The game continued to impress me as I learned all its quirks. This was the simple farming game I had been looking for, and the mechanics mostly aged well. As I played through the game’s early stages, a comforting nostalgia kept me going. You spend the first few days or weeks of the game clearing your land of weeds, rocks, and stumps to begin planting the classic three-by-three grids of turnips and potatoes and perhaps buying a chicken to get you started on the path to farming greatness. The town is also home to the five women you can marry you can win their hearts by giving them gifts. Nearby, there is a mountain trail where you can collect materials and a town where you can buy seeds and animals. You inherit a run-down farm and are expected to fix it up within two and a half years, and you are only provided with a handful of basic tools: a sickle, a hoe, a hammer, and an axe.
#HARVEST MOON SERIES#
Unfortunately, that shine faded before the game officially ended.Īs you would expect from the game that spawned a series followed by an entire genre, Harvest Moon contains all of the foundational aspects of a farming sim.
So, when Harvest Moon arrived as part of the Nintendo Switch Online service, I decided it was time to give it another chance.Īrmed with my new “less is more” mindset, Harvest Moon began to shine from the very beginning and reinvigorated my love for the genre. Many modern farming games do not focus on the simple parts I enjoy the most but instead focus on telling a story and fighting monsters. My favorite part of the genre is growing tons of crops and raising a modest number of animals. More than a decade later, I feel a bit frustrated by the farming simulation genre. The farming simulation genre had moved on and improved on the formula, so why go backward when I had already played multiple more modern Harvest Moon games? I excitedly purchased it and started playing, and then almost immediately quit. My first opportunity arrived when Harvest Moon released as part of the Virtual Console for Nintendo Wii. I still hoped that someday I would get to try the original game, but I would have to wait until adulthood for my chance. It wasn’t the game I had memorized all the guides for, but it hooked me all the same. I finally had my chance to own a virtual farm when I received Harvest Moon 64 as a gift a few years later. I read the magazine guides repeatedly and had planned out everything I wanted to do, but I never owned Harvest Moon.
/HarvestMoon_1500-56a6dfa85f9b58b7d0e53475.jpg "harvest moon")
I was busy trying out my first RPGs and trying to finish The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past before Zelda 64 was due to release still, the game about getting married, owning a cow, and planting corn was the one on my mind. Some of these names tell us what crops were harvested with the help of this bright moon in days of old.I have been fascinated by Harvest Moon ever since reading about it in Nintendo Power magazine, but that fascination surprises me even today.
#HARVEST MOON FULL#
The Harvest Moon may also be called a Corn Moon, Barley Moon, or Wine Moon (all names for September's full moon), or the Singing Moon or Elk Call Moon ( we can get behind this name!). So, we enjoy several evenings of full (and nearly full) moons that light the sky just as the sun drops off. The result: Not only can you expect a prompt full moon rise at sunset, but also the moon rises only 25 to 30 minutes later each day (the delay gets even shorter the farther north you are of the equator, says ).
The following night, normally you can expect the moon to rise about 50 minutes later as the moon travels along its tilted orbit.ĭuring a Harvest Moon, however, the moon's orbit is nearly parallel to the Earth's eastern horizon at sunset. In general, a full moon rises and sets on the opposite schedule of the sun (the sun and moon on are on opposite sides of the Earth during this moon phase, after all). We can thank the moon's orbital position in relation to Earth this time of year for the qualities of the Harvest Moon.
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