I think one of the best video games to come out of Japan is Harvest Moon, in all its various incarnations. I’m currently playing Sprite Station for the DS, but my heart will always belong to the first Harvest Moon I ever played: Friends of Mineral Town (FoMT for short) for the Gameboy Advance.What is so attractive about the Harvest Moon experience? For those who don’t know, Harvest Moon is a farming sim set in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. You play a young man (default name of Jack), whose goal is to grow crops, raise animals, make friends, and get married. At first glance, it seems very quiet, repetitive, and likely to be, well—extremely boring. However, Harvest Moon always reminds me of a quote from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice—when Elizabeth Bennet is asked whether or not she ever gets tired of living in a small country neighborhood consisting of a small and unvarying society, she answers merrily, “But people themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be observed in them for ever.”
That’s the beauty of Harvest Moon. When I started playing FoMT, Mineral Town seemed like a quiet and idyllic little place. But then you start to noticed weird little oddities. For example, you find if you follow the town policeman out on his rounds, he spends the entire day on a break—and at various locations no less, so no one catches on. If you work hard to make friends, those friends will start to tell you more and more revealing things about themselves, or be inclined to gossip with you about others. There’s always something new to learn. Most Harvest Moons (FoMT included) have no end—there are events that won’t trigger until 50 years or even more into the game (The farthest I’ve personally gotten so far is year 6 in FoMT.)
Harvest Moon is also gracious enough to make a “for girl” version of most of its incarnations, so you can play a female farmer (generally defaulted as Jill, but sometimes Claire or Sara), and marry one of the town bachelors. You’d be inclined to think that the “for girl” version would be nothing more than the boys’ game with a different sprite, but the game designers cleverly change or add just enough new elements and events to keep it interesting, but still essentially the same game as the boys’. Fabulous.
Harvest Moon is my favorite Japanese video game. I can never get enough of it. If you decide to start playing one yourself (and I recommend FoMT), I caution that it is highly addictive, and urge you to wait until the end of the semester or your grades will suffer. My only saving grace with Sprite Station is that I own the Japanese version and it’s a real pain have to do a SKIP or radical look up on almost every kanji, because I can only read a small handful off-hand, and the game has no furigana. [Just a note: Unlike Playstation, Japanese Nintendo cartridges do work in American Nintendo systems without a problem.]
Still, I know I only just escaped academic death—my best friend just informed me she’s buying me something that I’d never be able to put down despite the annoying kanji look up factor: the Japanese version of More Friends of Mineral Town (The “for girl” version of FoMT) to congratulate me on going back to college. Fortunately, she agreed to defer gifting me with the lovely present until classes were over.
Can’t wait for summer! ^_^
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