@Moonshadow101:

In the same boat at you Karen first then started a new game and married Ann then... Elle i think

HM64 still remains one of my favorite games of all time ^^

Hitokiri151

I'd rather not talk about my selection tis too personal. I need another harvest moon game its my hot tears of shame game crack cocaine.

Deadeyereborn

I usually go for the angry tomboy one. Started with Karen in HM64, never looked back.

Moonshadow101

I always marry the pink haired one... Hahah... Well not always, but they stick out the most.

Kaemon

@drweazel: It's a story about social stereotypes.

The girl writing the article started playing Harvest Moon as a guy, and started playing the field. She married the mermaid chick, but then changed her mind and went after some other girls.

The point was that she acted like a totally perveted scumbag that she would have hated, because she claims that she was influenced by what society told her men were like.

Kirbytheslayer: The Movie

Obligatory:
[www.penny-arcade.com]

Naelok

Ummm... so he guy wrote a story about if he married a mermaid then bailed and married a farm girl? I'm confused whether if I have the story straight or not.

drweazel

That's quite an extensive piece there.
Whether thats humorous, strange, or just plain weird is up for debate.

:P

Terrorsaur

In other news: Harvest Moon DS 2 was supposed to be out by now, but those punks delayed it till JUNE. BAH!

Klaymen

@Kirbytheslayer: The Movie: I allways thought that girls would be slime if society let them :)

Irenicus-the one and only

I always take sooo much time picking a wife as well, minus the game cube game, the one that forced you to marry year one or game over. Cecila won that one out with her sad pre-arranged marriage tale. *sniffs* I'm a sucker for a damsel in distress apparently.

I also seem to find guilty pleasure in stringing the girls along. Though I am *not* willing to dig 255 floors _every day_ for the mute princess. I draw the line there!

MangaDragon56

>^,^< Every time I end up playing an HM game, my first instinct is to go for the mousy girl with the glasses. Cause I'm a mousy gal with glasses, so who else am I gonna root for the hero to go for in a wishful thinking game? Even when she's not the girl I really life (Rune Factory, so to speak) because she has the glasses, she gets the obligatory marriage the first play through because she happened to be wearing specs. If there aren't any glasses toting females, it's the quiet one who 's shy, good-natured, and would genuinely like the guy.

I end up playing my games to get the girl who most resembles me because that's how I was growing up playing video games. Instead of playing with dolls and thinking of the prince on the stallion, it's playing video games and the prince is the hero of whatever said story I'm playing. Guys dream of hot girls, girls dream of hot guys or guys that get them, and I was dreaming of the hero-type guy. At least in the video game, I had the chance to make the girl get the guy :3

Melody-Kitn

I really only really got into the N64 version, in which I first married Popuri (because she was pink and girly, and I was 13) and then proceeded to wed each of the lovely brides. I also played all of the GB ones, but don't remember those either, and married the butch girl in the gamecube version because a friend demanded I did. I haven't played much of the DS one, and since the gamecube version makes it really easy to decide whom to marry, I wonder if I'll be as indecisive as I once was and insist on marrying all of the girls, one after another.
I don't really think this is because I'm a girl (although I'll admit to never having played a Harvest Moon game as a female character) but because I really like the romantic aspect of the game, and because I don't want to screw up by picking the wrong girl in a game I worked so hard in. Then again, most everyone (girls and guys alike) "play the field" in real life, because it's hard to find someone to settle down with without doing so.

Tiger-Fever

I've come to the conclusion that I am a narcissist. I went after Flora in Harvest Moon DS because she looked like me.

brainless

I never really thought about Harvest Moon and it never registered on my radar, but after reading through her article and checking the rest of the game out, I just might pick up one of the billion versions which must be floating around still. Not good for someone with behaviour similar to OCD, but whatever...

Krytha

@Pombar: I would've said that was a poor example of the ideal bride, but whatever.

Krytha

Always marry the shy, but non-emo girl. The Church-obsessed girl in the SNES version, por ejemplo.

Pombar

I've played through marrying all three marriage options in the Wonderful Life version on the Gamecube (where marriage is mandatory or the game ends), and was least happy with Nami: quiet, brooding, surly...she was ME!! In Friends of Mineral Town I settled down with the sensible nurse Elli while lusting for Zack; there's a hoopy frood that always knows where his towel is.

Knukleur

Man, I remember trying to make the most efficient way schedule for watering and feeding. What's worse was once I figured it out I lost interest in the game. You don't always reap what you sow because you never water them ever again.

@Melody-Kitn:

I lurv shy quiet bespectacled girls. But, sadly, life is not a video game and thus they do not exist.

Channing

Ever since the first HM (on the SNES), I've always chosen the tough, tomboyish girl. It was a pretty unique experience for me, never having played a dating-sim sort of game. It kind of let me live out my fantasy of dating girls when I was younger. So for the later versions, I usually chose to play as a male, just so I could date the girls. This reminds me of when I first played Neverwinter Nights, and I was disappointed when I got to the brothel and the women wouldn't flirt with my female character. lol

angelus-errare

I love a good Harvest Moon post. I loved the SNES version when I was 10, still love it today.

I can't really say which way I go when it comes to the wooing parts. So I'll just go with what I went with with each game I've played

Ann(HM:SNES)->Eli(HM64)->Karen(HM:BTN)->Celia(HM:AWL)->Flora(HMDS)

Now where do I go from here?

ZenGrenadier

Ann all the way for me, Tough, new how to cook, very rough and tumble, because that who I want IRL. In Rune Factory, it ended up being Rosalia, because she was so Ann like.

A shame Harvest Moon DS was so full of bugs and whatnot as to be unplayable. Also, the special 'girls' are often not worth marrying at all. Harvest Goddess anyone? Now the Witch, I wanted to marry, but not only was she as big of a pain as the Harvest Goddess, but needed a item that was left out of most copies of the game.

Now if Natsume could just remember those two lines of code that they left in the N64 version that had your wife DO something after they married you, even if it wasn't that useful. (Milking the cows, collecting eggs, pulling weeds), I'd be so happy.

Sixtail

I usually go for the quieter ones. Except in BTN, I got Popuri in that. But Mary...oh, Mary.

Guess I have a thing for glasses..And libraries. I think I married Eve in HMSNES, though. Probably because you could get her to maximum heart level on the first night.

KirbySS

As much as I remember playing the SNES and GBA versions of these titles (Reminds me, I need to dig that one back up again, I was getting good at that whole cave exploration thing...), I don't remember who I ever married. Come to think of it, I might've not have done so in the GBA one. Anne sounds familiar though.

I think I was always too busy running my ass off to remember much.

ampillion : Will comment for money.

I've found a rather consistent problem with Harvest Moon games is that they stop writing stuff for the girls right after the wedding ceremony. While you get a variety of interesting lines unlocked by wooing them through the courting process, and cute scenes or "heart events" to complete in order to advance your relationship, after you get married, your wife has about two lines and the only scenes I recall getting involved producing offspring, where the focus isn't very heavy on your partner.

Some games are worse than others. I remember the very first game only had one wife sprite, and the girls had to settle for a pallete swap to their appropriate hair colour once they'd settled down. Their dialogue was identical and poorly translated too (so much so that "Can you think of a name?" and "Maybe if I sit down..." was your wife's way of telling you she was pregnant).

I remember in Friends of Mineral Town for the GBA, Ann sounded like she was married to a wife beater when you talked to her. She got a bizarre expression and shouted "I'll do my best!" even after you showered her with gifts.

(Better yet, Nami in A Wonderful Life would wander out of the house and let the baby just wander unattended around the farm. Ch!)

I still haven't managed to marry the Witch Princess in DS, but here's hoping she'll remain as interesteing (and maniacal) once wed.

Darien_Shields

@KirbySS: ahhh. going for the easy catch.

same here.

im so shallow.

D:

Onizuka-GTO

@Darien_Shields: The witch and the goddess characters are unmarriable in the english versions due to bugs which popped up during localization coding. Sucks.

Krytha

I always put the farm first, so whomever I marry is based on what work they're going to do on the farm and how much maintenance they're going to be for me to keep around. I think of it like buying a tractor. You gotta kick the tires and make the right decision for the farm.

D00mM4r1n3

I liked to go for the girls who liked farming and would help out the most ... like Ann and Popuri, or Celia in the later games. Though every once in a while it was fun to marry those who seemed completely out of place, like Karen, Muffy, or Nami. Harvest Moon is the best, I can't wait for the Wii installment to be released.

kupoporo

@Krytha:

That's the US release. And as I understand it, they actually fixed the bug on subsequent production runs. But I have the UK release, which means that the casino has been made rubbish. Hurrah for no gambling! [/sarcasm]

Darien_Shields

The only ones I really played to any extent were Back To Nature and Save the Homeland, and since Save the Homeland doesn't have spouses, it doesn't really apply to this article. I remember when I was playing BTN that I initially went after Poupuri because she was pretty nice AND I figured I might get some kind of bonus because her family owned the Chicken feed store and my main focus on my farm was Chickens. I also sympathized with her search for her mother.

However, I was told that if you married Karen you get to go into the locked room in the store that her family owned, and I had always wondered what the crap was in that room, so I started pursuing her. The wine you had to give her to gain her affection was really costly though, so I went back to Poupuri who was relatively easy to please. I never married either of them because I ended up losing the memory card with my BTN data on it, but I got a lot further with Poupuri than I ever did with Karen. So I guess when playing that game I never really courted anyone to get a spouse, I just wanted to know what happened after you married either of them.

Pickens