Harvest Moon (series)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Harvest Moon on the SNES

Harvest Moon (牧場物語 in Japanese, pronounced Bokujō Monogatari, Farm Story) is the name of a series of farm simulation/role-playing video games produced by Victor Interactive Software (acquired by Marvelous Interactive in 2002). Yasuhiro Wada is considered the father of the Harvest Moon series. English translation and distribution of the game is done by Natsume. The object of the game is to maintain a farm over a period of time, tending the crops and livestock through the seasons, while befriending the nearby townsfolk and getting married in some games. The first game was Harvest Moon, released for the SNES in 1997. Games in the series have also been produced for Game Boy and GBA, Nintendo 64, PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and GameCube; with upcoming titles for PSP , Nintendo DS, and Wii.

Most Harvest Moon games are permutations of a central formula. The game generally takes place over a set period of time (generally 3 years), in which the player is charged with the task of running a successful farm, getting married, having a child, and becoming friends with the townsfolk.

Most gameplay in the Harvest Moon games consists of planting seeds to grow fruits and vegetables in the spring, summer, and autumn, and collecting items, making home improvements, and building personal relationships in the winter. A successful farmer must weigh the cost, selling price, number of harvests, and growth times of the various types of produce in order to pick the best product for each of the seasons.

The player must also balance their physical resources; if players over-exert themselves, they might not have the energy to perform needed activities, or might even get sick and miss a day of farming.

1 Activities
2 External links

[edit] Activities

A number of activities are common to all Harvest Moon games.

[edit] Growing produce

This is the central aspect to all the games. The player must find optimal planting, watering, and harvesting patterns. Finding the most profitable plants, clearing space for planting, and harvesting the crops before winter rolls around are key to gaining money. In the games, each season has different crops available for planting, except for winter, when crops cannot grow and the player must rely on foraging, mining and livestock for income (except in A Wonderful Life). Some crops, such as turnips and onions, only grow once, while other crops, such as corn and sweet potatoes, can be harvested several times, until the season ends.

Turnips, potatoes, tomatoes and corn are staple crops of the series, introduced in the first game. Since then, other games have introduced new crops, such as cabbage, carrots, onions, strawberries, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, rice, pineapples, and more. In some games, corn was not used.

[edit] Ranching livestock

An increasingly large part of the games is purchasing, caring for, and reaping the rewards of owning livestock. Livestock can bring about profits on a daily basis (e.g., the player can milk cows each day). The other end of this spectrum is caring for animals. Giving one's animals attention will increase their heart meters towards the player, and after a certain amount of time, will begin producing higher quality products. On the other hand, neglecting the animal's needs can lead to sickness and even death.

The first Harvest Moon only allowed cows and chickens and provided a barn and chicken coop to house them. Milk and eggs could both be sold, as well as the animals themselves. Later titles introduced sheep, which provided wool every few days, as well as machines that could change milk into cheese, eggs into mayonnaise, and wool into yarn. Chicken feed is needed for chickens, while it is either required or highly recommended to have grass on the farm to feed cows and sheep.

Animals are also able to reproduce. Eggs can be placed in an incubator to hatch a chick in a few days, while giving a cow or sheep a miracle potion will impregnate them. Cows may also be impregnated by bulls. It takes about a month for livestock to give birth.

[edit] Gathering materials

Many Harvest Moon games require the player to gather materials for home improvement, tool improvement, cooking, or simply selling. The most common resource at earlier stages of the game (in older games) is wood; the player is able to chop up tree stumps to gather wood to add buildings to his or her farm, or add fencing to keep wild dogs out of the farm. Mining has also become an important feature, and most of the minerals found while mining in caves are required to upgrade tools to better, more manageable forms, as well as craft gifts for girls or in later versions guys in town. Cooking has also become a side activity in some games, and foraged foods, crops and livestock products can all be used to create different dishes.

[edit] Festivals

Most games in the series feature annual festivals in which the player can attend. Some of these may just be simple social events, while others may be contests with prizes available to the player. Sometimes festivals will be takes off real life holidays, such as Thanksgiving and the Starry Night Festival, which seems to be reminiscent of Christmas Eve. Livestock themed festivals often take place, where the player can submit their animals to compete against other farms. Animals who win these contests often receive benefits, such as producing gold milk if a cow wins.

Players can always choose to not attend these events, but all stores also close on these days and shipped items are not picked up either, leaving for few choices available outside of festivals.

[edit] Getting married

The Harvest Moon games offer many choices for potential love interests. As the player spends time with the various potential love interests, he or she learns his or her likes and dislikes, showers him or her with gifts, and eventually proposes. Developers of the series have taken to producing both male and female versions of Harvest Moon games in recent years, allowing for different lineups of potential spouses. More recent games have begun offering a gender choice when starting a game. Only one Harvest Moon game has yet allowed players to pursue the possibility of living with someone of the same sex, Harvest Moon DS: Sprite Station for Girls (currently Japan only). Instead of marriage, a special friendship ceremony can be performed between the main character and another of the special girls instead of marriage with one of the guys in the game. In "Save the Homeland" if the player (a male) gives flowers to another male character, he is rebuked. In "Back to Nature" (and its later incarnation, "Friends of Mineral Town") the sexuality of a certain character becomes somewhat of a joke (Gray, for example, acts incredibly embarrassed after receiving a blue feather).

[edit] Children

In many versions, it is possible to have children, but always a boy with the exception of Harvest Moon, Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life Special Edition, and Harvest Moon 3. In Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town, when a girl is played, a baby girl can be born. This event occurs usually about a month after marriage. Harvest Moon and Harvest Moon 3 are also the only versions where the player can have multiple children. Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life and its spin-offs are the only games in the series where the player can experience a child's growth from toddler to full-grown adult.