@@EmberCitrine HM64 was the best home console HM ever for me but I knew Friends of Mineral Town for GBA was the favorite for most fans (which itself is a remake of Back to Nature which itself is sort of a HM64 remake) and guess what we did get a FoMT remake recently and…… I was underwhelmed. I couldn’t get past how mediocre its graphics and artstyle looked. I swear an indie studio could’ve made it look better. Not even the character portraits looks good 😕 What I’m trying to say is that even if they do make a faithful HM64 remake I have little faith it’ll be good judging by how mediocre the FoMT remake was.
I think the funniest thing they removed in the SoS remake in modern day is the stuff with the golden lumber! I’m reliving my mineral town memories with my partner and I was telling her about how the townspeople used to come bully you for your show of opulence if you put the golden limber out 😂
It was weird. It reassigned who was related to whom in N64 then became the mold for FoMT from then on Elli was always a nurse, Popuri a chicken farmer, Karen's dad became nice etc
I played FoMT and MFoMT growing up, so I miss catching the tv ads and ordering stuff, figuring out how to water the inner plants, rival events, etc. in SoSFoMT. I miss the litte things. Also, I was never aware of the family switching. Wild. Nice to learn the history.
One thing I am disappointed they removed is that you could choose which ingredients you used. I assumed that if you added unecessary ingredients for the recipes, but still made a legal recipes, it boosted the stamina recovery.
Always praying for a HM64 remake, as long as they don't ruin it by removing rival marriage again. It may be small, but Flowerbud Village and its cast will always feel like home to me.
I grew up with the BTN/Mineral Town timeline so that made more sense to me. That timeline is canon in my head. 😆 Also as a queer individual, I miss rival marriages. I belive HM/SoS could still do that whilst being inclusive. It's so sad that the remaining candidates will be single forever after your character gets married.
I got real mad they took away Rival Marriages. It felt really stale that only the MC's life changes. The other townspeople are in basically limbo. It doesnt help in the remakes, the characters are written to eventually supposedly fall in love with the rivals but they took the final heart events away so theyre just stuck in perpetuity.
hi josh, i found your channel about a month ago and i really have to thank you for all your nostalgic and thoughtful content! i started this series with harvest moon 64 like you so seeing how much you love it really connects with me ❤ i’ve also learned a lot about the behind the scenes production of these games from you like in this video! i played harvest moon back to nature on the ps1 second and adored it as a kid. i’ve restarted that one more than 64 because it was easier to access on the ps store whereas my 64 broke. hearing your opinions on these games is so interesting to me! i appreciate how honest you are and you are right about many things, always give me lots of things to think about. i found your channel because of fields of mistria which brings back so many happy memories and creates new ones for me✨ i had to stop playing that game because i injured my wrist so i found your channel at just the right time! you’ve been such lovely company while i take a break from playing games! you are so kind and authentic and welcoming 💚 i hope your channel keeps growing because you truly deserve it! i also love your accent and am so impressed you know japanese!! im going to japan on vacation in november for the first time and im struggling learning the very basics 😅 im so glad this series has stuck around and continued to change and grow! few games can compare to the old ones for me but then games like fields of mistria come out and my inner child delights in it! thanks for all you do!! sending love from texas!
Hi Alicia! What a beautiful comment to start my day, thank you!! 😭 There are definitely very few games that can replicate the feeling of old ones as well as Fields of Mistria. I can't wait for it to receive more updates, and hopefully by that time your wrist has healed! 💚 Take care and have fun in Japan!
I'd honestly love a video talking about all the other family changes. I played either Back to Nature or Friends of Mineral Town first, so the families in 64 seem weird to me. You had a really good point about the ones you did mention though, it doesn't make that much sense changing Popuri's family in the ways they did lol
Playing MFOMT as a kid, I accidentally made every bachelor fall in love with my character, and then after I got married, they would look angry all the time! 🤣 Rick’s dialogue became Japanese too at certain points lol.
My first exposure to HM was a guide from a Nintendo magazine featuring Harvest Moon 64. I wasn't actually able to play the game but I was mesmerized by it. I wanted to play it but I didn't have a game console. After a few years in high school, I got myself a PS1 and got to play BtN. It was my first HM and it was a blast. I do remember wondering why the character relationships were not as I remembered in the guide despite being the same ones. I spent lots of hours on that game and it was technically my first HM experience. I got to play FoMT later and it was also nice. I wanted to play the other HM games too back then but I didn't have any other game consoles to play back then. Recently I have picked up the remake again and was a bit disappointed that there's no rival marriages. I have a backlog of great HM games that I didn't get to play so I think I'll get to those once I start to chill in my elder years.
I think I mentioned this before in the past somewhere but Harvest Moon Friend of Mineral Town was what made me give the series a second chance. My first game was Harvest Moon DS which I think I saw on commercials but I got it as a young kid who only understood playing Pokemon Sapphire/Ruby, Pokemon Diamond, Nintendogs & Animal Crossing Wild World. I had no idea what I was doing & actually managed to forget I was suppose to save the Harvest Goddess, I also didn't like that I couldn't choose a girl since other games gave the option & wasn't happy about being the husband.(In present day I identify as male now but I still wouldn't play Harvest Moon DS because I'm attracted to men) Years later I think after high school I later found an LP of Harvest Moon Friends of Mineral Town & it led to a better understanding of how to play leading to giving the series a second chance. I went on to get a physical copy of More Friends of Mineral Town & also having a rom of the game that has a modded patch that replaces Claire with Pete & fixes the text as well on a few devices, I also ended up getting Harvest Moon DS Cute but have yet to play it.(Also obviously have the Switch remake too) Ignoring Harvest Moon DS(didn't get very far in it), Harvest Moon Friends of Mineral Town was my first Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons game. I didn't know much about past games until finding a video series were someone tried working on a fan game using RPG Maker(and assets/character sprites from HM FoMT) that uses the Harvest Moon 64 version of characters. It's interesting to learn about the game that led to Friends of Mineral Town & it also feels really unfortunate that the girl versions up until More Friends of Mineral Town would have the game end when you get married. Feels a little ironic that DS has the same thing happen if you marry any of the Mineral Town girls cause you chose to move back to their town but on DS Cute the guys move in with you if you marry one.(With the only one leading to ending the game like in DS if you marry Mason/May's grandson) Makes me wonder if there's a way to mod it so you can keep going in the games were marriage is were the game ends? Also makes me curious what it'd be like if we got some games were it has the Harvest Moon 64 version of characters would be like.
I never realized the differences between 64 and BtN! My entry point was Save the Homeland and Friends of Mineral Town. Very informative video, and the history behind the changes is so fascinating. That diagram that shows the bigger differences between 64 and BtN made me chuckle. Also, I think the animation on Dia at the end is so charming. The way she tilts her head and leans forward before rudely turning her head away really sells the character. Save the Homeland is a hot mess, but I still have a soft spot for it since it introduced me to one of my favorite game series.
I wish for a remake for HM64 with modern QOL, but since we got FOMT instead it will probably never happen. I like SOS FOMT a lot but I dislike the reliance on breeding animals. Rival marriages need to come back in every game, too.
I was introduced to the series through GBA Friends of Mineral town and loved it to bits. I've played the switch version, but I find it sometimes "too easy" if that makes sense. It might just be the nostalgia talking though! Great video!
Great video Josh! My first entry to the series was More Friends of Mineral Town, so I never knew the characters initially had different backgrounds. Popuri's original concept made a lot more sense (I had no idea that her name was related to flowers lol); it was weird to learn though because I've always known her as a chicken farmer! I once did a project on the differences between boy and girl versions of HM/SOS, though I missed the girl version of Back to Nature. What an interesting example of how girls were treated in games. I think it's kind of crazy that, after learning that 30-50% of players were female, and enjoyed the game already as it was, they decided to change so much. I do like that they changed the dialogue and events to be from the girl's perspective, but ending the game after marriage? That's wild to think about...as if the girls didn't already play the boy version exactly how it was. 😅 At least in future girl versions, they ended up getting the quality of life updates. The trade off was that they came out months or years later; with greater waiting times for English speaking players who had to wait for them to be translated (not sure about other languages). In my mind it would have made sense to wait and release boy and girl versions at the same time, but perhaps they didn't have a large enough team to do that. Thankfully now they're not separate!
BTN is probably the game I've put the most hours into, it's the reason I love farming games so much. I just wish SOS:FoMT wasn't such a 1:1 remake of the GBA game but instead a mix of it and the BTN removed content, as it has the more fun festivals for example (goddess festival, swimming race, tomato fight, etc).
Back to Nature was my first HM/SoS game and it also the game that introduced me to farming sim genre. I had so much good and sweet memories in this game. It definetely has special place in my heart 🥲 Also this game was very popular in my neighbourhood during my childhood. At that time PS1 was booming in my country and many of my friends bought it, including me. Thanks to that we got introduced to HM BTN. It was that one game that everyone love, not only for kids like us, but also for the adult. I still remember when all of my friends in my neighbourhood came to my house just to witness my character married Karen because I was the first kid who successfuly marry in the game lol 😂😂 what a nice memory
This game introduced me to the Harvest Moon series and farming simulators in general. I love it to death. I put A LOT of hours into this game as a kid. I'm happy to see you talk about it.
Rival marriages is something I want any new company or game to do! It’s such an amazing mechanic. And if people aren’t crazy about it, make it a setting to turn off and on!
For me, Harvest Moon 64 was the first one I played. I was like 13 and I'm from a poor country so I was emulating on an old computer that lagged out with any game I put except N64 games and older. Buying a PS1 was out of the question but I used the school computers to browse harvest moon games. That's how I got introduced to the original harvest moon game, the gameboy color ports and the, then, newer ones. I never played the play station games because 700MB back then was too much to download, and even when I got internet in my house, the lower camera angle and the fact that you can't rotate it to have 90 degree angles to match with the controller made me not want to play the game. When I found out there was a gameboy advance game I downloaded it and played until year 5 and loved it, and I even bought the newer remake for the nintendo switch, which I loved because it staid simple and kept the essence of the original game.
I liked the challenge of rival marriages and having to make friends with the town before the end of 3 years. I was always worried about the game ending if the villagers didn't like me.
I'm heavily conflicted, because I spent my youth indulging myself rotten on HM64 and FoMT, so I constantly finding myself bouncing back and forth on the structure, the relationships, the maps, etc, of everything in both games. I love them both though. I too want an HM64 remaster/remake, and I've been finding myself thinking about it more and more as I've finally gotten a means to revisit my FoMT cartridge within recent months.
Wiki says about Kano: "Thomas does mention him randomly in Friends of Mineral Town. He mentions that he disappeared and left a letter for the Mayor, but has yet to come back." "Kano also never appeared in the remake of Friends of Mineral Town, Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town. He is once again mentioned by Thomas, but his name is incorrectly spelled as Kanno." The "roommate" reminded me of Nigel and Ralph in Olive Town until someone corrected me. Nigel is actually Ralph's father! Iori and Dotetsu on the other hand though 🤭 I don't think they are related.
I am currently playing friends of mineral town for the playstation and I'm kinda disappointed that they cut out the other festivals from Back to Nature. I miss the tomato throwing festival and the goddess festival. And also the art style Zack looks like Nigel Thornberry and I can't unsee it.
Back to Nature is my favorite Harvest Moon game and probably one of my top 5 games in general. The Switch remake looks nice and I intend to play it some day but the art style of the original looks so much nicer in my opinion.
Friends of Mineral Town on GameBoy was so good :) i would say its the beginning of my casual game journey. i loved it. i still have it with a functioning handheld and played it not long ago for a bit but now its difficult to sit down with a handheld when i am more of a pc person. The controls and the pace costs a bit of nerves :( so sad. I would love to experience the joy again like i was 11 or 12 years old again.
I didn't play Harvest Moon until PlayStation came out, so I first played FoMT. I loved the game so much that I ended up buying every game after branded as HM, even if it wasn't HM anymore.
It's a quite interesting video. I came to know the series by Back to Nature on de PS1. One of my friends had it and we spent so much time playing that game and trying to understand English (not my mother tongue). At the time I didn't have a ps1, so I had to relay on my friend to play it. Later I discovered the emulation world and I could play Mineral Town on GBA, and boy, I played so many times. Boy and girl versions, different marriages, so nice. When I discovered the N64 one, it was so strange, all the characters mess up and less quality of life in the gameplay, so I never played for too long. I ended up discovering the N64 version was the original one, but in the end the PS1 got more popularity. Anyway, greats games. Thanks for the video.
I grew up with 64, so I've never been able to fully connect with the Mineral Town games. I just prefer everyone's original characterizations more. Not to mention I miss the element of time management that 64's short days provided. That said, the FoMT remake on Switch was what reignited my love for the series. May not be my favorite entry, but I still appreciate it! Also, I don't know if the little 12pm pause happens on the original system, but I've been playing the PS5 release of Back to Nature for the last year, and yeah, that happens every single day when the bell rings.
I actually was introduced to Harvest moon with the Game Boy Advance! I bought the DS version purely by accident years later while in costco, lol. After that there was no going back. I actually really enjoyed the Future set Harvest Moon for the PsP.
BtN is my favorite: greenhouse, animal mortality, rival marriage. I like the new remake a lot, but they removed many things I enjoyed. Also not found of the house with no rooms.
"Has a 'roomate'" Oh my Gosh they were roomates~ But also I love the Quotations around roomates implying that Thomas is in a gay relationship~ You have the shipping brain too.
I played fomt and mfomt growing up and loved them dearly. I'm happy to hear there's no rival marriages in the sos remake tho because I was just never a fan of the mechanic or the pairings they did lol. I never knew that 64 was so different, that's pretty funny 🤣 and to think the btn became the mold for the other remakes...rip 64's og story lol
I only had access to HMFoMT and now SoSFoMT (in that part of the series) so it’s interesting to learn about the differences between the games. I didn’t know BtN was on PSN and I’ve really wanted to try it so I’ll have to give it a go! 🥰 We never got the for girls editions in the UK and I was super excited when Magical Melody came out to find out we got the Wii version only that had a lot of things removed and I’m still salty about it. I just wanted to play as a girl! I’m happy that they are more inclusive now but I wish they wouldn’t remove the rival marriage and children growing up as I really enjoy that aspect and it gives more content to enjoy after completing the main aspects of the game. (FoMT was my first game in the series, I forgot to mention that.)
i've never seen u playing HM Hero of Leaf Valley PSP, i think thats better than Save the Homeland with more endings and marriage, although some events are time gated, u could fix that by guide and u wont miss anything in the game
I loved HM64 to bits and played it for hundreds of hours so of course I jumped at the chance of buying Back to Nature. By all accounts it was HM64 but with remixed and much more content so I was ready to lose myself in that game… what’s not to like? Turns out a lot. I’ve never gone from total hype to total deflation with any videogame as fast as I was with BtN. 10 seconds into the gameplay when I saw you could only move in 4 directions (coming from HM64 and it’s free form analog control) was devastating. And to add insult to injury it was made more confusing due to the isometric angle because you’d move in an “X” form but the Dpad was in a “+” shape. For a late PS1 game in 2000, way after the introduction of the analog sticks via the DualShock controller, was unforgivable. The 10 second or so loading screen everytime you entered or exit your farm screen certainly didn’t help things. After that I kept for years trying to get that next drug kick on a home console I got from HM64 which sadly never came (at least not from this series). I gave Save the Homeland on PS2 a try but incredibly it was even worse than BtN but for very different reasons. Then came A Wonderful Life for GC which did fix many of StH problems but still lacked much of what made HM64 so special. And I know I wasn’t the only one feeling this way because apparently the guy that did Stardew Valley made it because he felt the same way I did. He, like me, knew there was a market for a game like this which Marvelous refused to satisfy but unlike me he did something about it.
There are a 2 things currently I hate about the remake of Friends of Mineral town for switch 1]THEY RUINED GRAY....THEY REMOVED HIS ICONIC HAT...GRAY IS NOT GRAY WITHOUT HIS ICONIC HAT. THEY MIGHT AS WELL HAVE REMOVED HIM FROM THE GAME & REPLACED HIM WITH SOMEONE NEW. YOU CAN'T JUST REMOVE GRAY'S ICONIC HAT & THINK IT'S OKAY. Gray was my favorite bachelor, now I can't even bare to look at him. I feel so sorry for Gray. 2]The ruined a number of other characters as well, I feel sorry for them having the wrong names given to them for the English dub of this game. Elli, Ann, Doug, Barley, May, Stu, Ruby, all there names are incorrect & it bugs the hell outta me seeing the wrong names in the English dub game, I wish they would fix it. If I didn't need to talk to Barley to get animals I wouldn't bother talking to him in the remake at all just cause his name is wrong for the English dub. They even screwed up the names of the harvest sprites. They got 1 right outta 7 & that 1 was the blue sprite named Aqua. All the rest Chef, Nappy, Hoggy, Timid, Staid, Bold they got their names wrong for the English dub. I actually avoid talking to the people mentioned above as much as possible just to avoid seeing the incorrect names as it really pisses me off.
I completely agree that they should have kept Gray's hat! For the other characters though, they changed the names to make them closer to their original names in the Japanese version. Natsume changed a lot of things when translating the first games, so as much as it is a bit unsettling at first, I like that they're now using the actual proper names.
@@JoshGamingGarden I get why they changed them it still doesn't make it right in my eyes. It just feels wrong seeing those names in the Eng dub of the game & I'm still gonna avoid talking to them as I can't stand seeing those names even though I have played quite a bit of the remake. They feel wrong and out of place in the Eng dub of the game. I wish there were an option to choose which variant of the names you see in the game for those of us who want the other names.
Totally disagree on the automation system, especially in modern games you'd have no time to actually explore the rest of the game without automation, watering takes too much time this used to work on older games that had no content but nowadays things are different.
I love this game SO much. I think my only complaint was the controls, the way they are on a diagonal always confused my brain/hand coordination. I loved cooking in this game so much. I carefully organized and hoarded all my ingredients in my upgraded kitchen. I loved fishing every evening. I absolutely love the music. I loved going to the mines. I actually never used the sprites for anything. I'd befriend them and gift them, but never hired them. I guess I never trusted them to do the job right, I wanted to just do it myself.
