Tag: harvest moon

Feature

I miss the summers in Japan: How videogames overcome language barriers

I sat cross legged in front of the TV and watched as Alex carefully removed the Super Nintendo from its dusty, neglected box. Our grandfather hardly used it, preferring to play Shogi on his computer instead of the console. Also stored away were a pile of games with labels we couldn’t read. The Japanese characters were printed in bold intimidating letters, with no illustrations to help guide our interpretation of what the cartridge held. He fished around for a second before grabbing the Super Mario World (1990) cartridge, blowing into it. It was a very familiar ritual, repeated during our…
Review

Stardew Valley brings in a full harvest

There is no point in kicking sticks around over Stardew Valley’s similarities to the Harvest Moon series, Natsume’s long-running farmlife simulator. Not to be confused with the also really good Neil Young album, “Harvest Moon”, which Stardew Valley does not riff upon outside of the honkey tonk atmosphere in the single’s bar waltz music video. And that is probably a coincidence. Stardew Valley is an homage, a send up, and there is little mistake to make about that. It likes Harvest Moon a lot, and those who like Harvest Moon will probably like it in return. It likes the graces of…
News

Stay a while and be a good gardener

Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. A Good Gardener (PC, Mac, Linux) IAN ENDSLEY AND CARTER LODWICK Unlike games like Harvest Moon, A Good Gardener is not your grandma’s gardening game. Well, actually now that I think about it, the story of A Good Gardener might be most recognizable to someone like your grandmother. Set during WWII, the game puts the player in the role of someone planting a “victory garden,” which is the term the US government used to encourage citizens to join the war effort by growing their own food. In A Good Gardener,…