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Harvest Moon's great stuff. Last year I found myself in the weird position of being addicted to both Harvest Moon: Boy & Girl on the PSP and Rune Factory for the DS at the same time. Surprisingly enough, I burned out on both really quickly. Playing two hugely time-intensive games at once kind of does that to you.

My craving to pick up a Harvest Moon game and play it like crazy for a few weeks before suddenly getting sick of it and then never playing it again usually arrives once every two or three years, but the cycle was broken this week with the release of Harvest Moon for the Virtual Console.

Or at least, I thought it would be. As much as I wanted to waste hours a day on a game I'd inevitably give up on, I couldn't make it past the damn introduction. I think I've turned stupid.

See this guy? This guy sucks.

I didn't really want to talk to everyone in town to begin with. I've played Harvest Moon before. I knew what was up. You don't need to tell me how to grow crops or explain why hitting the cows with my axe is bad. Still, I guess I'd better do it anyway, just to make this guy happy.

Wait, what? No, I already did that. I've talked to everyone. Okay, maybe I missed a couple of people. I'll go around and see if there's anyone I missed.

Okay, I'm positive I got them all this time.

Dammit! Fine, I'll just go back and talk to everyone a second time. You're crazy, you know that? Why are you doing this to me?

All right, I'm back. Let me go finish grieving at my dead grandpa's farm already.

AAAAAH!

I don't know if this was because of a glitch or something, but I ended up having to reset and start from the beginning. By the time the guy let me through, I had already wasted half an hour on nothing, and I didn't feel like playing anymore.

Still, from what I remember from playing it back in my non-stupid days, Harvest Moon is a great little farm simulation. You plant seeds. You grow crops. You take care of animals. You get paid. Then you waste all your money on the ladies, and you eventually start up a family. It's a really ambitious game, and the scope, depth, and variety of gameplay is really impressive for a 16-megabit SNES cartridge.

Harvest Moon also has a wonderfully nonsensical translation, courtesy of Natsume's Office Cat. I love Office Cat. Everything you read in a Natsume game makes complete sense if you stop and remind yourself that it was written by an overworked and underfed cat. Typos? Look, it's hard to type with paws. Weird phrasing? What, you expect a cat to speak perfect English? The fact that Chulip was actually translated and released in the United States? Man, you know only a cat would make that kind of decision.

Anyway, assuming you can make it past the introduction, Harvest Moon is one of the best deals on the Virtual Console to date. Its gameplay is so deep, varied and complex that you'll more than get your eight dollars' worth, and if you're a fan of mangled English translations, all the better. If you've never played a Harvest Moon game before, this is a great place to start. Go get it!

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