Konnichiwa, GAF! O-genki desu ka?

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I hope you like plush bunnies, because I have a really neat giveaway for y'all today.

The Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley Collector’s Edition! Featuring a 12" premium-size rabbit plushie, one of the wild animals within the Lost Valley, the rabbit is part of a full set of premium plushies created by Multiverse Studio, Inc. and available exclusively via the Natsume Online Store. So, I've got one physical copy of the game with the included bunny plush to give away. (Bunny, rabbit, tomato, tomatoe, right?)

How to Enter

There are two ways to enter.

1) Tell me about some of your favorite memories and aspects of playing Harvest Moon games.

(or)

2) Tell me what kind of experiences or aspects you're looking forward to trying out in the new game.

Screenshots, OST samples, and videos are welcome.

As this is a giveaway for a physical copy of a game and a cute stuffed animal that need to be shipped via mail, only GAFers in the contiguous United States will be eligible to enter.

The giveaway will end Wednesday morning. You're welcome to enter as many times as you like, but there is only one prize this time around.

--

Here's some additional info about this new entry in the HM series, the first developed in-house by Natsume.

Here's the launch video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zXlZRyWBAY

And, some info from the official site:









Additional features such as:

• Hire the Harvest Sprites to do farm work for you
• Complete requests from the area's residents
• Build barns, wells, windmills, and other objects, and decide their placement within the valley
• Go fishing in the streams, using different types of feed to entice fish bites
• Post-release download content (DLC), both free and paid
• Mine for ores and gems, and have them processed into construction materials
• Participate in seasonal festivals
• Two save slots, and you can save anywhere and anytime

Disclaimer: I do not work for Natsume, Natume, or any game company. If I'm giving away an eShop or Steam game in a thread like this, the codes are usually provided by the publisher or developer, but I am not being paid or asked to do this.

<3 Harvest Moon <3

I first learned of the Harvest Moon series as a youngin', reading Nintendo Power. It was just a few years after Neil Young had released a very good album titled Harvest Moon, so I was emotionally primed. I didn't have an SNES at the time, but by the time 1998 rolled around, Harvest Moon GB had been released, and I was fortunate enough to get a copy for Christmas. I went through countless batteries playing this game, the only game that got more playtime on my GBC was Mario Golf. Sure, it didn't have any romance options, but it did cultivate (haha) a lovely, busy workday. I also spent lots of time loving Harvest Moon 64, and Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life.

However, my most memorable Harvest Moon experience will always be borrowing Harvest Moon DS from a friend, starting a new game, and killing the Mayor.



That smug, self-serving bastard. I don't expect to be able to kill the Mayor in The Lost Valley, but I'm hoping that the game's fun enough that I'll never want to

I guess Canada is out of the equation right?

is this for 3ds? if so, i'll enter.

I've never actually played harvest moon. i do remember that back in the day on ps1, my best friend's mom had a save with hundreds of hours on it. i've always been interested in these kinds of games, but I've never had the chance to try one. so yeah, that's my memory of harvest moon. lol.

I'd enter if I hadn't sold my 3DS!

Regardless, one of my favourite moments was in Friends of Mineral Town. It was my first Harvest Moon game and I thought that it was really cool how a game like that could exist. It wasn't exactly a typical game and felt like you were simulating the chores of farming, but it was really fun.

I think like most players, the fun in pretending that you were actually a farmer with responsibilities was a lot of fun. You tend to add your own narrative in your head as you go day by day, which is what I enjoyed doing most.

Oh my fucking god that bunny plush. I would put it right by my Tales of Xillia 2 Cat. They belong together!

I remember playing the first Harvest Moon on the SNES over and over and over while having no real idea of how to "beat" the game and didn't really care. I just wanted to grow stuff and raise animals. I also happened to live on a farm on the time, but at that point my parents were just raising Horses and we never had crops or anything and had stopped dealing with other livestock.

One of my favourite moments in Harvest Moon was when in Harvest Moon More Friends at Mineral Town, I was given the option to attack the mayor. I attacked the mayor so many times. It's so funny!

My fondest memory of Harvest Moon is not of playing it. I had bought it at a young age for GBA I believe, but unfortunately I was caught in a car accident.. Fortunately none of us were hurt, but I lost that cart ever since.

$20 down the pooper.

Harvest Moon 64: first game in history to give me a case of 'you know you played too much X' - I got out the house and it was raining so I tried to go back inside. Unfortunately, I forgot my keys and was locked out. "That's okay," I said out loud, "I'll just reload a save and start the day from the beginning..."

The twist? This was actually real life.

Bonus: second favorite would be finishing the game with the Father telling me I was a friendless loser. Had to restart and basically spammed gifts to everyone I met. Eventually this habit imprinted on me and now Im always gifting friends and family.

So many life long lessons learned from HM -_-

My first game in the series was Friends of Mineral Town and I remember being absolutely enthralled with the idea. During the months leading up to release I was glued to fogu.com. I read up on the game and planned out exactly what I was going to do with my file. I wrote my plans in a notebook and pestered my mom for weeks leading up to Christmas. Christmas morning finally came...and I didn't get the game that morning. I was devastated. The rest of the morning I was one grumpy customer, and looking back I was a brat.

That afternoon we drove to my grandma's house for Christmas for dinner. We had stuffed pork chops and they absolutely blew my mind. My grandma had a couple presents for me and my sisters. There was some clothes, books, and candy. We got through all of it and my grandma brought out an extra gift Sure enough it was a copy of Friends of Mineral Town. I spent the entire christmas break with the game and played out my plans. It was some of the funnest times I have had with a game.

I used to binge on Harvest Moon 2 on the GBC.



I liked to pretend that I was actually a villager in Hyrule who worked on a farm similar to something like Lon Lon Ranch. I always wanted to be able to just chill out in the original Zelda games and do some life-simulation stuff, and this game let me pretend that I was doing that.

Harvest Moon 2 GB was probably one of my favorite games back in the day. My sister owned the game on her Game Boy Color, so when she stopped playing, I took it over. I binged on that game so much, though I never completed it. I was really young at the time.

Still, great memories of raising cows and other livestock. So happy when I finally got my sheep pen and greenhouse. I finally reached the big time. I'll never forget this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoKqH_aKwoM#t=890

My first memories of the series are with Harvest Moon GBC2 and '64. They were games unlike any other I had played at the time. It wasn't a sim that I worried about stats and figures, an RPG where I saved the world, or anything that was the usual fare like that I was used to. All I had to do was befriend townsfolk, make my farm the best I could, collect bugs, fish, and photographs of all the events I participated in or accomplishments I made. Which ended up being reflected in my involvement with the fan community. Met tons of friends I've had for years and even though we don't talk much about the games anymore we still keep close, talk about this and that, and share what we can with each other. Definitely one of the greatest fan communities I've been a part of.

Lots of good memories about this series, but here's a story about the very first thing that blew my mind with the game. This is going to be long, but bear with me.

When the original SNES Harvest Moon came out I had already moved onto the Playstation, so I was completely unaware of it. But later that year EGM awarded it "Most Original Game of the Year" in their best of the year edition. In the award it mentioned milking cows and kept saying how funny the word "teats" is. As creepy as they made it sound the game still piqued my interest enough that I decided to track it down.

A few months went by and I had no luck. It wasn't in any local stores. Most places hadn't even heard of Harvest Moon. The clerk at my local Electronics Boutique kept insisting it was never released in America (misinformed know-it-all clerks existed even before GameStop). Eventually I gave up and settled for playing it on an emulator. I had a low end PC and while the emulator sort of ran, it didn't run well. It was very slow, the sound was choppy, and some of the animations weren't working right. For instance, there was some layering problem with the graphics so I could only see the playable screen or I could see the rain, but I couldn't see it raining on the playable screen. Still, I was impressed enough that it doubled my resolve to find it, and eventually I found a rental copy at an out of the way movie store.

The real game was amazing compared to what I had played before. Everything was fast, the music was delightful, and I could see it rain while I played. But the thing that completely blew my mind? The shadows of the clouds in summer. That layering problem that prevented the rain from showing up also stopped the shadows of the clouds, so when I saw it I was utterly shocked. It was just amazing. I still remember being in awe of it.

And stuff like that is exactly why I like the series. It makes very mundane events feel very exciting. Finding out a neighbor's favorite fruit, buying a blender, or just looking at the shadows of passing clouds. Doesn't seem exciting in the real world, but in Harvest Moon it's an epic experience.

My first memory of Harvest Moon was reading about it Nintendo Power, and for some reason, it instantly appealed to me. I was a city boy who had been to my grandparent's farm a few times before they sold all their land and turned it into a sub-development.

So I had good memories associated with farms, and knew I had to get the game. I went to my local gamestore and actually preordered it, so worried was I that it would sell out and I would be unable to get it day one.

When I went in to get it, I was told by the dude, with a congenial chuckle, that I was the only one who had preordered it. He told me, since I was there to pick up something so unique, he had something else that might interest me.

He demoed Earthbound for me and sold me on the large oversized box with the kooky guide inside. Discovered two of my favorite games of all time, and both of them still safely in my collection. (Though I no longer have either games' boxes... if only!)

I don't know where I first heard about the game. I don't know how it found its way into my Nintendo 64, but Harvest Moon 64 will always be an incomparable experience, as it was my first foray into a genre where the tools of your trade only ever struck soft soil and your blades were only for the harvest.

I used to play the game, back when I was in high school, very late and into the morning hours. I had a routine for courting Maria, the village librarian. Every day during the summer (I believe it was summer, at least) I would bring her a cabbage early in the morning before going about my chores around the farm.

That was a very new thing for a game to do. I had played plenty of RPGs where romance was central to the storyline, but I never really had any agency into that process. Harvest Moon really opened up a lot of possibilities for me.

Sadly, I have not really had that experience again. The original Animal Crossing for GameCube came very, very close but never did I lose track of time until the sun started peeking in through the window.

Do'h! It isn't 2015! It's 2014!

I was going to link some images of some horribly drawn and written "stories" I wrote while in elementary school of Harvest Moon, but I'm a bit embarrassed to really show them on GAF. Can I just PM you that?

Out of every game I've played I have more memories with the Harvest Moon series than any other series, namely Harvest Moon 64 which is one of my favorite games of all time. Harvest Moon 64 is the earliest game I played that I still have fond memories of. It was one of the very first games I had ever played.

I played this game addictively. I really loved the setting and characters. It was the first non combative RPG I had ever played and I instantly fell in love with it. I loved the sort of progression of the game where you start with nothing and can end up with an enormous and wealthy farm and the aspect of marriage even as a child was pretty awesome and I always chose (of course) Karen. She was the most fun out of the available girls, although I later on chose Ann or Elli as well. I always thought of Karen was my "dream girl".

There's actually some really good scenes between the characters if you dig deep enough in to Harvest Moon 64 and some that can be missed entirely if memory serves me right. I really loved the fantasy elements in the series like the Harvest Sprites, the dwarves in the original game, the Kappa in Harvest Moon 64, etc.

I really cared about the animals I rose in the games as well. When an animal would die, I would become really sad when I went to the funeral and saw Ann and Doug disappointed in me. Even though it was just a game, I sorta took it to heart and tried to never let that happen again.

I really loved the events in Harvest Moon 64. One of my favorites was the swimming race that as a kid it took me many tries to beat. The egg festival was also really fun to do and I loved the dog and horse races as well.

The music was really great. When I was in middle school, I had a tiny MP3 player that I would bring around with me containing songs from Harvest Moon 64. It was one of the very first game soundtracks that I started to listen to and it attributes to my love for game soundtracks, which is almost exclusively what I listen to. 64's soundtrack was amazing, one of the best gaming has to offer.

Everything about the game was amazing, the graphics, music, characters, game play, etc. I later played the original Harvest Moon and instantly loved that game as well, despite it having less features than Harvest Moon 64. Harvest Moon 64 was Yasuhiro Wada's original vision for the first Harvest Moon, however due to time restraints he had to cut many features which later turned up in Harvest Moon 64. Back To Nature was also an amazing game that I felt while had a lot more to do than 64, but I didn't care for the characters and setting as much.

I played a lot of the Harvest Moon game boy games. I vividly remember buying Harvest Moon 3 for the Game Boy Color at a Kmart or Walmart before I went on a road trip to my grandparents' house in Minnesota. I also played Harvest Moon 2 for the Game Boy a little later on. These games were pure farming, so while they weren't my favorite in the series, I still enjoyed them quite a bit.

My two brothers always teased me about liking Harvest Moon, even though they played it at the same time as well, but they knew I was a lot more interested in it than they were. I never really understood why it was "uncool" to like Harvest Moon honestly, I mean there's alcohol in it!

Unfortunately this is where my story turns sour, my brother's friend took my Harvest Moon 64 cartridge and never returned it. I have lost most of my Harvest Moon games in the years that have gone by from either people taking them and not returning them (happens a lot to me...) or my parents throwing them away. I only still own Save the Homeland and some of the newer games. I haven't bought a new copy since I feel like it wouldn't be the same for me since it isn't my original copy.

I never had any friends in middle school and that period of my life was one of the worst periods growing up. The friends I made in elementary school became too cool for me or just went their separate ways and I was alone for 3 years while I was in middle school and that is where I began playing Friends of Mineral Town during the bus rides, the greatest Harvest Moon handheld game. It felt like a true Harvest Moon game that is fully featured and no handheld Harvest Moon since has gone close to rekindling that feeling. In seventh grade, I succumbed to depression and video games like Harvest Moon helped me get through middle school, where everyone is an asshole to you. I was bullied by almost everyone and always let people walk over me and I felt horrible and flunked a lot of my classes, but I later tried harder and harder to do good in middle school. I thought of Harvest Moon as if it was my only friend and always thought in my head during class what I would do that day when I got home.. Shall I try to woo Karen or try and upgrade my house? Back then when I was much younger these tasks were really difficult than what they are now. I'm not sure if you would call it addiction, but games like Harvest Moon were the only way I could get past middle school at the time because of my loneliness and disconnection with the rest of the world.

Later in middle school, I began to lose interest in the Harvest Moon series since the most of the newer games didn't impress me. I liked Magical Melody, but I never finished it and A Wonderful Life had really bland characters. Harvest Moon DS wasn't so bad, but once I finished a play through I was done.

Beginning in high school, I stopped playing the new games entirely and instead decided to make a video game based on my own take on Harvest Moon 64, called The Meadow Story after a camping trip, however I never finished the game because I wasn't the greatest animator or artist. I hope to finish the project after I finish my current one.This may sound strange, but a lot of the reason I loved Harvest Moon games was because I felt like I was entwined with nature when I was playing Harvest Moon and being a regular camper goer when I was younger, I felt like I was camping again, or rather out in the forest on a hike, when I played Harvest Moon and this became an integral reason why I wanted to make a Harvest Moon game. Another reason was the non-combative nature of the Harvest Moon games and I really liked that aspect of it. It was the first RPG of its kind that I had played. The Meadow Story was centered on a mythical forest with an enormous world tree and its many secrets that only the villagers' and the mythical creatures that lived in the forest knew. It had more fantasy elements than many of the Harvest Moon games, but it still involved farming, social aspects including marriage and building friendships, part-time jobs, festivals and events, etc. It really was mostly Harvest Moon 64 with a stronger emphasis on story and exploration as many new areas become available to you as you progress in three years in the game. The game was a recollection of my childhood memories of playing Harvest Moon and the many camping trips I took while I was younger. Game development is something I'm actively trying to pursue a career in and without Harvest Moon, I'm not sure if I would have ever began an interest in programming and game development.

My favorite three games of the series, Harvest Moon, Harvest Moon 64, and Harvest Moon: Back to Nature were the best out of the franchise and unfortunately the quality of the series began to dwindle and I became less interested in each new installment, however I am very interested in seeing Natsume's original take on the series, considering that without them I would have never had the experience to play the Harvest Moon series.

Oh yeah, fun fact, I share a name with Jack, the character you play as in the Harvest Moon series. We were destined to be buddies forever.

Writing all this out makes me want to return to The Meadow Story once again.

Harvest Moon always reminds me of weekday afternoons hanging out at my friend Ian's house. I believe I had Harvest Moon GB as my first game, but HM64 was where I first got into it. Ian and I would play every afternoon, switching between our respective files. Unfortunately, we both wanted to woo Karen, fun loving wine bar maid that she was, so we had a friendly rivalry to see who could woo her first. We didn't have much access to the internet, so we had to test items and see what worked.

Luckily, I discovered that Karen loved grapes, so every day I'd collect some and bring them to her. Ian always had more time for games, so as soon as he figured out she liked grapes, he quickly caught up. The race was on to see who could max out her heart and collect the blue feather. Ian was out one afternoon, so I finally got the chance to go after the blue feather. I scaled the mighty mountain and won, marrying Karen shortly thereafter. Had Ian been home that afternoon he would gave beaten me, since he had just gotten to the blue feather mini game.

After our friendly competition ended, we continued to grow our respective farms, using the sweet green house upgrade and help from many of the power berries we'd collected.

Our rivalry after that was Dragon Warrior Monsters, but that's a story for another time...

Whoa, some epic entries do far! Keep 'em coming, all!

I first played a Harvest Moon game after trying and liking Rune Factory Frontier.

I find I like the more modern versions, since the very old ones don't have a friend gauge to tell you how close you are to your buddies.

I played Grand Bazaar until I was able to make Four Seasons wine, I loved how the cats would fetch the chickens in and out of the barn.

Now I'm playing Sunshine Islands, trying to learn, make, and ship every recipe in the game. Gotta love looking at your history of everything you've ever touched in a game!

I spent a ungodly amount of time on ALW for the GameCube. It was one of my favorite titles for the system.
I remember not knowing what to do first. All my crops and animals would die, so I actually restarted the game about 6 times before I actually knew what to do ha.

Then when I finally got the horse, I just spent hours just riding it around the small map



that's my story

I don't have anything cute to post like those stuff animals above

I would like to enter!

My first Harvest Moon game was Friends of Mineral Town back on the GBA. My 10-11 year old self fell in love with the game. Something about growing crops , livestock , and wooing that girl in the doctor's office really clicked with me

I actually had a friend who kept pestering me about how the hell I can like a game about farming. When he heard I got Magical Melody , he was confused Lol. I always told him that it's just a different experience that I enjoyed

Magical Melody was my last Harvest Moon game. I remember looking at a previous 3ds game in the series and it didn't captured my interest.
This new one seems interesting and I hope it's the one to get me back!

My most memorable occurrence playing a Harvest Moon game was spending the summer after 2nd grade trying to win Karen's heart in Harvest Moon 64. It seems silly now, but at the time it felt like I was developing real intimacy with another person. She actually felt like a presence in my life instead of a character and I can still remember what it felt like.
Weird.
So weird.

I got the limited dog plush from E3. Lined up an hour for dat shit.

I like how you can play for hours and not realize it.

I always like going around and learning about the people in Harvest Moon games. I enjoyed being able to ride the animals in Animal Parade, but I think my favorite is the original SNES one. I really enjoyed the aesthetic and atmosphere. I suck terribly at all these games. I think my first was actually a GBA one and I got a cow plushie for pre-ordering.

Ellen is still my first love!

I really only played the SNES original but it was a great summer with my cousins because we all played it and had our own save files. We would swap tips and secrets each other had found.

I've never really felt the need to go back to the series but that first one has some really great memories.

Saw this thread earlier today and was excited to share about the role Harvest Moon played in my young life. There's even a GAFfer I've never met that was a part of it Glad to see that Mr. RPG had a rather long tale, because mine might be too. I'm not sure if it falls within the OP's guidelines, but I thought I'd share it anyway since there are probably other big HM fans in here. Plus, I don't find it embarrassing anymore. It's about role playing in the Harvest Moon universe on a message board.

So, I first read about HM SNES in Nintendo Power. I remember it coming out so late, but I the previews sounded incredible to me. I ended up not playing it at the time, but I got into Harvest Moon 64 as soon as it came out. I was pumped. Like another GAFfer above, I had grandparents who had a farm that I would visit, so the game seemed neat in that respect too. I used to love helping my grandfather grow his big gardens, picking fresh vegetables to eat, and playing with farm animals.

Anyway, I played a ton of the game, and absolutely fell in love with the characters, music, and cheerful atmosphere. I still play the game every year or two to this day. So, the same year it came out I went online and Alta Vista'd some Harvest Moon terms and landed on a forum called Kuffa.

Kuffa had an off-topic side, and it had a Harvest Moon roleplaying side called the International Flower Bud Village (IFBV). There were people roleplaying characters like Rick from the game, while others were roleplaying wholly original characters. For whatever reason, I chose to roleplay as Stu, the weird young kid who loves flowers.

My first memory after signing up with the handle "Stu." I went to a thread where this guy named Jack and... I think her handle was maybe Luna, were both roleplaying a date at the beach in a thread with a title along those lines. I decided to make a two sentence post strolling into the scene, hooking up Jack with some flowers for the girl, and promptly running off. Jack accepted them and gave them to Luna, and I guess for some reason... I really loved doing this.

A quick aside: Shortly after finding this forum, I moved to a new city at the end of a school year and didn't know anybody over the summer. For that reason, I ended becoming friends with a lot of roleplayers in off-topic section and started chatting with a lot of them on AIM. I became extremely close friends with a lot those people for years (and made plenty of healthy real life relationships too, I should add). The guy with the handle Jack from the previous paragraph ended up being IntelliHeath over here on GAF. Some of you might know him. He was an awesome guy and we chatted on AIM for a bit. He eventually committed account suicide, which definitely affected IFBV I can't remember if we had an excuse for it in the world.

IntelliHeath and I just made the realization a year or two ago that we knew each other years ago on that forum when we were 13. That was pretty cool.

Anyway, not too long in after getting to know some folks on the forum, I changed my handle from Stu to my real name, Kevin.

Roleplaying dates in IFBV and flirting with a girl named Kazuki lead to a brief (month or two?) online "relationship" (lol) at the age of 14. Sadly, my weird adolescent long-distance relationship was a little more complicated than the ones of IFBV and the Harvest Moon games. My dating's been strictly local since then. I did take our break up pretty badly until I woke up the next morning and realized that it was kind of silly. I find it funny looking back, but the fact that there were some mildly dirty picture exchanges made it feel pretty legitimate at the time.

I kept in contact with some of those IFBV folks for a long time, but most of the friendships slowly began to die off years ago when we were all getting into our early 20s.

I honestly don't think they'll ever make a Harvest Moon that I'll enjoy more than HM64, but that's partly because of the nostalgia I have associated with it. I literally roleplayed in that world for at least two years before sticking to the off-topic side. And I became friends with a lot of those people. It's weirdly kind of fitting with Harvest Moon's theme. I moved to a new town but I didn't have any way to get to know people for months. So I fell into this online Harvest Moon world and built goofy fictional relationships with IFBV townspeople, and ended up building real relationships with some of those other folks who were my age outside of that too.

Somehow I never got into DND either If I ever get into a conversation with a friend that involves telling weird childhood stories, this is one I tend to go with. People definitely find it strange that I had a ton of internet friends at one time, that I knew some of my internet friends' RL friends, and that they knew some of my RL friends. And then I just emphasize that this stemmed from roleplaying on a weird online farming video game message board to drive the strangeness home.

Bonus picture of young me on the farm riding a pig because I love it:

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I would be looking forward to trying the series for the first time. The closest thing to it I have played is Animal Crossing: New Leaf, which, despite having played for 90 hours because the tranquil style is lovely, I felt was perhaps a bit of a poor fit for me in its pacing and... politely distanced acceptance? It tends to want you to play only a little bit every single day, but I tend to "save up" my game time for certain days of the week or certain late nights and play several hours at a time.

Harvest Moon seems more rewarding of that kind of investment of effort regardless of how spread out or clumped together it is, and it also seems like it perhaps has more content in the way of events/story/relationships, and also more designed for cultivating richness/depth rather than flavor-of-the-day tagging and passing things on in limited capacity. Despite having an acceptance of transience myself, I appreciate the virtue of cultivating good, so AC felt kind of shallow and HM seems more up my alley.

I might be wrong in that interpretation, but it's what I'd look forward to approaching the game.

I'd LOVE winning this (and give the plush to my girlfriend), but I got no change in Hell. Oh well, I'll post anyway.

My only limited experience with HM is with the original SNES game. I didn't play it for long, I tried taking care of my farm but I never had time to do anything else. All that worry about time took away my fun so I gave up.

I've always meant to give the series another chance, but I've never got around it. So if I get this game, I just wish I will give it the time it deserves (I'm hoping it's a good game) and I want to enjoy every apect of it, be it wooing the ladies, farming, taking care of animals, and whatever else they have in there (saving goddesses?).

I just hope it has a pace that is relaxing to me.

Hero of Legend said:

I guess Canada is out of the equation right?

Click to expand...

It is, I'm sorry. I've gotta keep this one to USA only.

Harvest Moon 64 is pretty much my favorite game ever. That's my memory.

I was thinking this version of the series would be perfect for my younger daughter. The other games move along at a bit too much of a pace for her but this one looks like one she could really take her time and enjoy. Of course I was waiting until more people got a chance to play and comment on it before picking it up for her. The good thing is if she can wrap her head around this one she can move on to the other games of the series hopefully.

I remember that a friend told me the best way to wed Karen in FoMT was to just give her wine every day. he said I should go for her because she was the easiest.

I'm not going to lie when I say that, as a teenager, i'm pretty sure I thought getting "easy" women drunk was how you got them to marry you... for a while.

I'm not from the US so i'm not entering.


but playing this game as a kid on rainy days was amazing.

this song

Does Natsume have some sort of release-day embargo on Lost Valley reviewers or are they simply not sending the game to to reviewers? Why is no-one playing or talking about this game already? This bodes ill.

@MUWANdo said:

Does Natsume have some sort of release-day embargo on Lost Valley reviewers or are they simply not sending the game to to reviewers? Why is no-one playing or talking about this game already? This bodes ill.

Click to expand...

It's available for reviewers I'm sure (I have a copy of it), but I agreed to stay put until its release date to prevent spoilers and other features from being known before the 4th. There's nothing "ill" or malicious about it; just simple courtesy.

(I'm not entering the essay contest, just responding to this non-entry post )

This is my kind of contest!

I've been playing this series since SNES days. From the start, I was hooked! I had my brother and dad hooked equally as well. The reason it hooked us is because it was the first game where the characters grew on us. You could clearly see it was an RPG and yet, you weren't killing a thing. I named my farm Rusty Farms, and farmed the lands until there was nothing to do.

Then the N64 version came out (which I still have, including box and all). I saved up, bought it, and discorved I could play infinitely after I "won" the game. I still have my save and when I'm in a HM64 mood, I load up the ol' N64 to do so.

Since then, it's been the same thing for me during every game. I love the series for providing a relaxing relief from work stress (which I definitely need these days). I've skipped the 3DS games because of hearing about glitches, but I have hopes for this one.

In the new game, I'm more excited about shaping the entire game (terrain). Having a sort of map editor in the series isn't something I'd originally hoped for, but it's intriguing.

If it helps too, right now I'm listening to the N64 soundtrack on my Vita while doing my job.

Oh man, a contest I actually care about! I don't post about it much on here, but I was a huge fan of the Harvest Moon games when I was younger. Consider me entered.

I'm pretty sure the first HM game I played was Friends of Mineral Town on a friends GBA. This was back when the only platforms I had for gaming were an ancient PC and an old GameBoy color, and so a lot of my gaming experience was playing things that other people had lying around at a sleepover or whatever. So I had one friend who just loved the series and said I had to try it, and I think it was my first experience with the idea that games could be about more than just being fantasy epics or elaborate puzzles. The...banality of it immediately struck me, and the cycle of clearing, planting, harvesting, selling sunk its hooks into me and I probably played six hours straight the first night. It was undoubtably a key part of getting me interested in less conventional, more experimental or just oddball games.

I got my own GBA and my own copy of Mineral Town a bit later, and played a few entries since then up to the first Rune Factory on DS before kind of drifting away from the series.

I guess I'd like to win because I'd really like to reconnect with this series. Its got a lot of fond memories that had honestly kind of receded until I saw this thread and they all came crashing back.

My first Harvest Moon was Back to Nature. I used to play it with my cousin and brother on my cousin's PS1, and we'd pass the controller between us and play 3 days each. It was tons of fun, and it got me hooked on that style of games; although I think the only ones that have fully recreated that obsession have been Animal Crossing for DS and New Leaf. Back to HM:BtN, what I loved about it was how "directionless" it was, and yet you could always set some goal for yourself and get to work on that. Plus the random story events kept the game fresh, and the dating system was actually fun.

Later I played some PS2 and GC Harvest Moon sequels, but I wasn't too thrilled about those, as they never felt as open as Back to Nature to me. When Friends of Mineral Town was released, I was thrilled and played it days on end as well.

Hopefully this new game aims for that sort of feel again

I guess it's an NTSC copy so I can't enter the competition but I would just like to say that I would give my all to own an original copy of Harvest Moon 64.

Gamecube version Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life (side note: I've played and beat both versions). But, when I finally got married to Marlin! Marlin was pretty difficult to impress, but I did it LOL.

Another memory, same game, was when my cow got sick and died :'( It was pretty said loading my game up to find my cow died. Till this day, I still remember the cut scene.

I've never had the pleasure of playing a game from the Harvest Moon series.

Back when Blockbuster and Hollywood Video were still around en masse, they had N64 games to rent, and I always saw the case for Harvest Moon 64, but never a rental box for it(meaning, it was currently checked out). I waited and waited, came back every other day every week, hoping that it would be returned, and it never was; the staff alerted me to the fact that it was stolen, and wouldn't be ordering another one as it "wasn't fun/popular enough".

To this day, I have never played a game with the words HARVEST MOON written on the cartridge, and from the gameplay I've seen of this new game, I'm hyped up for it! Freeform gameplay, farming, marriage, and stacking dirt to make staircases to the sky sound awesome.

The first Harvest Moon game I ever played was Harvest Moon 64. I knew what the series was about, but I didn't play the SNES game until years later (thanks to the Virtual Console on Wii and later on Wii U). I got it for Christmas one year and started...and got a little frustrated because it was so different from what I was used to. But the more I played, the more I enjoyed it.

I found every recipe (even though they did nothing in this version), got every girl up to a pink heart, built everything that I could, earned tons of money, had a healthy barn full of livestock and poultry, and did just about everything that one could...and still kept playing because it was just relaxing. Almost therapeutic.

It turned my girlfriend at the time into an addict. She married Karen, I married Popuri. My sister even played and married Ann.

I've played several titles since then (the original, GBC game, Friends of Mineral Town, DS, Magical Melody, A Wonderful Life, and three of the Rune Factory games, and I own Back to Nature on PSN), but none have matched the level of sheer enjoyment I got out of Harvest Moon 64.

My first experience with Harvest Moon was on the Nintendo 64, and I absolutely loved that game.

The genre was completely new to me and I loved the variety of activities that the player can perform. I remember the trick where you kept showing your dog to Ellen, her heart meter immediately a red heart! But my favorite potential wife was Ann, loved her clumsiness (after you marry her, she tries to take care of animals, sometimes breaking the eggs), even though she has been working on her father's ranches since she was young.

While I've never played a fulle-fledged Harvest Moon game, I have had the pleasure of playing all the games in the Rune Factory series.

While obviously carrying on the farming legacy of its sister series, the RF games also threw in some extra action/adventure toppings that enticed me like level-ups, dungeoning, and weapons.

Focusing on the more traditional Harvest Moon gameplay, I truly did enjoy tending my farm daily along with chatting up all the townsfolk. Having so many marriage options to pick from in the games was staggering since there are often two or three attractive options.

Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley would be a fascinating experience to see how Natsume handles the development of a full Harvest Moon game. I don't view the IP split as a negative (Except for possibly brand recognition) but rather as an opportunity to have double the Harvest Moon-style gameplay in the future! The Lost Valley looks to be both a departure from the series while simultaneously containing similar and familiaer throwbacks that fans are accustomed to and have come to expect from a Harvest Moon game.

When I was a wee lad I played my first version of Harvest Moon on the Gamecube. I planted my seed, milked my cows, life was wonderful. I grew to love my animals, naming every cow brushing them, making sure they were happy.

Then the cold grips of reality grabbed me....my cows,my friends would be butchered to feed me...I remeber crying for hours. My poor brown cow. The very next day I became a vegetarian.

This phase lasted for 10 years, until one day a girlfriend at the time offered me incentives to eat a sausage. It tasted so good, so plump...I betrayed my brown cow.

Ive grown a lot since then. Still eat meat, but found a way to live with myself.

My favorite Harvest Moon memories where with the N64 version. I loved exploring the world and finding all the little details scattered throughout it.

I always woo'd Popuri... i must have had a thing for pink hair ;P