Tag Archives: Harvest Moon

Harvest Moon (SNES) — Issue 45

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Farm­ing life begins with
SNES sim­u­la­tor classic

Leav­ing every­thing behind and tak­ing up the life of a farmer does­n’t seem to be half bad. Sure, it’s back-break­ing daunt­ing work with a large reser­voir of poten­tial fail­ure. But it’s hon­est work and high­ly sat­is­fy­ing. Or, at least that’s what Har­vest Moon wants you to believe. In a tale as old as video game time, the orig­i­nal farm­ing sim­u­la­tor wants you to live that life and suc­ceed, no mat­ter the cost.
Har­vest Moon’s orig­i­nal entry is the stark­est of all in the series. You, the name­less farmer, are tasked with rebuild­ing the fam­i­ly farm and prop­er­ty. There are ani­mals to raise, crops to nur­ture and sell, and — if you play your cards cor­rect­ly — a fam­i­ly to start. You have rough­ly a year to do this before your par­ents come back and judge your efforts. If you’ve suc­ceed­ed most­ly, you’re in the clear. If not, well, you’ve failed and it’s game over. This is the basis for the series that you see today in Har­vest Moon and Stardew Val­ley, and though most­ly unchanged in basis, it’s sim­ple and effective.
The depth comes in learn­ing the game sys­tem. Crop nur­tur­ing and ani­mal hus­bandry are not easy, but once you’ve got the nuance it’s a whole new world of prof­its. The con­trols are sim­ple to pick up and once you’ve built your­self up sta­mi­na-wise, the fruits of your labor are obvi­ous. There’s some­thing super sat­is­fy­ing about work­ing the land, plant­i­ng crops and car­ing for your ani­mals in a day’s work and then reap­ing the ben­e­fits. There is plan­ning involved also, which adds an extra lay­er of depth. Know­ing how to spend your day wise­ly — whether it be tend­ing to the farm or social­iz­ing in town — is impor­tant, and adds to the over­all experience. 
Part of that expe­ri­ence is the pre­sen­ta­tion, and it’s not bad for a SNES game. Giv­en that this is 16-bit, the sprites are bright and pop with the gor­geous SNES palette. Some areas are a lit­tle too brown but over­all, it’s a pret­ty game. The music is slight­ly monot­o­nous but it’s a lit­tle catchy so it does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly grate the way you’d think hear­ing the same tune would for more than 20 min­utes of farm work and socializing.
Because this is the entry point to the mod­ern series, Har­vest Moon has work to do. Time — though not explic­it­ly shown on screen — runs too quick­ly. Also, the start­ing hand­i­cap of low sta­mi­na and mediocre tools is not fun. This does become eas­i­er in lat­er entries, but this frus­trat­ing mechan­ic began here and does not enhance the series in any way. 
Despite some frus­tra­tions with the game, it’s a nice, relax­ing start to a fun, quirky series. Mod­ern fea­tures may be a draw for the lat­er games, but don’t let the orig­i­nal fool you. There’s a won­der­ful life to be had even in the 16-bit starter.

Harvest Moon: Back to Nature — 4Q2014 issue

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A life that’s sec­ond nature

A life of farm­ing is nev­er sim­ple. Ask any farmer and they’ll tell you: It’s a tough, tough job that requires before-dawn ris­ing and at-dusk retir­ing that repeats itself over the course of many a day. There’s also the fear of Moth­er Nature wreck­ing your liveli­hood and out­side forces such as oth­er humans steal­ing from you and run­ning you into ruin. But, thank­ful­ly, you can avoid all of that and expe­ri­ence the joy of liv­ing off the land at its finest, dig­i­tal­ly if you so choose, thanks to Nat­sume’s Har­vest Moon: Back to Nature. And, if you play your cards right and take time to pull your­self away from dig­ging up your ground, you can find your­self a cer­tain Mrs. to share the farm­ing duties with as well.

Back to Nature is the best game in the long-run­ning series. I say this with con­fi­dence because it’s one of the only titles in the series to have been remade mul­ti­ple times with the same set­up, just dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters. Every mod­ern Har­vest Moon title takes its cue from Back to Nature, as well. The main goal, which stays the same through­out the series, is to take a farm that’s fall­en into dis­re­pair and make it into a prof­itable bas­tion of hard work and suc­cess. Your char­ac­ter works to accom­plish this by pulling up his boot­straps and putting in a lit­tle elbow grease with lit­tle to no help from any­one else, aside from the gnomes he meets tucked away in the crease of the town.

Speak­ing of the town, you’re tasked with meet­ing folks and forg­ing some type of rela­tion­ship with them so that you are con­sid­ered neigh­bor­ly. The town’s set sched­ule makes for inter­est­ing inter­ac­tions and a type of sched­ule plan­ning not unlike Ani­mal Cross­ing. While you’re work­ing to save your farm and chat­ting up the towns­folk, you’re giv­en a third task of find­ing a suit­able lass in town to wife up. If you can man­age to put a ring on it by woo­ing your intend­ed (there are five love­ly ladies that you can choose from to pur­sue with vary­ing likes and dis­likes), you’re all but guar­an­teed to earn your place in the town and be allowed to stay.

Back to Nature is deep, extreme­ly deep. So much so that it takes quite a bit of time just get­ting the farm up and run­ning in a prop­er man­ner that you might make mon­ey to sus­tain it. And that’s mis­sion accom­plished for Back to Nature: Get you involved and think­ing hard about what it is you want to accom­plish in your town. That lev­el of inter­ac­tion is sim­ple to begin with, and with decent con­trols it does­n’t get too much hard­er to main­tain. It’s one of the things that I love about Back to Nature. It does­n’t press too hard about mechan­ics and there’s a wealth of infor­ma­tion with­in the game about crops and car­ing for ani­mals that can help you main­tain a com­fort­able way of life with­in the game. But some­times, the lev­el of com­fort you want isn’t always with­in reach.

While I praise the con­trols, the effect isn’t always ben­e­fi­cial for you. The game is hard in the begin­ning, some­times too hard for its own good. Take, for exam­ple, the fact that you arrive in town with basi­cal­ly noth­ing but the clothes on your back. You’re expect­ed to suc­ceed and set­tle down there but you have noth­ing tying you there very much. What’s to say that your play­er char­ac­ter does­n’t decide that it’s too much, packs up shop and goes home? It’s not very real­is­tic with some of the things you’re tasked with doing, and start­ing with absolute­ly no mon­ey and try­ing to rebuild a farm is impos­si­ble with no cash flow. 

My next prob­lem comes with the cash oppor­tu­ni­ties afford­ed in the game. With­out cheat­ing, it is near­ly impos­si­ble to become suc­cess­ful and well off. This leads into a larg­er prob­lem with the way time is struc­tured in the game as well. While the time aspect has to be dif­fer­ent than real time, an entire day should not pass with­in near­ly 30 min­utes. It’s extreme­ly hard to get much accom­plished in the ear­ly going and it demands that you must have a rou­tine in place quick­ly or risk being left behind. Sure, you’re giv­en a year or two to get things togeth­er but it’s hard to make things work on the farm, court a girl and par­tic­i­pate in town activ­i­ties all at once in the short amount of time that pass­es as a day. 

Cou­ple it with the sched­ule giv­en to the town and there’s a time man­age­ment prob­lem just wait­ing to hap­pen. The con­trols some­times leave a lot to be desired, too. More than once I’ve had a buck­et that I’ve filled with good­ies from my plot of land emp­ty just far away enough from a bin that it went wast­ed. And more than once I’ve been angered by loss of income because it’s on the ground and not able to be reclaimed. But that’s a fact of life in Har­vest Moon titles, I suppose.

Oth­er­wise, Back to Nature is a great sim­u­la­tion of farm life. It’s a good way to play a dat­ing sim and life sim all at once with very lit­tle con­se­quence for poor choic­es. Get­ting back to nature is an idea all of us need to think of at least once, even if it is to dig­i­tal­ly pair off and make a fast dollar.

Back to basics

Back to Nature, released in 1999 for the PlaySta­tion One, has been remade sev­er­al times. The first remake was released for Game Boy Advance as Har­vest Moon: Friends of Min­er­al Town in 2003. Friends of Min­er­al Town was expand­ed with a side sto­ry, More Friends of Min­er­al Town — which allows play­ing from a female farmer’s per­spec­tive — in 2005. These were lat­er port­ed as Har­vest Moon: Boy & Girl for PSP in 2005.