“I don’t understand why no one is buying our new Super NES game, Harvest Moon.”
“Well, it is a sort of kids-looking game.”
“Yeah, I don’t know….”
“And the Super NES is almost dead. It’s 1997, you know.”
“Sure, but both of those things are true of Kirby’s Dream Land 3, and it’s doing OK for itself.”
“Hmmm. Well, we have been getting reports of children having nightmares after being terrified out of their minds by that quote-unquote ‘creepy as hell’ box art.”
“Which box art? I don’t think I– OH SWEET JESUS”
“Yeah.”
“F-fire the artist. And then nuke him from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
I may have played Zelda games before it, but Harvest Moon was my Legend of Zelda (1, NES). The actual farm-raising mechanics were easy enough to game that I ended up spending most of my 300 days mining secrets from the game world—which, while compact, is diversified by the passage of time. A surprising number of obscure, undocumented events and details occur only in certain seasons or, in some cases, just once per game. From a shady salesman hawking a money tree on your doorstep to some kind of rodent just shooting around the mountain on spring days, the world indicated more goings-on than I could ever know, instilling that Zelda-esque frontier spirit of curiosity and discovery.
Haha I need you to spell it out for me Parish cuz when I see that art all I see is “charm” and “whimsy.” Please explain “creepy as hell.”
Anyways I need to stop procrastinating and download this on VC, Harvest Moon 64 is one of the best games ever made so even if the original’s only half as good I’ll be satisfied. Lovely sprite art is an extra bonus.