Harvest Moon 64 Review (Retro WedNESday #1)

Harvest Moon 64 Review (N64) (Retro WedNESday #1)
Developer: Victor Interactive Software
Publisher: Natsume
Released: December 22, 1999

There’s something fitting about kicking off Retro WedNESday (which I hope and plan will be a weekly feature) with this title. If you’ve read my Stardew Valley review, you already know parts of this story. But Harvest Moon 64 deserves to have the full story told from its own angle, because it’s been sitting in my all-time favorites list for over two decades.

I was 13 years old when I found the January 2000 issue of Tips & Tricks (one of my all time favorite magazines) at a grocery store. This issue had six pages on Harvest Moon 64. Tools, seasons, a walkthrough of the basic loop. I had never heard of the game before, but something about it grabbed me. The idea of inheriting your grandfather’s farm, restoring it from nothing, growing crops through the seasons and actually managing your time each in-game day was nothing like anything I’d ever played. I was a wrestling, sports, racing, and platformer kid. This was something else entirely.

The problem was I couldn’t find it anywhere. No stores in my area in Alabama had it, and this was before you just jumped on Amazon and had something delivered to your door. And of course, the good old days, so you couldn’t just buy it on your console digitally. I read that section probably eighty times over the course of the year. I’d flip back to it and just think about what it would actually be like to play.

In November 2000, my parents too me to Toys ‘r’ Us over in a Georgia town to look for Christmas presents. I went looking for WWF action figures and WWF No Mercy, which I had been looking forward to since I loved WrestleMania 2000. I had no thought of Harvest Moon that day, because I could never find it, but there it was. One copy sitting on a shelf. So they bought that and No Mercy, and I want to say I got another game but honestly can’t recall what it was or would’ve been. No Mercy is a great game and I did play it a ton, but within a week it became pretty clear which game had my full attention. Harvest Moon 64 absolutely took over.

What made it work was the simplicity, and I mean that in the best way. The town is small enough that within your first days of playing you already know where everything is. The farm starts as a weedy, overgrown mess and it becomes yours to build however you want. You clear the land, you buy seeds, you figure out what to plant in each season, you water every day, and then you ship the crops and start planning what to do with the money. It sounds repetitive when you describe it like that, but the loop was, and still is, deeply satisfying in a way that’s hard to fully explain unless you’ve played it.

The townspeople are the other half of the game and they’re what kept me writing actual notes on paper. Every character has specific gifts they like, and bringing the right thing will build your relationship over time. Festivals break up the calendar in a way that gives you something to look forward to. The fishing is slow and relaxing. The mining adds just enough variety without turning into a whole other game. And the house upgrades, the greenhouse, collecting all the recipes — there was always something to work toward.
I always married Karen. She was the best then, to me. Playing today, I’d probably go with Ann or Popuri because I’d be more drawn to their personalities in real life. Or, I’d probably just marry Karen again. She’s the best marriage candidate in the game, and if you disagree, you’re wrong and I’m sorry.

Here’s what nobody really talks about when they write about Harvest Moon 64: it made me a gardener. I was not an outdoors kid. I was not thinking about soil or plants or growing seasons. But somewhere between planning my farm layout, deciding which crops to prioritize, and just caring about whether my garden looked good, something clicked. Within a couple years I was actually out in the yard growing things and I’m into it now more than ever. That connection is real, and I’ve never found another game that had that kind of outside-the-screen effect on me.

Stardew Valley is technically the better game. I’ll say that without any hesitation. Eric Barone took everything Harvest Moon 64 did well and expanded it into something more complete, more polished, and with way more content. But Stardew didn’t make me want to go outside. Harvest Moon 64 did. And there’s still something about its simplicity; the smaller map, the tighter cast, the way a full day feels manageable instead of overwhelming. Stardew is excellent, but it has never quite replicated that Harvest Moon 64 loop for me at least fully.

You can play it today through Nintendo Switch Online if you have the Expansion Pack tier. It holds up better than you’d expect for a game pushing 27 years old. The graphics are charming in that specific N64 way and the core gameplay loop is as clean as it ever was.

This is still one of my absolute favorite games of all time. The year I waited for it, flipping back to that magazine over and over, was worth every page turn. It lived up to the hype I built up for it in my head, and it still holds up today.

Harvest Moon 64 gets a five out of five: EXCELLENT.