UPDATE: Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town will be getting a remake on the Switch, is headed west

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The classic 2003 Game Boy Advance game, Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town will be getting a full remake this year, on the Nintendo Switch. Marvelous Entertainment announced the existence of the remake in an issue of Weekly Famitsu, where they revealed that they would be combining the content of both Friends of Mineral Town and More Friends of Mineral Town into a revamped version for the Nintendo Switch, which will be called Story of Seasons: Reunion in Mineral Town. As opposed to modern Harvest Moon titles, this game will be developed by Marvelous, known in the west for their Story of Seasons series, rather than Natsume, who is the current owner of the Harvest Moon IP in North America. The game has not been confirmed for the west, but it will launch as a Nintendo Switch exclusive in Japan on October 17th.

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UPDATE:

The game has now been confirmed for both a North American and European release. A new trailer shows some more footage.

 

Kadji

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Harvest Moon: Light of Hope has NOTHING to do with the Harvest Moon you might know from the SNES / GBA games.

Marvelous is the original developer for the japanese versions of Harvest Moon, better known as the "Story of Seasons" series in Japan.
Natsume was choosen as the Publisher for the western territories and somehow they decided to rename the game to "Harvest Moon".
Story of Seasons SNES = Harvest Moon SNES

Sometime later Marvelous decided that they want to self-publish in the West, killing the contract they had with Natsume.
But they did one critical mistake: Marvelous NEVER saved the rights for the name "Harvest Moon".

Natsume, now with only a name for a beloved franchise and no game to release, started to do their own versions of Story of Seasons while keeping the name "Harvest Moon".
That is the reason why the last few Harvest Moon games are soooooo bad - gameplay and graphics wise. And the people don't realize that Natsume is not the original developer. Heck, I even heard people talking about Story of Seasons, calling it a "Harvest Moon" rip-off.

That was our short history lessen, back to topic:
I am very happy that the game is coming to the west, my sister loves Harvest Moon for GBA, this will make a nice present :D
 

Queen of SoS

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The game looks slightly better than Harvest Moon: Light of Hope.
It looks way better than light of hope. That game was the worst HM game I ever played besides HM: The Lost Valley and SkyTree Village. It actually looks a bit better in motion than it did in the screenshots. Plus Marvelous develops the new HM games which is called Story of Seasons now. Natsume owns the title to HM which is where the crap games come in like Harvest Moon: Light of Hope.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

I honestly like some of the changes to the game. Karen’s portrait doesn’t seem all that bad now that I’ve gotten a good look at it. And it seems they’ve added two new marriage characters, they added new animals : strawberry cow?, jersey cow, and a caramel cow?, you now have two options with dogs it seems, you can have a cat and maybe a penguin at some point, and they have brought the angora rabbits, capybara’s and alpaca/llama’s to the game. I didn’t see any kind of character customization so I’m still assuming that the other people standing next to the screenshot I posted above is your child growing up. As for the style of the game (specifically the characters) I won’t say that I love it but I do like it.
 
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KyleHyde

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The NA logo looks cute. I saw that Chary had updated the OP mentioning that they had announced the western release (on their JP site, oddly enough), but I didn't think they would have already made the logo so fast. Kinda odd that they didn't keep "Reunion" in the name, though I guess they wanted to make it more obvious to the western audience that it's a remake of the Mineral Town games and not some sort of sequel that takes place after them.
 

Sillybunnie

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How did the 2003 Gameboy compare to the ps1 harvest moon back to nature? That was my first exposure to the series and my favorite
 

SonyUSA

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I really hate the 3D art of the new harvest moons, they seem so slow and chunky, I wish they would go back to 2D (like Stardew :rofl2:)
 

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I must admit, it makes me feel like a kid again when I get really excited over the concept that pink cow in the posted trailer. Then I saw that pink cows make strawberry milk.

Well played, my dudes. Thumbs up for a fun and cute idea.
 

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Looks awful and I loved FoMT in GBA.
Looks cheap and the art looks like deviantart babby's first anime drawing.
 

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Wish it was a remake of the original SNES one. Thats the best one in my opinion and the only one I could get into besides Animal Parade.
 

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I really like the art direction of Bokumono series, the clothes have a interesting fell, the characters are pretty nice and artworks very charming! I liked how the characters are, but not as remake... idk, looks like they where planning a new game and gave up to make a remake, reusing the mineral town everything XD (But still use the new designs idk), the "alternative" heroes style are very nice too(and far from the original designs)
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They really looks like "planned for a new game", not a remake hahah
So I have mixed feels about this as remake... all visuals are very nice and I like them (except Carter, I understand not referencing real religion with the costume, and actually liked it, but why from an good looking guy he became a sausage face? Thomas is hilarious btw looks a mix of old him with Mayor from PPG and Dimadome hahaha).
 

KyleHyde

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I really like the art direction of Bokumono series, the clothes have a interesting fell, the characters are pretty nice and artworks very charming! I liked how the characters are, but not as remake... idk, looks like they where planning a new game and gave up to make a remake, reusing the mineral town everything XD (But still use the new designs idk), the "alternative" heroes style are very nice too(and far from the original designs)
They really looks like "planned for a new game", not a remake hahah
So I have mixed feels about this as remake... all visuals are very nice and I like them (except Carter, I understand not referencing real religion with the costume, and actually liked it, but why from an good looking guy he became a sausage face? Thomas is hilarious btw looks a mix of old him with Mayor from PPG and Dimadome hahaha).
I've been thinking about it since those designs were first shown, perhaps the original artist didn't allow them to use most of them (ie. completely redraw the originals in the SoS style) or they probably just felt like changing it altogether and making them fit in with the designs of the previous titles in the series (not counting Popolocrois and Doraemon, as those keep their original series style). I'll probably get used to some of those designs eventually.

The modern variant for the male MC looks like Mark (A Wonderful Life), so I might just go with him instead; I liked his design best from the GC/PS2 era protagonists and it's a shame that he wasn't available again for HMDS, which was basically a remake/reboot of AWL/AnWL with more content and more characters from Mineral Town. Meanwhile, the one for the female MC would sorta look like Pony (Another Wonderful Life/DS Cute variant) if she, as funny as her name is, had a ponytail.
 
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Sliter

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I've been thinking about it since those designs were first shown, perhaps the original artist didn't allow them to use most of them (ie. completely redraw the originals in the SoS style) or they probably just felt like changing it altogether and making them fit in with the designs of the previous titles in the series (not counting Popolocrois and Doraemon, as those keep their original series style). I'll probably get used to some of those designs eventually.
Sorry, but what you meant by SoS style? It's not like they changed the art style just because the series got renamed in west it still bokumono and you can see it's not that unlike if compare "first SoS" with HM a new beginning(Last Bokumono to came as HM)... the not-bokumono HM really have a "pseudo anime feel" but it's not the case...
(also the over world characters in this looked a lot on the style of HM lost valley... at least not "minecraft styled world" here xD but really wtf is natsume doing? xp
... wait, maybe it's a reference? The original "Back to nature" subtitle in japanese was "harvest moon", probably as a reference of the series outside... I hope they haven't get the "unrelated HM" in count to make this remake xD)

Also I think in general the art of Doraemon bokumon looks more bokumono than doraemon (not by character desin... but everything is so styled and nice aesthetics, doraemon only wold be all colorful and crazy XD)
But yeah, I don't think was the artist not letting use the design, I think they belong to the series anyway, but looks like the artist really wanted to make the redesigns ...

The modern variant for the male MC looks like Mark (A Wonderful Life), so I might just go with him instead; I liked his design best from the GC/PS2 era protagonists and it's a shame that he wasn't available again for HMDS, which was basically a remake/reboot of AWL/AnWL with more content and more characters from Mineral Town. Meanwhile, the one for the female MC would sorta look like Pony (Another Wonderful Life/DS Cute variant) if she, as funny as her name is, had a ponytail.
yeah I think these "main" styles where the most used, but I really liked the new, I'm probably going by these too xD
The girls kinda remind me of Tina from ANB idk why xD
 
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KyleHyde

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Sorry, but what you meant by SoS style? It's not like they changed the art style just because the series got renamed in west it still bokumono and you can see it's not that unlike if compare "first SoS" with HM a new beginning(Last Bokumono to came as HM)... the not-bokumono HM really have a "pseudo anime feel" but it's not the case...
(also the over world characters in this looked a lot on the style of HM lost valley... at least not "minecraft styled world" here xD but really wtf is natsume doing? xp
... wait, maybe it's a reference? The original "Back to nature" subtitle in japanese was "harvest moon", probably as a reference of the series outside... I hope they haven't get the "unrelated HM" in count to make this remake xD)

Also I think in general the art of Doraemon bokumon looks more bokumono than doraemon (not by character desin... but everything is so styled and nice aesthetics, doraemon only wold be all colorful and crazy XD)
But yeah, I don't think was the artist not letting use the design, I think they belong to the series anyway, but looks like the artist really wanted to make the redesigns ...

Yes, I do know that, but the current art style is mostly referred to as such (as far as I know) because that's how the series is called in the west now and it was where they began refining it (despite it starting off with ANB). Kinda like how most of the SNES-GC/PS2 era games had a similar art style (despite having different proportions) and then when ToT came along everyone had round or soft faces. It was a pretty drastic change at the time.

If they were keeping that fake HM in mind while making this game, it probably wouldn't have looked as good. Plus, the sprites would have lazily been 3D model frames with clashing low quality 2D artwork (ie. Light of Hope and Seed of Memories), haha. Now that I think about it, Natsume's line of games look like an off-brand Polly Pocket knockoff for some reason.

Natsume was probably just trying to cash in on the Minecraft craze, though I feel like they failed at it and the bland character designs certainly didn't help. As for Doraemon, I suppose it's more about the overall colors/tones that the game has. While most of Doraemon is known to be bright, colorful, and modern there have been some movies or episodes with colors like what the SoS game is using (though I don't think it's happened as often).

yeah I think these "main" styles where the most used, but I really liked the new, I'm probably going by these too xD
The girls kinda remind me of Tina from ANB idk why xD
Oh yeah, her hair does look somewhat similar.
 
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