Harvest Moon: Magical Melody

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Cow-tipping with Harvest Moon

We talk birds and bees with the venerable series' creator

Words: Mike Jackson, CVG UK

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Why?

Wada: Because that platform would allow us more freedom to create the game as high-spec as possible.

So if you were to make a Harvest Moon game on, say, the 'high-spec' PS3, how would you take advantage of all that extra processing power?

Wada: If I were to make Harvest Moon for a high-spec machine I would like to expand the game's constructibility - I would like to extend the player's freedom, to allow players to meet more people, keep more animals and have more interactivity options, rather than go for better graphics.

One example I will give you is that, at the moment, a player can only cut down a tree. But they cannot cut down a single branch. I would like to build a game with that level of interactivity.

So, with that being your vision, is it safe to assume a game of that depth on PS3 to be the next step for the series?

Wada: There are no plans to do anything on PS3 right now.

If it was my choice I would like to make Harvest Moon for all the platforms, but there are many reasons why I can't, such as limited resources, budget, business opportunities and so on.

Plus, Nintendo as a company has been very good to me, always very helpful, friendly and supportive, and that's another reason why we chose to stick with Nintendo and develop a game on Wii.

So what are your plans going into the future, and what other projects are you working on?

Wada: At the moment I'm working on Project O and No More Heroes - both on Wii.

Project O is a brand new game being developed by 'seven samurai' (famous developers) of the gaming world. It's similar to Harvest Moon in that it's a family-orientated game and is aimed at gamers that have got bored of other games.

So will it also have the same life-sim mechanics of Harvest Moon?

Wada: It incorporates life-sim elements. You could say it's like Sim City or Sim World. However, in Sim World the player takes on the role of God to create a world, but in Project O the gamer plays among the people and creates the world around them from ground-level, not as God.

It sounds similar to MySims...

Wada: In a way yes, it's similar to that. But in Project O the player will select one person (to perform a task) and he will go off and talk to several other people, who will then start to change the world around the player.