While the big highlight of Natsume’s E3 presentation was the latest Harvest Moon game, Harvest Moon: A New Beginning, they had plenty of other titles to show off as well. However before we took a look at these new titles, we spoke shortly with the wonderful woman behind Natsume’s social media. She told me that Natsume is taking a big step towards moving a number of their franchises onto digital markets and have already done so with their biggest franchise, Harvest Moon, with various PSOne title and iOS as well as Gabrielle. She continued to say that two classic Game Boy Color titles would be coming to the 3DS eShop in the next few months and these two titles were Harvest Moon Game Boy Color and the Legend of the River King Game Boy Color.
The first thing we took a look at during our time with Natsume was Harvest Moon: A New Beginning, the preview of which can be found here. Afterwords we took a look at the next installment to the Reel Fishing series, Reel Fishing Challenge which will be coming to the WiiWare marketplace shortly. This title will allow the player to cast out normally or by using the WiiMote to cast their line, as well as reeling in by moving the nunchuck in a reeling motion or simply holding A. The title will allow players to catch up to twenty different fish and participate in forty different missions involving catching certain fish. In the future, DLC will be added to add more fish to the title as well as more lures to catch said fish.
Earlier I mentioned that Natsume was looking to move onto the iOS marketplace and their first step was with the $4.99 Harvest Moon Frantic Farming. This title is an interesting take on the Harvest Moon series and instead focuses solely on farming. However rather than play as the farmer himself, you control one Harvest Sprite who will need to harvest all of the vegetables on one plot of land with only so many moves available. This puzzle styled game will have players sliding plants around in an effort to create strings of plants (currently 4 types available) for the Sprite to harvest as well as water nearby plants so that they grow and can be harvested during the next move. The Natsume representative stated that the game would be constantly updated and upgraded in the future.
Also landing on the iOS marketplace, this time for the price of nothing at all, there is Gabrielle’s Monster Match which is a simple game that allows players to match up various monster tiles, with four monsters in a line being the goal. Every time the player makes a move that doesn’t create a line, a new monster is added to the map, with the final goal being to clear the map of all tiles. The game will be freemium in a way, as players can purchase additional items in-game. Besides the basic gameplay mode, there is a time attack mode, an endless mode and a challenge mode as well. At the moment both of these apps are available on the iOS store with the Harvest Moon Frantic Farming set to be released on the Android in the future.
Warhound
The Harvest Moon franchise is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year and with this milestone comes the company’s first Harvest Moon title developed solely for the Nintendo 3DS, Harvest Moon: A New Beginning. At Natsume’s booth during E3 this year we were given a full run down of this brand new title, including a number of its new features, as well as a small bit of hands-on time with the title.
For example, if the player is choosing to go after a certain bachelor or bachelorette then they can simply move their house closer to their farm. Or perhaps you are eager to create a livestock raising farm, then you can move the livestock store close as well. Interestingly enough, two new animals have been added to the livestock list, with a Yak and a Llama entering the barnyard.
As standard with the Harvest Moon series, players will have four bachelors or four bachelorettes to choose from. There will also be two hidden romantic options, one for each gender, though who these may be was not revealed yet. Along with all of the other improvements to the game, the relationship system has been overhauled as well. In past games there were plenty of times that romantic interests could instantly fall in love with the main character.
