The first Harvest Moon is where the farming simulation games started for me. I remember a friend telling me about it in the late 1990s, and we eventually found the ROM online. So, my first experience with the game was on an emulator.
Harvest Moon was released in 1997 on the SNES. This was very late in the console’s life, and you can tell that Natsume got the most they could from the system. You’ll also find a bare-bones experience compared to modern farming simulations like Stardew Valley, Rune Factory, and Fields of Mysteria.
The game is exactly how I remember it. It can be fun for a while, but eventually, you run out of things to do. You can see where modern games improved on a game like this. It can be very relaxing but might get boring quickly, especially in winter.
TLDR: A Repetitive and bare-bones farming game. It was great in 1997 but not as good as the games that emulated it in the 2010s and 2020s.
Narrative
There is a story to this game, one that other games would flesh out. In the first Harvest Moon, you show up in the town and start working on your grandfather’s ranch. That is all you need in this game.
What is the goal of the game? Well, you can run the farm/ranch however you want for two and a half years. The ending depends on the actions you choose during the game. There aren’t a lot of branching paths, but it might be fun to see the endings you get with the different wives.
That is it for the story. You leave your parents’ land to turn around your grandfather’s abandoned farm, and you can get married if you want. It isn’t as elaborate as the games today, but in 1997, this would’ve been cool.
Gameplay
The gameplay can be a ton of fun, but it is hard for me to get past the modern games that greatly improve on the core game. The controls are great, but the inventory is extremely small, and during the winter, there is little for you to do. It can get very boring and repetitive after you’ve done the few things you can do besides farming and tending your animals.
The first thing I have to mention is planting crops. It is somehow easier than other games, but it can be very frustrating when compared to modern games. It all has to do with the fields.
You spread seeds within a nine-square radius but don’t want to plow a nine-square block. I remember Nintendo Power telling the reader to make U-shaped fields. This is to reach the plant at the center of the field.
You can’t walk over plants in this game, so you won’t be able to water whatever is in the middle of a field. This is why the Nintendo Power tells players to make U-shaped fields, which still makes me feel like I’m wasting a plant.
If you want to read this, here is a link to the Nintendo Power archives (Link). The article can be found in the February 97 edition of Nintendo Power, issue No. 93. The game was given a strategy guide and review. I’ll get into this later.
Harvest Moon gives the player a small inventory. Only two items can be carried at once, and you can hold stacks of an item. This makes the game rather tedious when putting crops into the sale box.
There were a few times when I threw a potato on the ground as I tried to carry too many of them. This was something I totally forgot, and it made me appreciate other games like this much more. If you’re growing a lot of crops or have a lot of livestock, then this becomes very boring.
Many of the gameplay mechanics you would expect to see are here. You can grow food and raise cows and chickens, and you have to clear an area on your farm by cutting down weeds, breaking rocks, and chopping wood. The only thing missing is building new buildings and exploring a dungeon.
There is also a dating sim in the game. It isn’t all that elaborate, but it gives the player something to do. You pick one of five women, then give them gifts until they like you. You check to see if they like you by sneaking into their rooms and reading their diary.
While that sounds creepy, it is apparently totally normal in this game. A small part of me wonders how many relationships started on the wrong foot because of games like this. Once you’re married, you fall into the same repetitive trap of doing the daily chores.
Instead of building new buildings on your farm, you’re upgrading what is already there. This worked fine for 1997, but this is one of the things modern games added that greatly improved the game. Gathering the wood to upgrade your house can be a little painful, but it looks nice when you’re done.
Harvest Moon gives you a time limit to do whatever you want with the farm. One thing I noticed is how the days blend together. The developer didn’t do anything to tell you how many days are in each season, or what day of the week it is.
I can’t help but compare this to the modern games in this genre. They give you a date so you know what will happen in the game. This makes it easier to plan things out. I can’t fault Harvest Moon for not having this, especially in this first entry; I simply wanted to point it out.
Overall, the gameplay is okay. For a game released in 1997, Harvest Moon is a great start to the series. While the future titles have passed it up, this one is still fun to go back and experience for a little while.
Visuals
Harvest Moon is one of the better-looking games on the SNES. Because it was released late in the console’s life, the developers could get the most out of the aging hardware. They put together a beautiful-looking game.
This game isn’t going to blow anyone away. The graphics get the job done, and don’t try to wow anybody. It does look better than the early SNES games, but it should since the game was released in 1996.
There isn’t too much else to say. It is a good-looking SNES game. There are things I like about the game. I think the animals look adorable. This is one of the many cute-looking games on the console.
Reviews at the Time
For the most part, reviewers liked Harvest Moon. The only review from 1997 I could find was from Nintendo Power, which gave the game a 3.6/5. Other reviews are from the mid to late 2000s. After looking at MobyGames, I found more reviews, and they were mostly 8s and 9s.
By 1997, the mainstream reviewers weren’t looking at the SNES. This explains why there weren’t too many reviews in print. Some early blogs might have talked about the game, but they weren’t archived or posted anywhere else.
The reviews I saw gave the game an 8/10. The mainstream gaming press seemed to like the game after it was released on the Wii Virtual Console. Then there is the only bad review for Harvest Moon.
HonestGamers gave the game a 3/10. The review includes some fair criticisms of the gameplay. Harvest Moon gets repetitive and a little boring during the winter. It seemed like the reviewer simply hated the game. It is just an opinion, and I think the reviewer went too far with some things.
I think it is important to note when this review came out. This was a little after the start of AVGN, and craping on retro games was “fun.” While I don’t agree with the score, I think some things the reviewer pointed out are fair.
I find the HonestGamers reviews to be fairly terrible. They give me a similar feeling as the DreamcastPlanet reviews did. These show the difference between a professional journalist and someone trying to be funny or simply a jerk.
Looking back at this game is interesting. The original Harvest Moon has been greatly improved on by indie games and Natsume. The first version of the game is an interesting first step in these relaxing slice-of-life games.
7/10. This isn’t terrible. There isn’t much of a reason to come back and play this game when modern games have greatly improved on the formula. This game was a breath of fresh air in 1997, but after a day or so, it got very boring.
Pros
- Relaxing
- Good Graphics
- Unique for the time
Cons
- Repetitive
- Very few things to do
- No dungeon
- Small area to explore
- Way too repetitive
Conclusion
It is very hard not to compare the first Harvest Moon to Stardew Valley. It isn’t a fair comparison, and there isn’t a game I can compare this one with. This game lacks many of the features we’ve come to expect from a farming/life simulation.
This genre had to start somewhere. Harvest Moon of the SNES set the stage for better games, and created a market for things like Animal Crossing, Rune Factory, and many indie games. Many of them greatly improved on the genre.
Harvest Moon of the SNES is one of the first Cozy games. It is a relic from when developers and publishers took chances on something different. Big companies rarely take a chance on something like this today, which is why you can find so many indie games that take inspiration from games like this one.
If you liked this post, please check out my other reviews of similar games, such as Dungeon Inn and Fields of Mysteria.