Take a look at the list of retro game post-mortems at GDC 2012, and Harvest Moon may seem out-of-place; after all, there’s no question that Gauntlet and Fallout changed the industry, but a niche farming sim? On the surface, at least, Harvest Moon doesn’t seem as relevant as the other old games being dissected this year, but this late Super NES release actually laid the groundwork for outrageously popular titles like The Sims and Animal Crossing by showing the world that day-to-day drudgery could make for a highly addictive experience. Original developer Yasuhiro Wada (now of Toybox) and Natsume Vice President of Operations Graham Markay sat down with me after the panel to discuss how such an atypical concept has been able to thrive over these past 16 years.
Harvest Moon owes a great deal of its success to cross-gender appeal; women make up nearly a third of the game’s Japanese audience, a percentage doubled by its American user base. But, initially, Wada never intended for Harvest Moon to strictly appeal to women; later in the series’ history, the “for girls” releases would feature the same essential experience as the games with male protagonists. And further down the line, male and female protagonists could be selected from the very start, allowing players to decide on their gender of choice without having to buy an entirely different game.
