When I was a kid, I thought for sure that the entire point of gaming was to give me a quick fix. I didn't want to spend my time scrolling through endless dialog boxes or complicated lore that didn't appeal to me in the slightest. I just wanted to have some fast fun through the button-mashing, arcade-y nature of the many titles I had managed to get my hands on through trades and rentals.
I didn't wanna play anything that required me to think.
Of course, that mindset was challenged (and defeated) as soon as I got my hands on "Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego?", a game so good at what it did it that it even managed to hide the fact that it was teaching me stuff while getting me completely addicted to it at the same time. Surprisingly, I didn't resent the developer for it. I thought that it was a pretty neat and natural way to get me engaged on something that could potentially be useful later on. However, I felt the need to draw a line: from that point onward I would only play games for escapism and senseless violence, effort and thinking be dammed.
And for a few years, that's exactly what I did.
I'd go to the video and computer store every Saturday, looking for something flashy and violent to get whilst keeping a scrap of paper detailing my Pentium II's specs on my pocket, manually checking each and every box, seeing if I could run any of the games that had gotten me interested by obsessively reading through the minimum system requirement tabs.
I remember just how fun it was to finally get my hands on those games that were made famous through word-of-mouth during the pre-internet days, renting absolute juggernauts like Mortal Kombat 3 and Quake II in all their gory glory.
For a really long time my ideal game involved a gun and something to use it on.
In all honesty? The more I punished my keyboard by savagely smashing its keys, the better.
But then, the age of the internet began in full and I became aware of all those console-based games I had missed out on. Unsurprisingly, I still chose the instant-gratification stuff, but with a little more tolerance for strategizing: Worms Armaggedon, Panic Bomber! and Klonoa filled many of my afternoons as I navigated a plethora of Abandonware and Emulation sites, looking for whatever looked interesting to play.
And then, one day, I ran into Harvest Moon.
The name alone got my attention, but I couldn't quite place it. It looked like Pokemon... was this a romhack? Was this like that one game that sometimes made the rounds as Pokemon Crystal, but with cellphones? It certainly looked the part. I downloaded it, but didn't give it more than a minute of my time.
The idea of Harvest Moon felt so foreign to me that I honestly thought it was a romhack. In my young mind there was simply no way that someone would make a whole videogame about farming.
No, this was text-heavy and awkward, not at all what I had signed up for.
But years later (and already speaking some English), I ran into the name again... Specifically, I ran into Friend Of Mineral Town for the Gameboy Advance.
I downloaded this one with some considerable effort (those 56K speeds, man) and decided to give it an honest go, brushing my initial hastiness aside.
And it was the thing I didn't even know I needed.
I was blown away by this thing, not because it looked so different from literally every other thing I had played up to that point, but because it spoke to me in a very personal level. I just couldn't believe that a developer would make a game about tending to the farm of a deceased relative when that's exactly what I did during most of my childhood. Realizing that was like a slap on the face and a caress at the same time.
When I was a weelad, one of my biggest joys was just tagging along as my grandpa worked on the small area he hard cordoned off at the edge of his property, a dirt square prepared to grow his own food. I was fascinated by the whole thing and I often volunteered to help him out, doing anything he'd ask me to with great enthusiasm. The fact that I could feel like I was helping (and that he treated me like a peer instead of like the very annoying kid I know I was) made me want to throw myself at those tasks with all my heart and soul. And during those grueling hours under the sun, I'd listen to him talk endlessly about his childhood on that very area, feeling ecstatic as he'd tell me all about how the neighborhood used to be farmland that extended as far as the eye could see, about how he and his friends would ride on horseback to the nearby river and make it back through an area that's now taken up by a supermarket. He'd even rummage through a forgotten drawer just to show me a black and white picture of his pet sheep. It was all amazing to me.
I'm always surprised by Friends Of Mineral Town. This is easily one of the best-looking games on the GBA, a console known for its beautiful graphics.
The fact that I had missed out on an entire series that would let me revisit some of those memories was genuinely upsetting to me. Where was the word-of-mouth when you needed it? Why weren't magazines throwing parades on the streets over this one? Why weren't the N64 and PS1 versions reviewed on TV? It felt like a conspiracy designed specifically to piss me off.
But as much as I wanted to love Friends Of Mineral Town, I just couldn't.
I'll be the first to admit that I wasn't the right audience for this game. I'm the kind of person who would play SimCity 2000 with cheats on and then summon the monster whenever the taxpayers got pissy about something. The sole idea of growing my farm (and life) over DECADES felt grueling to me. I also had a nagging sensation at the back of my head telling me that instead of doing that I could, I don't know, go out, start my own farm and actually get paid for the back-breaking job demanded and expected from me through the endless text of the GBA version. Whatever the case, I didn't last the season as I made every rookie mistake possible, ranging from trying to clear my entire field when that wasn't needed to failing to water my crops through the infinite stupidity of placing them randomly around the place, guaranteeing that I'd block my own path at a time when my basic water can couldn't spray further than the square immediately next to it. I eventually ended up ditching the damn farm altogether (with the sole exception of selling a bit of honey obtained each day) to throw myself to the much more entertaining mining industry, hacking and smashing rocks for some raw ore to sell. But that wasn't very engaging, either, and the idea of trekking all the way to the mine each and every day cycle felt punishing after a while, so I just quit for good.
Then, years later, my kids discovered the game and urged me to play it with them.
I have read that the series used to attract more than its fair share of criticism due to its dated graphics at a time when gamers expected better, but I just don't see it. I think that a game that feels cozy doesn't need cutting edge graphics to shine.
Maybe it was because sharing the misadventures was automatically funnier than soloing the whole thing, but this time I actually really loved my time with it. The kids had a ton of ideas and often had to be asked to slow down just a little, because there was just so much time on a day cycle and we couldn't just accomplish it all in one sitting.
Getting and naming chickens proved to be not only funny, but also simply beneficial for our game, and we quickly settled into a routine that involved harvesting eggs first thing in the morning and then just heading to the mines immediately after that was done, always on the lookout for that one magic pixel that would open up the next level when hit. Everything just worked for once.
Now, I won't just sit here and tell you that we found an excellent rhythm that saw us getting all the upgrades, wooing all the bachelorettes and dominating every community event, because that'd be BS. We enjoyed the game for what it was, but didn't even come close to becoming masters at it. We mostly did what we found fun and neglected everything else (which I suspect IS the right way to play it, but it certainly didn't feel like it).
For as much fun as it was to explore Mineral Town, the game never truly won us over. The tight schedules, punishing mistakes and endless dialogue (which I swear felt like reading a Harvest Moon NOVEL at times) ended up becoming a little too much for us to handle... and then came the dagger to this one's heart: Stardew Valley.
One could argue that Natsume completely dropped the ball in several aspects (hence, Stardew Valley), but I could never fault the company for putting out an updated version of their game so girls could play as a female farmer. That was almost shockingly nice of them at a time when girls just had to play as guys in most titles.
Stardew Valley just KILLED this one for us by refining and building upon the bases already left by Harvest Moon through its many installments. The game felt easier to play, far less punishing and much more engaging, to the point of it still being the one we play. We haven't touched Mineral Town (or any other Harvest Moon title) in years, but we still sneak in one or two hours of Stardew Valley action whenever we can. It simply makes sense to do so, too.
Did I enjoy my time with Harvest Moon? Absolutely. Will I ever go back to it? Probably not. I'm sure I can eventually come up with a playstyle that would just work for me, but Stardew Valley simply killed that possibility. That said, I really do enjoy the atmosphere across the series, particularly that of Harvest Moon 64. Whatever else I can say about these games, they nailed the small town vibe to an impeccable degree, and that's something that not even Stardew Valley could quite pull off.
In a landscape when gaming was dominated by titles centered around going really fast, shooting at everything that moved and generally blowing junk up, Harvest Moon proved to be a necessary break, and I'm glad it existed.
What about you? What are your memories of Harvest Moon?
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