Why does it take Natsume forever to bring Harvest Moon over to Europe? The newly-announced-for-the-UK Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar was released in America last year, and hit the shelves waaaaaaay back in 2008 in Japan. Now, I know they have quite a bit of writing, but I'm not convinced it takes that long to translate it from Japanese to English/French/German/Italian and Spanish? And to top it all off, when the Americans pre-ordered the game, they could get a cuddly horse. I want a cuddly Harvest Moon horse.
Ranting over, any new Harvest Moon game sounds good to me. And while I preferred the Wii version, Harvest Moon: Animal Parade, to the DS one, the DS games - like Harvest Moon: Sunshine Islands - aren't half bad. So the announcement that Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar is coming to the DS this summer has us quite excited.
The game's set in Zephyr Town, a place which was once the home of one of the most famous bazaars in the world, and drew customers from all four corners of the globe - but now has become all but a shadow of what it once was, with more tumble weed than customers. In traditional Harvest Moon style, you turn up one day, and decide this is the perfect place to start up your new farm, as you take over an abandoned patch of land on the outskirts of town. As usual, you'll be planting crops, raising animals and romancing the eligible bachelors and bachelorettes about town - all while saving the Zephyr Town Bazaar from a life of mediocrity.
Harvest Moon is certainly full of colourful characters - Raul seems to be a mexican in a clown hat.
New to this game is - you guessed it - the Bazaar, which happens every Saturday, letting you sell your stuff to people from the city - and if you come in the top 3 most profitable shops, you'll win a prize, which gets you closer to upgrading the Bazaar to the next level. They've also added the ability to jump, so you can leap over streams, up hills and skip through fields like something out of the Sound of Music.
You'll also be able to have a few pets too - something I'm still working on with the super cute Bear Cub in Animal Parade on the Wii.
That's all the details we have at the moment - we're sure to get a release date and stuff soon though, so make sure you keep checking back. In the meantime, I'm off to pay a visit to the Sunshine Islands.
