Today’s Nintendo Direct was an absolute banger, filled with all sorts of good shit, but what really caught my eye was the announcement of my favourite Harvest Moon game getting the Story of Seasons treatment: A Wonderful Life.
I had just had a shower at this point. I insisted on getting the Direct into my system before I started work this morning. Let me tell ya folks, I was in the middle of brushing my teeth when this damn Direct wiped to ‘A Wonderful Life for a New Generation’. I choked. I spat. I said out loud, “No fucking way.” And then it began.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Ahem. Sorry. If you weren’t a Gamecube kid or a Harvest Moon kid, I can understand if you’re confused about my excitement. But please, let me indulge.
Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life is a farming game released in 2005 for the Nintendo Gamecube. It is arguably one of the best Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons games (in my opinion at least). It was also one of the first Gamecube games I ever played, and the first Harvest Moon game I played. So yeah, maybe nostalgia falls into it a bit.
However, I played it again more recently and it still has the charm that it always had for me. It felt more real than the other Harvest Moon games. Slower, calmer, and more emotionally driven. A Wonderful Life was THE game that got me into farming games. It’s important to me.
And the cows in Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life… They were the best cows.
Moving on, today’s Nintendo Direct announced that Marvelous Games would be returning to the Forgotten Valley of A Wonderful Life in the form of a Story of Seasons remake. Unlike the original game, you can choose to play as a male, female, or non-binary protagonist (the original had two separate games for playing as male/female, one of which didn’t get an Australian release). As well as that, all marriage options are available regardless of gender, so I can finally wife up Muffy while also being a wife myself. You love to see it.
On top of that, Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life looks like it’s going to do what other farming sims won’t: Get on with the protagonist’s life. Rather than going through years and years with no clear aging of anybody in the game, it looks like you’ll watch not only your character age, but your character’s child move into adulthood.
Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life is a game that I have revisited time and time again for years, and I truly can’t wait to play it again with a fresh coat of paint and updated gameplay for a new generation. I don’t think I’m alone in saying that A Wonderful Life was a core memory type of game for me, so this is going to be a treat.
Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life will be released in Winter 2023, and you bet your sweet bippy I’m there day one.
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