Who the @#%!! is Eggman?

Okay, so every now and then some Sonic Plebe will ask the following:

"In Sonic the Hedgehog, we were fighting the bad guy Doctor Robotnik, right? Then who the heck is Eggman? He looks just like Robotnik, so why did they change his name?"

My response is usually something along the lines of, "Please just accept that he is called Eggman in the games. I promise you don't want to know."

"Oh ho ho, I'm called Eggman because my nose looks like an EGGplant! Get it? HOHOHO--No but seriously, I have no idea."

But you wanted to know, you assholes. You wanted to know. Well, I don't see anyone bugging King Koopa about being turned into Bowser, but you know what? I'll give you the lowdown on Doctor Robotnik. You cool? I'm cool. Let's do this.

First, you need to understand some history, and "history" is a very broad term here because if you just play the video games, you literally do not know any of this. But let's make some stuff clear for you. The guy in the video games, from the first Sonic game all the way to the end... he was not originally named Ivo Robotnik. Okay? That's not his real name. Granted, that was probably the first name he got from the developers of the Sonic comics, but his "real name" as in "birth name" was not Ivo Robotnik, because that's too on the nose for a series whose main character has a best friend who's name is just a joke about speed. Uh... not the drug. I mean, like... speed.

BUT ADORABLE, SO ADORABLE!

Nope. Doctor Ivo Robotnik is actually one Julian Kintobor of the House of Ivo. But you want to know what's confusing about that? His dad is named Ivo Kintobor. Which is weird because I'm not sure I really get why Robotnik didn't stick with the Julian first name. Not evil enough? Anyway, Julian is the son of Ivo and Bertha Kintobor and has an older brother named Colin, who got married twice (once to Miriam Day and once to Angela Hopkins, but they're both dead) and Colin had two kids: Colin Jr. and Hope. Colin Jr. is more often known as Snively. You know... of Sonic SatAM fame?

Okay, so... more questions, right? Robotnik has family, so what happened to them and how come Robotnik is so evil? Was his family all a bunch of evil people? To that I have to sigh and tell you about the name Robotnik.

This was retconned so hard it hurts, but originally Robotnik was just a moniker for Julian because I guess he needed one. But the games don't follow the comic continuity (I actually like the comics, but I'm still going to say thank god for small miracles), so in the games, it seemed like he was always just named Dr. Robotnik. Now, Gerald (when the series started) didn't exist, so they had to retcon (retcon meaning retroactive continuity, just in case we're not clear) Gerald into existence. At first it seems like we aren't actually retconning since Gerald never existed but there was a place for him to exist, but remember that Robotnik was initially just a moniker in the comic series. Now, I've read (most) of the comics and I don't remember Gerald being brought up until Shadow was brought up since their stories are intertwined. Because of that the retcon seems more obvious in the comics since the two names (Kintobor and Robotnik) are reversals of each other and it doesn't seem like Julian put very much thought into his new evil name initially. In the games, there's no sign of retconning at all. Again, Kintobor as a name doesn't exist in the games. So when Gerald from the comic books was introduced, it only went to follow that he would have the name "Robotnik" as well in the games even though the enemy at the time was Dr. Eggman.

So the timeline works like this: In the comics, Gerald doesn't exist until they need him in the Shadow arc. Then he is created and added to Robotnik's history retroactively. But instead of being named Kintobor in the comics (which would have made him Julian's paternal grandfather and kept the story the same as always), he was given the last name Robotnik to match with the character Julian was at the time, Ivo Robotnik. But then someone pointed out that in the past, Ivo Robotnik was Julian Kintobor, so Gerald ended up being Julian's maternal grandfather and when he names himself Robotnik, he takes the name from his grandfather. In the games, Robotnik was never Julian Kintobor (technically), so that making Gerald's last name Robotnik makes total sense. Except for the part where Robotnik no longer exists, and all that remains is Eggman.

Since Julian's maternal grandfather was Gerald Robotnik, his mother Bertha was once Bertha Robotnik, and in order for Maria Robotnik to exist and be his cousin, he had at least one maternal uncle (with the inspired name Geraldo, like he was an Italian version of his father or something) who was married and gave birth to her. And, get this, Gerald Robotnik, Bertha Robotnik, Geraldo Robotnik, and Gerald's wife Jennifer Vasquez? None of these people are evil.

But Gerald was in prison for turning against the government.

Granted, Gerald can be seen as evil when you think a bit about his storyline and why he created Shadow to be the way Shadow is. You see, due to no one wanting to tell this story (or they did and I haven't read this part yet?), Maria doesn't live with her parents and has Neuro-Immuno Deficiency Disorder or NIDS. NIDS is possibly fatal, rare, and of course, incurable. But before you start getting up in arms about it, there is one other character who has this particular ailment, so while yes it is just an up-the-ante-esque way to get Maria aboard ARK, it does show up within the Sonic timeline more than once. And it is a plot device both times it shows up. Also, it only shows up in women right now.

On the inside, they're crying.

Anyway, Gerald Robotnik wanted to create a cure for NIDS, but that funding just wasn't happening. But he got help from the Republic of Station Square and was able to go forth researching a cure for his grand daughter by, I kid you not, working on a way to make immortality a real thing. This is about to get wicked convoluted, but I'm not here to explain Shadow, so I'll make this quick: Gerald gets in contact with the Black Arms race leader Black Doom, who is immortal and has Chaos Control, and gets his help by telling him he will make Project: Shadow into a weapon, but double crosses him. Gerald eventually makes Shadow and the BioLizard or the "ARK Monster". Shadow is to be used to defend the world from Black Doom, but then the Guardian Units of the Nation (GUN) heard about Shadow and want to use him for a weapon themselves. Gerald, not having any of that shit, tells Maria to take Shadow and go to an escape pod but Maria gets shot in the back when she tries to save herself and Shadow (seemingly on purpose, which calls a LOT into question about GUN, but I'm not here to make you aware of the politics of Mobius). Original Shadow, however, escapes. GUN finds Original Shadow after ordering Gerald to make them another Shadow (which of course, they ask after they tell him his granddaughter's dead) and Gerald, correctly assuming that they killed her, reprograms Original Shadow to take revenge on the whole planet. But then, afterwards, he tries to create another Shadow for GUN, and GUN isn't sure if he's dicking around so they kill him. There was never a cure for NIDS. So, an old man who out of love for his "only granddaughter" (considering that Hope is his great granddaughter, you get a pass, Gerald... but a very narrow pass) went to work on a project that should've been impossible succeeds only to watch his granddaughter die before him and then gets killed after that. He seemed like a sweet old guy to me, but other people have other opinions of him. But the only reason I even told you this story is because this is the only person who, in Robotnik's current family, could be considered someone who "turned evil". He consorts with clearly evil people, tries to take revenge on a planet, and reneges on two promises to deliver weaponry into client's hands. But your mileage may vary here. Technically, you could argue Gerald isn't evil because he consorts with Black Arms to complete the weapon for GUN, who were putting him in a tight spot by only giving him the money to cure NIDS if he did an altogether shitty thing in the first place. He does things that evil people would do, but does that make him evil? I don't know, I'm not here to discuss that.

In other news, Bertha and Ivo are both normal (Bertha doesn't seem to be the genius that her father was) and have supposedly normal kids, except for the part where Julian is a super genius.

If you consider his track record, this image is accurate.

Colin is a surprisingly heroic older brother figure who teases Julian, who as you will recall is a genius, and generally is just luckier in life than his younger brother. He gets married twice and has two kids, but if you watched Sonic SatAM you already know that Snively exists. But, what you didn't know (maybe) is that Snively was not named Snively by Julian, but by Colin. Snively was raised by Colin because Miriam (Snively's mother and Colin's first wife) died and Colin had no idea how to parent his son. So Snively starts becoming rascal-like and silly, which makes Colin straight up disown him. I didn't read this comic that detailed this, so I don't actually know what Snively did that was so bad that he was disowned but the whole reason I bring this up is, out of literally everyone in his family, only Snively is someone you can consider "evil"... and it's a purely coincidental thing, because Snively isn't completely evil and does do things that are good. In fact, he does them often enough that you could consider him a double agent or an anti-hero at times. But just so you can be sure that no one in Robotnik's family is evil, Hope is named Hope because she is good and also because she is literally just Maria. Shadow becomes friends with her and everything. Okay to be perfectly honest, I absolutely hate Hope because she's literally just Elise from Sonic 2006 to me. But the point is that she isn't an evil person, she's actually very good.

So, now that we know that pretty much no one in Julian's family was evil, the question remains-- who the @#%!! is Eggman, am I right?

Okay. Now, pay attention, because this is going to get silly quick. No sugar coating, let's get to the meat of things.

Julian was born to Bertha and Ivo Kintobor and thought that they loved Colin more than him and thought Colin was annoying. But Julian was a super genius and trained under Dr. Nate Morgan. Nate was a really nice guy who created the Power Rings. I'm not going to explain those right now, but they're important. Anyway, Julian waited until Nate taught him everything he knew... then he staged an explosion and blamed Nate, banishing him from his labs.

I'm sorry, Nate. D:

Okay, so here's something you probably didn't understand but you need to to move on. There are humans, there are Overlanders, and there are Mobians and all of these races live on Mobius. When you play the games, you usually end up in a place called Station Square or Central City-- these are not on "Earth" per se. It's long and complicated, okay, but humans are like... ancient. They've all been changed into Overlanders via Gene Bombs. Gene Bombs were created by the Xorda (aquatic alien life forms who mastered intergalactic travel-- no seriously) and basically it changed humans from having five fingers to four. It was honestly supposed to be worse. Further it changed Earth to become more like Mesopotamia (again, it was supposed to be worse) and the inhabitants changed the name of Earth to Mobius. But it did one "good" thing: evolved animals to be like humans. The Gene Bombs also created the Chaos Emeralds and caused the first Day of Fury (Days of Fury are global disturbances that-- fuck it, you don't care, it's not really important right now). So, to reiterate, most humans (most because there are references to humans, but the references don't ever really state if the humans are currently living or ancient) are dead, Overlanders are de-evolved humans, Mobians are mutated animals, and Mobius is Mutated Earth . Get it? Got it? Good.

Here, have some reference material.

Now. What you need to understand is that the Mobians in the Kingdom of Acorn were trying to form a single civilization using every species and race in the world. They tried to include all species, but Overlanders were too aggressive and xenophobic, so the ruler at the time (Alexander) decided to leave them out. As such, the Overlanders were a complete mystery to the Mobians. Alexander's son made friends with an Overlander and was accidentally killed by the man with a gun. Alexander happened to see the Overlander leave (and to be honest, there was nothing the Overlander could've done, since they weren't like, besties or anything) and so he decided that there would be a no-gun policy in the Kingdom of Acorn. This ruffled the feathers of the Overlanders, so tensions started to get high.

Remember Nate Morgan? He was banished from his lab and ended up living amongst the Mobians, the first of his kind to do so. Nate was trying to make a clean power source... the Power Rings. The Power Rings plus the Chaos Emeralds allowed the Mobians to get better technology (Mobians are especially conscious of the environment because they're animals, you guys) and they flourished for a while. Until the sorcerer Ixis Naugus vilified Nate because Nate's science made his magic useless. He worked with a Mobian war hero, Kodos Lion, to vilify Nate by using his magic to amplfy the hatred that a nearby group of Overlanders felt towards the Mobians and then told the current King, Maximillion, that Nate told the Overlanders the location of the Kingdom of Acorn. Nate self-exiled himself (such a nice guy, jeez) because he didn't know if what Naugus said was true. What I mean is, he thought maybe that his existence with the Mobians was the problem, so he left. Kodos tried to kill Naugus so that Naugus couldn't, at some point, put any blame on him... but Naugus escaped to the Zone of Silence so that he could gain power and then rule what remained of the kingdoms. Kodos then locked the Zone of Silence to prevent Naugus from escaping. Still with me? Good. What followed was the Great War.

Back to Julian. He was an engineer for the Overlanders and created items for the military including a prototype weaponized satellite called the Ultimate Annihilator. But Julian used living Overlanders to test his weaponry. When he was found out, Colin (who was the Minister of Justice) sentenced him to ten years of imprisonment. Julian escaped imprisonment and made it to the Badlands where he was found by the hedgehog brothers Jules and Charles (also students of Nate Morgan). Jules is Sonic's father and Charles, his brother, is often known as Uncle Chuck. Despite Charles being skeptical of Julian, Jules convinces his brother to save Julian. Julian swears allegiance to the Kingdom of Acorn and gives them the technology to fight the Overlanders, which turns the war in the favor of the Mobians, who then ultimately win.  Also, this is pretty important: Jules worked alongside a hedgehog named Bernadette. She was his partner during the war and they liked each other, so they got married and had Sonic. Not now, but if I don't mention it now I'd have to mention it later.

Bernadette is adorable. And she's hugging Sonic here, by the way

Kodos took Julian under his wing (despite being xenophobic of Overlanders) and decided that he wanted to overthrow the King and rule the world with Julian, who agreed that world domination was awesome but not if he had to share the power, so he banished Kodos to the Zone of Silence. Julian took Kodos' title of Warlord. He was later joined by Snively.

Kodos was also kind of a crappy guy.

Let's take a breather. You're probably wondering what any of this has to do with a name change. Patience. If I just came out and told you "This is what happened," you'd have questions like "how" or "why". No, you need to actually understand what's happening to really get this.

Okay. You good? Let's jump back in.

Julian decided that if he was to take over the world, he wouldn't make the mistake the last two guys did-- i.e., he wouldn't share his plans with someone who would overthrow him by making sure everyone under him was lesser than him (Snively) or were cyborgs. This required testing, but because he didn't want to be caught like he  had been with the Overlanders, he picked people from another settlement to practice his schemes on. Ultimately, only one Mobian survived, Monkey Khan (or Ken Khan). Monkey Khan was roboticized where his people were killed, and used by Julian until he rebelled. Julian locked him away and started thinking about removing free will from cyborgs as a necessary next step.

Simultaneously, Charles had come up with a machine to prolong the lives of the sick and elderly, a Roboticiser. Julian tampered with it to make it remove the subject's free will and make the subject follow his commands. Jules was injured badly and Charles unknowingly made Jules into Julian's first victim. Heartbroken, Charles apologized to Bernadette (who had just had Sonic) and stepped down from his role as Minister of Science and left the Kingdom for a while. However, there was another way to win the war without the Roboticiser, and Julian decided to go for that. He arranged a duel between the two sides and assumed that one side would kill the other. However, Maximillion won but didn't kill the Overlander. Julian was going to fail, but Charles turned over the Roboticiser to him.

I'm so sorrieeeeeeee

Bernadette discovered that Julian tampered with the machine and was using Jules, which made Julian toss her into the machine and Charles came back to discover that she was no longer responding, like his brother. He took Sonic under his wing.

Since Maximillian had won the war (thanks mostly to Julian), he agreed to remove the status of Warlord and get rid of the military completely as Julian wished. He also planned on making Julian into the Minister of Science. This was all going according to plan, until Amadeus Prower figured out Julian's plans-- and on the date of his son's birth, no less! And Julian tossed him into the Roboticiser.

He wasn't amused.

Okay, so if you've seen the opening to Sonic SatAM, you should pretty much know the next part.  Literally from 0:14 to 0:15 is what happened when Julian was given power during the victory presentation. He robotocised almost every Mobian and then exiled Maximillian to the Zone of Silence. And this was where Julian got his first name change: he changed his name from Julian Kintobor to Ivo Robotnik.

Then the Freedom Fighters started threatening his rule. Robotnik was in trouble, because the Original Freedom Fighters were serious business and they took out a lot of his labs. He managed to get one of the members, a snake named Trey Scales, to turn against the group. Then Robotnik turned against him, roboticised all of them, and put them in the Zone of Silence. And, uh... then they all died afterwards.

This guy had nothing to do with it. Oh, wait, I'm sorry, I mean he had everything to do with their deaths.

Robotnik went into the Zone of Silence, determined that he really didn't need to be there (and Naugus pretty much owned the Zone) so he left with Snively's help and determined that he wasn't ever going back. Instead he focused really hard on ruling what he did have.

But that's where Sonic came in. Sonic grew up with Chuck, who abandoned science to run a chili dog stand, and had met Robotnik as Julian when he was a child. He didn't even like him them. Chuck was roboticised and Sonic and Sally decided to form a Freedom Fighter unit themselves. So, you know. They did. Their base was the Knothole, a stump in the Great Forest, and they were known as the Knothole Freedom Fighters.

Robotnik tried really hard to kill Sonic. Really, really hard. He failed with Exceptionally Versatile Evolvanoid (E.V.E.) made from Sonic's cells and Robotnik's brain cells. Programmed to learn and adapt, E.V.E. learned that she could just exceed her programming and straight up shot him into an alternate dimension where he met another version of himself, Robo-Robotnik. (Just FYI, an alternate dimension in the Sonic universe GENERALLY SPEAKING is a world similar to Mobius, but usually with a different history, some extremely similar and some really different.) The Robotnik in the universe he was thrust into had become nothing more than a computer program, but Robotnik persuaded him to kill Sonic, who had forced him to upload his consciousness into a computer, and Robo-Robonik agreed before sending Robotnik back to fight his own version of Sonic again. Robotnik failed a few more times.

But he failed with a smile.

He achieved success when he partnered up with Nack the Weasel, who knocked Sonic out and brought him to Robotnik. Robotnik kicked Nack out of the city for his trouble. Sonic was turned into Mecha Sonic, and Mecha Sonic was a damn terror. Fortunately, Tails recruited Knuckles, who was injured until Sally used a portable roboticiser to make Knuckles into Mecha Knuckles and then gave Knuckles his free will with a Neuro-Overrider. He saves Sonic and they both become organic again (by different means).

The group saves Maximillion from the Zone of Silence and Robotnik gets wicked pissed. But Max's release leaves a neutron reading that allows Robotnik to discover the Knothole. And thus he creates Operation: EndGame.

EndGame was a very complex plan with many steps that sometimes failed and sometimes succeeded. He tried to murder Sally and frame Sonic for the murder, and he tried to infiltrate the Knothole with an automated version of King Acorn. And then he just showed up at their doorstep, apropos of nothing. He doesn't kill them, preferring to use them as test subjects for the Ultimate Annihilator. Remember that? Yeah, well now it can warp reality and erase matter.

Sonic is furious about Sally's murder and the two engage in MORTAL KOMBAT! But Robonik still activated the Ultimate Annihilator. It would've been perfect, but Snively had tampered with the machine, coding it to target only Robotnik's DNA. So by activating the machine... he destroyed himself.

Yeah. Robotnik? Erased. The end. Vamoose.

And that would've been it. The end of a story. The end of a great. But Sonic's story is more convoluted than this. See what you've just learned, what we know now, this is all occurring on Mobius Prime. But there are other Mobius's, other parallel worlds. Now. Robotnik Prime had come into contact with a Robotnik from a parallel world with a similar backstory, Robo-Robotnik, remember? That alternate universe Robotnik actually benefited from Robotnik Prime showing up in his world. He had gone mad after his universe's Sonic forced him to upload his consciousness to a computer. But Robotnik Prime told him to continue his reign, and Robo-Robotnik changed.  He pulled himself together, building himself a robot body (with something it is literally too time consuming to explain) and killing his universe's Sonic (who was a king and had kids with Sally at that time) as well as literally anyone else he could get his hands on (so... you know everyone). But upon hearing that his savior had been killed, he went to Mobius Prime to avenge him and to "fill the void".

"Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere's Robotnik!"

Sonic Prime and the others of Mobius Prime literally had ONE YEAR without Robotnik before Robo-Robonik came, and then the dude came and was even more conniving than Robotnik Prime. He caused an avalanche, brought secret satellites from his home dimension, released the imprisoned Snively (don't ask, that's a whole different story), and tricked Sonic and the others to think Robonik Prime was back from the dead by wearing a skin suit that was subsequently burned off with acid. After a fight (and finding Sonic's parents) the Freedom Fighters escape Robo-Robotnik, seemingly killing him. But Robo-Robotnik just uploaded his consciousness to another body under his capital.

And, my friends, this new body... this is Doctor Eggman. Guys. HE KILLED SONIC. HE DID IT ONCE. THAT WAS A THING THAT HAPPENED, FOR REALS.

So the next time you look at Doctor Eggman and think, "Shouldn't he be dead?" just remember that as long as he continues building bodies, he can just upload his consciousness wherever he wants. And also, he's murdered Sonic before. That's a real thing that happened. A real thing.

So who is Dr. Eggman? Somebody worse than Dr. Robotnik. Somebody way, way worse.

Harvest Moon: A New Beginning and Why We Keep Playing This One Game

Alright, so I talked about Rune Factory a while ago and I mentioned Harvest Moon, so you and I both knew that this would happen. A whole post on Harvest Moon, specifically new, 3DS Harvest Moon before I go back and talk about old, not 3DS Harvest Moon. But yeah, Harvest Moon. Ready? Go!

Despite this game being called "A New Beginning", this game does not in fact have a new beginning. See, Harvest Moon is like... not the most creative in the beginnings department. I mentioned this before, but... I mean it's really, really ridiculous how this always turns out. Your family has land in Insert_Town_Here, and you know, no one was using it or anything. Sometimes it's like, "Your grandmother/father owned this land, but then they died and you came to take it" and sometimes you're just... driving by and decide to stop in and become a farmer. As you do, I guess.

This game comes from the "my family owned this land and didn't think to rent it out to anyone" family. You just show up, right, and the mayor, Crocodile Dundee, is super happy that you're around.  He asks if you'd like to join the community. You can say no, of course, but that's saying no to adventure. So, you know, your character just automatically says yes.

His name's Dunhill, though.

So you join the happy little town of three people, but then you're joined by another guy, Neil, almost right away. So the town, including you, is five people strong. Then Iroha joins you, making it a six person town. Finally, Rebecca and her son Toni move in and you're now eight people in a small enclosed area and honestly... it could stay that way for a really long time.

But here's the kicker... Harvest Moon: A New Beginning isn't as good as previous Harvest Moon games. And I mean like, games prior to A Tale Of Two Towns. I mean games that are generally thought of as bad, like Grand Bazaar. Why? Well...

Harvest Moon: Not The Best Choice For A Game

Around this time in Harvest Moon, I assume people somewhere were complaining about... err, something. Namely, it's hard to get married to people because if you play without a walkthrough, you might accidentally force your sweetheart to marry someone else. So they dropped that completely from literally every following Harvest Moon game. But just so you know, there is literally no other form of tension in a Harvest Moon game in the beginning of the game.

"We're the hardest people to marry~!"

I'm not saying that the now defunct marriage thing is what makes A New Beginning not that great of a Harvest Moon game, but it's one of the little things.

A New Beginning by the title suggests that the beginning is, in fact, new. That could mean a lot of different things. But I think they decided to take a large step backwards in this game and so the title turns out to be a very... err, faulty lie of a name.

Anyone who buys this game usually buys it with the warning that it has the slowest start-up of every Harvest Moon game. If you've been told this, the person who warned you is absolutely, positively 150% not lying. This game has a literal full year of dicking around before you can really get to do anything. On top of that, if you're not cheating your way through the game, you might find yourself with maybe... two or three bachelorettes for the first year. If you're playing as a girl, you have pretty much the same odds. See, this game is following the template of a few of the games in this year-- full customization. Rune Factory IV had it in the sense that you could decorate your rooms (it wasn't the focus of the game and everything is static so it's pretty annoying) and Animal Crossing had it in spades. This game really focuses on that aspect of gaming, so it has to teach you how you customize your town.

How, you ask? Well, Crocodile Dundee will give you Town Restoration plans, because even though you're not the mayor, you're the one making executive choices for the town. You choose where things are placed, like houses, fields, and so on. Full customization of your farm is, of course, the dream. I don't, however, see why the game changed so much between A Tale of Two Towns and this game.

FARM EVERYWHERE GOD DAMN IT

All Harvest Moon games have a story to break up the monotony of just farming everyday forever, which is why the Harvest Goddess usually is such a raging idiot. Thankfully, they decided to nix the whole "The Harvest Goddess made another whoopsie" story and went for "Everyone moved out of the town" story. I especially like that everyone just demolished their houses the moment they were leaving.

"My son and I run an inn, which I subsequently destroyed out of frustration that no one was coming to visit Echo Village."

Your job is to complete the Town Restoration plans that Crocodile Dundee has and create a new town from nothing. What does this have to do with getting married? Everything. You have to build someone's house in order for them to move in, and you have to build houses of people you don't even like to get people that you do like. I mean, if we were going for full customization, at the very least you should be allowed to pick who you want living in your town. On top of that, to get these people to live in your town, you'd better be cheating or just save everything you pick up, because the town restoration plans happen to be seasonal.

And don't get me started on the hoops you have to jump for the mine.

They don't seem seasonal, which is the problem. For one plan, you need to ship 10 honey, but one of the vital items doesn't appear in the summer or the winter. So if you reach this plan and you've been selling that item, you need to wait a season. The game is already slow enough without this bogging you down. Another thing is that rocks, which you need to break to make material stone, appear very rarely. If you don't buy material stone from Rebecca, good luck trying to finish the second and third plans within two or three years. What's stupid is that black rocks are all over the place, and black rocks take a special hammer to break. What's even more stupid is that small rocks are also literally everywhere but you barely use small material stone for anything.

Some liar somewhere told me that it was easy to make money in this game, which would be true if you weren't sinking your money into buying material stone and saving literally everything on the off chance that it might be used later, which again, would be something you'd have to do if you aren't using a walkthrough. But I guess the worst thing is that you have to buy items to start dating other people, even if they have reverse proposal/engagements. Like if you want to marry Neil, you need to be carrying a blue feather so that he can propose to you. What?

"I can't marry you unless you've put down at least 10000000G on our future. PS, I'm not going to help you on your farm, so... you know, fuck that."

To further the vast amounts of work you need to do for this game, you can get your cows and other produce animals to be more productive. Sounds good, right? Except your animals die and you have to level them up by giving them treats. "Eh." You say. "Still not that bad." Yeah, I know. That's why no one in game informs you and you only learn via straight up cheating that you have to give them a certain number of specific treats (cow, chicken, sheep) and a certain number of general treats to level up your animal. The plus side is, the treats roll over. The minus side is, it takes a bloody fortnight (okay, longer than that) and it adds to the already pretty long amount of time you spend tending to your crops daily. I suggest getting a pet that can herd when you have maybe five barn animals and let them feed themselves outside.

Pets have always been the bane of Harvest Moon because they never give you a pet to start out with, which means you get the pet animal so late in the game that the pet becomes more of a hassle than your produce animals. I get that you don't want the game to be too easy, Natsume, but by the time I buy my first cat or dog, I'm literally done with the game. So this game decided to cut that short (thankfully) and make it so you could buy pets early on, if you complete the town restoration plans quickly. The moment you see "Build a Cottage", you should just dump your money into that so you don't waste half your morning running into and out of buildings to feed your animals. Unless you only have chickens, in which case you have to build a separate place for them to eat outside AND you have to put food down for them everyday. The only upside  to chickens is that the star level of the eggs corresponds to the number of hearts a chick hatched from said egg will have.

And if you have ten chickens, prepare to spend an in-game hour picking them up and putting them down.

But this is a lot of complaining considering that I like the Harvest Moon titles a good deal. So why do I dislike this one so much? Outside of all that stuff I labeled above I just... don't think Harvest Moon has been progressing.

I get it, though. As we move forward, people want new and more exciting things and Harvest Moon is just a status quo. Farming isn't exciting (or new) and so of course players get bored with it. I mean, since Harvest Moon has appeared on the DS, I think only two games have been really original in the whole set. If we're talking about Wii games, don't even get me started-- Animal Parade is probably the best Harvest Moon game for the system and one of the better series installments, but I don't want to play Harvest Moon on a Wii, really. The creator of Harvest Moon, Yashuiro Wada, for some reason thought that the series itself was beyond saving (he called it a marriage simulator) and created a new game, Hometown Story. But that game seems to be suffering from the same flaws that this game is. It's slow, it's extremely boring, and after a while it becomes just... intensely annoying to play. It's like having a job on top of your real life job.

By the way, you can get married in this game, so... marriage simulator, this time without growing stuff.

But have you seen the reviews of that game-- have you played it yourself? I only played a little, but it suffers from Harvest Moon Syndrome hardcore, and it's worse off than the regular Harvest Moon games. Harvest Moon games start getting bad the moment you are no longer interested in the townspeople, romantically or otherwise. On top of that, without the nostalgic backing Harvest Moon has, it's very hard to want to continue playing Hometown Story. The character design took a step back and isn't as cute as Harvest Moon is, the characters are all bland and forgettable, the camera is ridiculous and the music is forgettable too. It's literally just Harvest Moon if you extract all the things that made you play Harvest Moon.

But we keep playing games like Harvest Moon and Hometown Story-- Why? It's a life simulator and we actually live lives, but Harvest Moon's charm comes from the small town closeness that it generates on top of the life simulation, in my opinion. The moment you stop trying to progress making the people in the game interesting is the moment that the game starts to stall. The way to make people continue to play Harvest Moon games is, quite simply, to keep giving them characters to learn about and to keep making the characters interesting. For example, after Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, you never had to build a relationship with your child again. In Animal Parade, they touched on it, but not in the same way that A Wonderful Life did-- instead of watching your child grow and having a relationship outside of "Hey kid, good to see you're still mine, " A Wonderful Life had character arcs for your child (depending on the mother, but that's still a thing that occurs in game). I don't know why, but this function was completely dropped from the game.

And look at him. HE'S ADORABLE.

With new technology comes better ways to make Harvest Moon interesting again. Why not make it so that people in towns get married to each other again? Why not have small story arcs for your child? Why not make it so that the amount of time you spend with your child as a baby influences the way your child treats you when it grows older-- why not have an "ending" to your character's game and have the child take your place in a New Game + option? How about using the 3DS's DLC to add new characters or levels to an actual mine and not the crap we got in A New Beginning and A Tale of Two Towns? If you're really all about making the game fully customizable, how about finally making the kid look like both parents i.e. make it so that making a black or Asian character isn't just a skin and is actually something that has continuity in the game? They could update the things people say via downloads, or make the characters change clothes depending on the season (they do change their clothes in some games, so the technology exists). There could be downloadable festivals, or ones that only show up on odd numbered years or even numbered years. Maybe make the game so that we can visit a nearby city and open a shop and hire people to run the store? Or make tons of different town events for each year that actually impact the town in some way? How about having characters be indifferent to you, or become your enemy over specific events instead of everyone just being sugary sweet all the time? How about more events that have an effect on your town's look and feel? How about making same sex friends have the option of becoming "best friends" and that resulting in different scenarios and options for the player? In all of Harvest Moon I can only remember one character actually dying, like for real dying. They had a tombstone and everything. Why not more character progressions in that way? What happened to just living your life in a town, even if the town isn't one of your creation?

I need to feel invested in order to play a life simulator. When you really think about the genre of life simulation, gameplay comes in two forms: either you are a god or you are one of the mortals. When you're a god, your "gameplay" comes from your own sense of humors and so forth. For example, the Sims is a life simulator in which you are a god, and people play those games in vastly different ways. But Harvest Moon is a life simulator in a different way. You're no god, you're just a person who lives in a town. Sometimes, you befriend everyone because you love everyone. Sometimes, you just don't befriend people. That's just how it is. Your gameplay experience by and large has nothing to do with who you are, except for who you marry and what you design your house to look like. But investment comes from the same place. Why are you playing the Sims? Are you playing to design houses? You might be, but you're probably not. You're probably playing because of the people. You're probably playing the Sims and enjoying being an immutable, infalliable voice in the lives of computer people. And in Harvest Moon, you might not be a god, but you're probably not playing the game to run a farm. There are plenty of free Facebook games for that. You're also most likely playing Harvest Moon for the people. The gameplay is different, but the investment is the same. You play the game not for the bells and whistles, but for the "lives" that you have the chance of touching.

And you play this game if you want to litter your friends walls with nonsense and terrible art.

I felt invested in the lives of the people in Rune Factory 4, I was invested in the conversations they had, the festivals, the events... everything. I wanted to protect the town and so I played and played until I had done so. That made the absolute mundane chore of farming (which it was, I'm serious) less mundane. It was less about me making a nest egg for myself and more about me getting Princess Points to get more things for the town. I stopped playing Rune Factory 4 right before I had enough Princess Points to nationalize the bath houses, and it wasn't because I was bored but because I had a backlog of games I had yet to finish writing reviews for. That is crazy.

A new Harvest Moon graces the horizon and while I spent this whole article stripping the veneer off of the series and saying what amounts to "there's no forward thinking here", I'm probably going to buy it because Harvest Moon is a dying breed. Say what you will about it, Harvest Moon is not a game that holds your hand, it's not a game that makes things easy, and the amount of nuance put into each game is commendable. But I spent all of Rune Factory pretty much talking about the good things in Harvest Moon, because those good things carried over into Rune Factory as a series. I hadn't even touched on every single good thing. Crazy.

I want the next Harvest Moon to be good, I really do. I can see why the series creator sees it as a lost cause. But what I'd tell him as a fan of the series is that this particular series has only really just begun. I'm not sure that in the world where Call of Duty still makes money (you know, with their one game) that Harvest Moon will become the next big thing, but I think there's still some merit to it's existence and continued existence. If Harvest Moon does, one day, run out of ideas outside of "create more characters and make the world larger" (cough cough Pokemon) then it's probably time to think about calling it quits. But right now, while I don't recommend A New Beginning, I do recommend the series.