Harvest Moon

Harvest Moon is a great game. Hours and hours of nail-biting, often infuriating fun experienced through ZSNES' hiccup, seizure inducing settings. Though it's been just over a decade since Harvest Moon's release in 1997, this game still kicks just as much as than its more popular counterparts such as Sim Farm. Like those games, you get several levels of customization with your in-game house, and, as the game progresses, the ability to buy more types of tools for enhancing your hillbilly experience. For those who are overly obsessive about farming, one can even find Golden versions of the normal toolsets, enabling rapid-fire genocide of pesky debris such as rocks and tree stumps, which your late relative's farm is simply littered with for some reason.
Also, unlike it's more one-dimensional competition in the farming-simulator market, Harvest Moon doubles as a dramatic love-story, allowing your pudgy, under aged anime character to woo different girls throughout the game with items such as perfume, cake, fruit, and special quests designed to up your love-love rating with them. Of course, as in most honest Japanese games, playing the game like a pimp makes bad things happen and generally wastes your time, seeing as how time progresses very quickly while just standing around, and hops forwards every time you go to a different map. Unless you plan on mapping you out a route of least-pixels-taken to the fruit trees in the mountains, stick to one gal, hot stuff.
And of course, after a sufficient amount of carrying on, you can even get the girl of your dreams to marry you, and even have kids for you, often making for hilarious end-game cut scenes. Far from being a pointless addition to the game, your wife will also randomly do your chores behind your back, such as watering your crops and feeding your livestock, freeing up your time to explore more of the HM world. As restrictive sounding as having only four different maps to explore, believe me, with their size, the things you need to do to unlock certain areas, and the ever-present visible progression of the day, you'll be lucky if you get to see everything your first play around. And that's not even touching the Power Fruits.
Depending on how you play the game, several different endings can be attained, each unique to the way you decided to play. You even get a special one for if you're a horrible farmer and you run the business into the ground. Though Harvest Moon isn't as in-depth as Sim Farm, the difficulties and relatively immersive storyline more than compensate. Even if all the rest of the daily trials involved with maintaining a cutesy 16 bit anime farm get monotonous to you the years are constantly punctuated with various kinds of festivals, events, and seasonal mayhem, the latter of which offers a delightful change in tile set whenever it comes around.
This game is a must play, and will always hold a special place in my heart. I highly recommend it to everyone.


Written by: ~dorento1

Harvest moon is an awesome game. First off, the graphics are awesome for its time. The game play is one of the most addicting i have ever played. This game has at least a good rating of 4 stars out of 5. The reason for this is the way the game is layed out. It's festivals, animal, and crops are soooo fun. I play this game tons even though its old. This is by far my favourite old game. I also have harvest moon 2, 3, and friends in mineral town. My brother got them for me though so don't ask me where to find them. Another good thing is that virtually ANY computer can play this game. The areas in the game consist of the mountains, your very own, very lovely farm, and the exciting town. All the festivals are held in the town square. The festivals, though I don't think i can remember them all. are the harvest ball, the easter one which is a easter egg hunt. I guess that’s the only ones I can remember. you can get married and have kids. you have to stay with your wife and spend time with her or she'll run away. Your wife can also do things like make food and work in your shop. The story line is that your parents are going away for like 2 or 3 years and you have to take care of the farm. off the beginning the farm is a mess of weeds and rocks. You have to clear these in order to farm. This part is a little bit boring. Storms come and wreck your crops sometimes. Some girls are easier to get then others. the bar girl is easier because she comes out at night so you don't have to waste your valuable time that is needed to get all your products into the shipping box. you can milk your cows and get eggs from your chickens. the crops vary in price. the more expensive the more its worth. you have to water crops daily. You also need grass because you need to cut it to get fodder. These elf guys that live in under ground caves take your tools and make them supertools. Earthquakes also happen and once and earthquake happens new places are opened up because of moved boulders or broken wells. At festivals there are perfumes that help to get good with your girl. There are hearts that tell you what your girl thinks of you.

Written by: ~dorento1