Points of Review!

Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town (GBA)

by Tim Allen

I've never played a Harvest Moon game before but I love Animal Crossing, so when I saw this on eBay I couldn't resist it. A week later it had arrived from Canada and within 10 minutes of starting a new game I was smitten. There's a quite a lot in common with Animal Crossing, in that you need to earn money and work hard to keep everyone happy, but it also adds an important element - farming. No wait, come back! It's fun, believe me.

You start with just a dog and horse, but before long you'll be looking after chickens, sheep and cows too. Time ticks by quite quickly, which takes some getting used to after Animal Crossing as it's easy to forget you're not playing in real time. But as long as you didn't go to bed too late and then oversleep, you'll be up at 6am to pet the dog and give the horse a stroke. Gold and other goodies can be found in the mine, there are plenty of shops and people to visit, plus a wide variety of stuff to plant, all of which keep you busy. Overall I'm really enjoying it and will be interested to see how the link-up works once Nintendo get round to finishing the Cube version.