Nature, For Girl. They're both the same game, just with slightly different overall narratives and a different main character. Confused? It's okay, we were too."It's unfortunate to hear that Natsume appears to be pulling a fast one on us. What a shame -- Innocent Life was a pretty beautiful game. It's upsetting to see PSP relegated to (yet another) port of a PS1 game. Publishers, take note: lazily developed games don't get much love from real PSP fanboys.
Joystiq impressions: Omega Five (XBLA)
As recently leaked, Omega Five is Hudson's next XBLA game to ship after July's Bomberman Live. At a blogger event today, Hudson briefly showed this chaotic Natsume-developed title, and I got a chance to helm a floating ninja-like character in this side-scrolling shoot-'em-up world.What?Yes. Not the first shooter to star human characters, Omega Five sure has a lot of "strange" going for it. But that could be a good thing.%Gallery-3982%
Omega Five, not another Harvest Moon
A French website dug up information on Omega Five, a Hudson Entertainment game being developed for Xbox Live Arcade. This would be the second time in recent memory a French website got a hold of Hudson information early. In March a French site published a video for Bomberman Live (the video wasn't even released publicly until this week) and that video was released four days before the game was officially announced. This time, Xbox Gazette reports that Natsume, best known for the Harvest Moon series, is working on a side-scrolling shooter for XBLA called Omega Five.The game will allegedly be a standard shooter with the exception of enemies coming out of 3D backgrounds. Details are still very sketchy and for some bizarre reason the French site says the game will cost 800 MS points, which sounds reasonable, but is probably a total shot in the dark. Now that the info is out, just like the Bomberman Live stuff, it probably won't take too long to get a basic statement acknowledging the games existence -- you know, unless Hudson and their PR pull a Beautiful Katamari stunt.[Via XBLArcade]
PSP Fanboy review: Innocent Life
Innocent Life takes the Harvest Moon series to a brave new world: the future. How would the long-running farming franchise transform when faced with the challenges of such an unusual setting? Unfortunately for gamers, Innocent Life doesn't really do anything new -- its setting is mostly wasted in a solid but ultimately meaningless story that suffers from serious pacing issues. It's clear that, like the title suggests, good intentions were at the core of the development process. However, some glaring issues with execution prevent it from being the must-have title it deserves to be.
Rune Factory - fight for your right to harvest [update 1]
Even though the sequel to Rune Factory: a Fantasy Harvest Moon is starting to get attention, don't forget that the original is due for its North American release over the next few weeks.IGN recently put up some screens, videos and an interview with the game's U.S. product manager. The video shows off the game's new direction: combat. It all looks pretty straightforward, but that energy you spend fighting is going to have to come from somewhere - the crops you produce. We're undecided as to whether this is really going to work, surely the peaceful gameplay is what gives Harvest Moon its unique feel?Aside from the combat, it looks like all the series' traditional elements are in place: tending crops, making friends and wooing the girl of your dreams by presenting her with vegetables. If only real life were so simple.Cooking and forging will be handled via the touch screen, along with inventory management. You'll also be able to trade items and screenshots over wi-fi, perhaps landing a husband or wife in the process. The accompanying video gives a July release date for Rune Factory.[Update: fixed grammatical error]
Harvest Moon: Attack of the Cows
Tired of being explolited as mascots for Marvelous Interactive's always-adorable farming sim series, the Harvest Moon cows have revolted, surrounding their cruel master to put her out to pasture once and for all. They finally secured the goats' loyalty, the final component of their master plan.That's the only possible explanation for the events transpiring in the above screenshot. Anything else, like that maybe she's feeding them or just talking to the cows, is so farfetched as to be unbelievable. Harvest Moon may be cute, but it's totally edgy.
Final Fantasy III & Rune Factory go head-to-head in Japan
On August 24, Final Fantasy III and Rune Factory: Shin Bokujou Monogatari (Harvest Moon spinoff) will be released in Japan fo DS. While FFIII certainly has the brand edge, both titles look to boost the DS's credibility as a viable RPG platform. Famitsu recently published its reviews for the two games, suggesting that FFIII is slightly superior: Final Fantasy III (Square Enix): 9/8/9/8 - 34/40* Rune Factory (Marvelous Interactive): 8/9/7/9 - 33/40 Keep in mind that, back in March, Children of Mana scored even higher than FFIII, earning a 36/40, and will be released in the US on October 30. FFIII will land stateside in November (hopefully). Rune Factory: Shin Bokujou Monogatari has not been confirmed for release outside of Japan, but Harvest Moon DS is scheduled for September 12. *C3 News notes that Famitsu's score for the original FFIII (NES) was 35/40.
Harvest Moon DS gets pushed back
Turns out those of you with a green thumb and constant itch to tend land will have to wait just a bit longer as the DS installment in the popular farming franchise Harvest Moon has been pushed back from a release of late in August to 12 September 2006. Pretty big deal, no? During the interim, why don't you watch the trailer a couple more times and think happy thoughts of bathing sheep and planting crops. Also, should we expect Natsume to give Harvest Moon DS the big push again, maybe even further into the future than a few weeks?
Harvest Moon trailer available
The videos just keep on rolling today. Next course up in our delectable entree of tender cuts of game footage for the day is a trailer for the farming sim Harvest Moon DS. Should you be the type of person who is thrown into bouts of rage when viewing farming duties such as tending to soil, cleaning livestock, and playing simple card games (the bane of every good farmer's existence), you might want to avert your gaze, instead opting to close your browser window and enjoy a nice bubble bath. May we suggest you go with the Pina Colada scented variety? We like the way it makes you smell.[Note: Video opens and plays in Windows Media Player after the link.]
DS impressions: Harvest Moon DS
The beautiful thing about Harvest Moon is that once you've played it, the formula never changes. Bringing it to the DS is a no-brainer though. Thankfully we have some interesting developments to this installment of the farming simulation.
