The Wii Blues

More of a rant than anything, I'm curious as to why there are two future DS titles prepared for after Sunshine Islands, and yet no speak of a Wii release.  Harvest Moon: Welcome to the Wind Bazaar is the next title coming to the DS, followed by Harvest Moon: Twin Villages.  

Wind Bazaar: Welcome to the Wind Bazaar is the next title to be released for the DS.  Very promising, it introduced the opportunity to sell items to other villagers at a weekly Bazaar.  You can also purchase items from other villager's booths, and more will open as you advance in the game.  Another feature is the ability to connect and play at another friend's village via Wifi connection, and up to four people can participate. Not much is known about the game or release date yet, but more information should be available soon.

Twin Villages: Twin Villages puts a new spin on the HM series by, for the first time, allowing you to choose the town you'll live in.  One is centered around farming, the other ranching, and the choice you make at the beginning of the game will therefore affect how the rest plays out.  My understanding is that the bachelors/eligible girls and villagers are different based on the town you choose, but this could be misleading information.  Twin Villages also introduces the ability to raise alpacas and, wait for it...bees!  As the release date isn't yet set for even Japan, it's hard to determine when the US release will be.

And seeing how unique and promising these games sound, I'm shocked I haven't heard anything about another Wii Harvest Moon yet, not even plans!  My initial thought was that Nintendo would be introducing a new console and, therefore, the next HM would be released on that.  Nintendo is introducing a new console, but known as the Wii HD with high-def features, which should not affect gameplay now.  This brings me to the conclusion that there is no information on a follow-up, which is hard to swallow.  

I assume it would take a long while to design a Wii game.  I doubt that if Natsume is creating another HM Wii (which they'd better be!), they would recycle the same basic characters yet again.  This leads me to believe that the concept and completely new design would be causing the stall, but what do you think?

Winter Festivals

With a lot of holiday hubbub it's been increasingly more difficult to get a post written, seeing as I (and Hannah) have so much going on to prepare for the season.  And with a disappointing lack of ideas, I personally found it hard to get enough inspiration to write.  And then it hit me.  What about the winter festivals? They haven't been touched on in great detail yet, and now seems as though it's the perfect time to do it as it ties into the traditional time so nicely.

Harmony Day (Winter 5, 6:00-24:00): Harmony Day, what some consider the equivalent of Thanksgiving here in America, is an all-day event all over the island of Castanet.  The purpose of Harmony Day is to show your appreciation of other island-residents by giving them a piece of Shortcake. If you have an island member up to five hearts, they will give you a piece when you talk to them as well.  You can recycle the shortcake and give it back to rack up friendship points, or you can eat/ship it as well.  The possibilities of this seemingly pointless holiday really are worth it.

Starry Night Festival (Winter 11, 18:00-22:00):  The Starry Night Festival is held in Flute Fields on Moon Hill annually.  It's a romance festival, with a chance to picnic under the stars with a marriage candidate/spouse.  While the festival starts at 18:00, giving you a chance to get a picture taken and socialize, your romantic interest will not arrive to view the stars until 19:00.  While watching the stars, you'll see a shooting star that allows you to be granted one wish, provided you complete the challenge at hand. You must select one of the five options, three times in a row in order to get your wish.  But be careful of clicking too fast, as the wishes are scrambled at each screen and you only have a few seconds to choose, so think on your feet!  If your wish is granted, you will get one of the five things available (popular/family affection+, recover/choco pudding, dive/tarpon, sleep/stamina recovered, gain/1000G).

New Year's Eve (Winter 28, 18:00-23:00): The New Year's Eve celebration is even more grand than in ToT!  Held in Harmonica town's entrance, next to the clock tower, there are many booths and festivals to see and participate in.  You can choose to participate in any or all of the following: Mining Contest, Fashion Contest, Bargain Contest.  You'll also have the opportunity to buy unique items, especially rare outfits and accessories at Shelly's booth that can only be found once a year at that festival.  Once time has ticked away and it's 23:00, the new year's countdown begins and you have the opportunity to make a wish as well.  Depending on what you select, you can raise affection with romantic interests/spouse, the people of Harmonica Town, or the people of Flute Fields.

So as you're rushing through this real winter season, don't forget to take some time to relax and enjoy the joys of Harvest Moon's take on it.

Meet Hannah!

Alrighty, it's been about ten minutes since I posted, if not less, but I thought it was of utmost importance to let you all know about the latest (and first!) addition to "Ready...Set...Farm!"'s staff of writers!  Hannah is a Harvest Moon-aholic like the rest of us, and a close friend of mine. Now she's a writer here too!   Both Hannah and I (Helen) will be moderating the site as partners and writing posts, organizing contests...all that good stuff!

A bit about Hannah: We'll consider Hannah a "specialist" in Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life, one of her favorite HM titles.  Making the top of the list is Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility, but Harvest Moon: Animal Parade may take top spot soon enough.  Hannah is a tried and true farmer, just like me, but also earns her money by fishing and ranching.

You can see Hannah's first post, followed by more, coming soon here on "Ready...Set...Farm!".  Stay in touch!

Wonderfuls in Sunshine Islands

Upon playing my copy of Sunshine Islands last night, I (foolishly) made a mistake, the purpose of this post in general.  I had equipped both the red and blue wonderfuls to my watering can (upgraded) to allow for watering a 2X3 space, which saved both time and stamina.

However I don't know what I was thinking when I asked Charlie to remove the wonderfuls from my watering can, as they disappeared completely from my possession.  Frantically, I checked Charlie and Chen's inventory, to find the Yellow Wonderful, yes, but not either the blue or red.

Now you may know that in Sunshine Islands, only one of each kind of wonderful is provided for you.  After that, if you wish to have another wonderful of the same color, you must build the wonderful piece by piece (something I honestly don't have enough patience for).  I of course had played two seasons without saving (another dumb move on my part), and had to quit without saving in order to get the wonderfuls I had lost back.  It wasn't fun.

So this is me, telling all of you never to remove wonderfuls from your tools if you know what's good for you.  And don't say I didn't warn you.

The Animal Color Conflict

Well obviously, one thing that really excited me about Harvest Moon: Animal Parade was the ability to have different colors of each animal.  While that was available in ToT, it wasn't nearly as "customizable".  Before I purchased the game, I was under the impression you were able to choose the color of your livestock.  Excited, I purchased animal after animal, never seeing the option to select my color. Devastated, I decided it was because the color was just randomized.  Then, in angst, I purchased 5 cows, thinking surely that would solve my problem.  I would get at least a little variation.

So I rode my horse, Andrea, back to my barn, ran inside and found: five spotted cows, all identical.  I could have cried.  I decided to search for some information online, and after finding some, I came across the realization that the only way to get the color other than default is to sprinkle miracle potion on livestock.  Stupid me.  

Nevertheless, I thought it would be dandy to inform all of you ranchers out there to the different colors of livestock:

Horse: Grey (default), White, Black, and Brown.
Cow: Black&White (default), Black, and Brown.
Sheep: White (default), and Black
Goat: White (default), and Black
Ostrich: Black (default)

All birds (aside from the ostrich) and the silkworms only have one available color (the default).

The Mishaps of Mining

At first glance, mining in Animal Parade is considerably better than in Tree of Tranquility.  For starters, the lighting is much better.  Now it's easy to see every pitfall and wall you could run into, making mistakes less common.  There are also stairs for every level, so you can mine without having to smash a rock or take chances with pitfalls to find a way out.  This, of course, is a very helpful addition as well.

But there are definitely the downfalls of mining this time around. The first complaint on my list is with "Wonderful" crystals, which are all the same, white tint.  Now instead of smashing blue crystal after blue crystal in the hopes of finding a Lapis Lazuli, you must smash a randomly selected white crystal, hoping the wonderful is blue and that when it's refined it's the right gem.

Of course this brings me to my next complaint, which also has to do with wonderfuls and ores.  You may know that in ToT, the number of sparkles determined the value of the wonderful once refined.  You could have up to three sparkles, but if there were no sparkles it would be refined to glass and worth nearly nothing.  This saved a lot of time, because any ore or wonderful that didn't sparkle wasn't even worth picking up.  Not only did this ensure you always knew what you were collecting, but you also knew that there would be no surprises when it came time to refine.  However, this time around, nothing sparkles.  You may pick up twenty rare ores in excitement, only to find them all refined to scrap metal.   This can be a real downer, as it means more trips into the mines and more disappointments at Koto Accessories.

You'll also remember Mira's refining business in ToT, and how the wonderfuls and ores in your rucksack were refined, free of charge.  This time around, it's a hefty 35G per item refined.  That wouldn't be so bad... If you knew what you were getting for your money.  But handing over 10 blue wonderfuls for 350G and getting 10 pieces of glass in return can be a little more than devastating.  Luckily, there's the beauty of restarting, but unless you're really fortunate, it won't make much of a difference.

Then of course, there's the whole "tool upgrade" disaster, but we'll save that for another time, as this completes my ranting for the evening.

Looking Back to Magical Melody

After a lot of HM:AP hubbub, I decided it was high time to highlight another HM.  The title may be a little misleading, but as I was opening up my DS to play a bit of Sunshine Islands today, an idea struck me.  Harvest Moon: Sunshine Islands, is essentially Harvest Moon: Magical Melody.

Now don't get me wrong!  The games are completely different at a glance.  New islands, features, and characters are only the start of the changes.  Not to mention MM is a console game and SI is handheld.  Nevertheless, they have one major thing in common.  That being the game aspect, which is nearly identical.  In MM, the goal was to perform certain daily tasks so many times or reach certain milestones, and you would obtain a musical note.  Collect so five musical notes, you get a musical instrument.  In SI, you perform these same general tasks or reach the same kind of milestones, and this time, you obtain sun stones.  With a certain number of sun stones in your possession, you gain the power to raise one of the many sunken islands and travel there.

Here's the distinction: In MM, the musical notes didn't do much to help you along the way.  Their main purpose was to win the game.  Aside from getting married, there weren't too many perks for collecting them unless you were dead set on completing the game (like me).  But in SI, every island you raise in beneficial to you in some way or another.  Volcano Island, for instance, introduces a new bachelor/bachelorette and allows you to mine for gelatin, ore and the likes.  Or maybe Mushroom Island is more up your alley (and pretty self-explanatory too).

That aside, it got me wondering if this concept was recycled or not.  Surely the basic standpoint is recognizable by others as well?  Not to say they aren't both great games (they are), but I'm curious to see if we'll be seeing this story line again soon.