
We recently published our reader-ranked top 50 Game Boy Color games, and we've taking a look back at a handful of our favourite GBC carts. Today, Kerry reminisces about her very favourite farming sim...
There have been a lot of Harvest Moon games over the years, with almost every format between the SNES and the Switch graced by their agricultural appearances. Since 1996 the series has seen more than its fair share of sequels, splits, and spin-offs, and inspired an entire genre of slow life sims, including the likes of the incredibly popular Stardew Valley. As the games and gamers playing them have grown, so too have their complexity, with the farming now seen as just one enjoyable part of a whole range of interconnected activities and systems designed to keep players engaged and entertained for months — if not years — on end.
And that’s great. Who doesn’t want to see games evolve and become more intricate as time goes on, combining new ideas with established mechanics in fun and fascinating ways? Well… me, for one. I like my cute farming games to be cute and about farming, and that’s why I love playing my Game Boy Color copy of Harvest Moon 2 GBC.
Sometimes derided for omitting features that were already present in its contemporary console cousins, this more streamlined handheld entry sensibly decides to do one thing very well rather than spread itself too thinly for completeness’ sake. This apparent “lack” of features gives my farming days a welcome rhythm of unhurried routine as my ever-growing list of daily jobs always naturally occur in, around, or for the benefit of each other: the grass I planted will feed the animals in the barn nearby; the water coming from the stream close to the fishing spot goes on my crops; the sale of milk I diligently collect every morning helps fund further improvements and expansions to my little farm.
The real magic lies in how this one very focused job of mine — running a farm — combines so beautifully with the otherwise vast amounts of freedom the game has to offer. How much I decide to burden myself with, and when, is almost entirely up to me, and these two elements make every casual session with Harvest Moon 2 GBC both very easy to keep up with (I know all I have to do is help my farm) and also only as intense as I want it to be (I know I don’t have to work flat out all the time or always plant in the most efficient manner to keep going). I decide what to plant and where to plant it; I decide when I’m ready to buy my first chicken; I decide if I care about maximising every coin-earning opportunity and buy my vegetable seeds based on their growth-rate-to-final-sale-price value rather than sowing something simply because I like it.
Harvest Moon 2 is only as intense as I want it to be. I decide what to plant and where to plant it; I decide when I’m ready to buy my first chicken; I decide if I care about maximising every coin-earning opportunity.
It isn’t the end of the world if something doesn’t work out either — if I miss a day’s watering duties because I went off catching bugs, or if I scatter some of my seeds on untilled earth and end up wasting them — because there’s little I can’t recover from with time and effort, and that means there’s little to stress out about beyond my own self-imposed responsibilities.
HM2 GBC even goes so far as to actively discourage overwork: there’s no benefit in trying to grow plants I don’t have the time or energy to care for, and that big tree stump in the field will still be there tomorrow if my little farmer’s too tired to chop it up or if I simply feel like doing something else today. The game’s relaxed pace — from morning to night, from seed to sprout, from season to season — gives me no choice other than to adjust my expectations to match, and the farm-first gameplay gives me no option other than to stick around and really notice all of the little changes happening on my dusty plot of land.
There’s an abundance of visual feedback to help make my selection of daily chores feel like organic tasks that directly contribute to the new life growing all over my farm, making it so very easy to take real pleasure in noticing how different crops have different sizes and shapes of seed, how the soil darkens when sprinkled with fresh water, and to enjoy the incredibly atmospheric sound of Game Boy-powered raindrops as I make my farmer dash across soggy fields to try to get all of their usual work done on a quiet rainy day.
And if none of that sounds particularly exciting or complicated — good. A fun game doesn’t have to be either of those things, and Harvest Moon 2 wouldn’t be a better experience if it was, anyway. It’s so deeply fulfilling in a way few games are, inviting me to take pride in my own work and work ethic, in setting my own goals and then literally watching them grow as the easily digested virtual days pass by. I made this grow; I made all of it grow. Every flower and herb. Every crop growing where I tilled the bare soil and later harvested with my own hands. Every weed dealt with as soon as it pops up, pulled out myself. My hard work brings about not only a gamified series of rewards and events but also tangible change, a feeling that things are getting better and — thanks to the game’s unwavering focus on farming alone — that I’m always on the right track and always doing enough. It’s wholesome in a way that games can sometimes struggle to get across; sincere without the sickly sweetness that usually goes with it.
Over two decades have passed since the game’s launch and Harvest Moon, farming sims, and gaming as a whole have branched out in all sorts of fascinating directions, and we’re all better off for the variety and inclusivity these newer additions bring. But I’ll always appreciate the clear vision and soothing simplicity of my little Game Boy farm, in busying myself with trips to its tiny town and gathering up all the eggs my hens have laid in the barn every morning. It’s not much, but it’s all mine — and it makes me happy.

Out of all the farming games available, which one do you like spending your free time with? Let us know in the comments.
Don't forget that our list of the best Game Boy Color games ever is now live, and you can still have your say and affect the dynamic real time ranking by rating your GBC collection. Alternatively, if you just want to lust over some lovely hardware colour variants, feel free to let us know your favourite Game Boy Color hue.
Comments 31
This is a good article. Personally for me I’m torn between harvest moon 64 and psx back to nature. I’m kinda of learning more towards 64 just for the artwork alone
Never played one of these, despite loving Animal Crossing. This article is the first that’s actually made me want to play one.
My favourites are probably DS and ToTT. Perfect balance of content, charm and great soundtracks!
@Strictlystyles HM64 is the perfect game for me.
@nessisonett The soundtracks in those games are great.
Nothing beats the SNES original.
My favorites are the GameCube and Wii games, but the very early games, such as this one, are charming in their simplicity. Great article!
I had the Harvest Moon 1 on the GBC (I think). It could have been regular Game Boy. I loved it. I don't think I ever fully understood how to play it though.
My favorite Harvest Moon Game is Save the Homeland on PS2 as that was the game that really got me into the series.
My favorite farm sim game though is Stardew Valley just because of everything you can do.
I really wish the 3DS version hadn’t removed some of the mini games.
I loved this game and still do. HM64 is still my favorite, but this is probably a close second. Like you, I miss the simplicity and sometimes feel like the newer games cram more things in just for the sake of having more stuff. I guess that's why I still play the older games at times.
@Strictlystyles I'm torn between the articles' Title and Back to nature on the PSX, definitely played back to nature more voraciously tho 🐑
I feel this way about a lot of games. Trying to step into any sport game by EA feels just overly complicated, while I just want to play hockey or play a football game for example. Sometimes the simplicity of older games is just nice and the early harvest moons were like that. Play the game how you want and something interesting might happen (or not).
ramble incoming
Sunshine Islands for me! It’s the only one where I’ve taken the time to marry every candidate at least once. I love hunting down the sunstones and deciding what order to raise the islands in, and I really appreciate how the dialogue differs slightly for pretty much everyone in every location depending on which protag you choose to play as. I also liked being able to customize the way tools functioned with the wonderful stones (a watering can that never runs out and gives me money every time I use it? Yes, please!) and I liked the extra challenge the Sun/Water points and hunger meter added in. But I also enjoy Nuzlockes, so I might be a touch masochistic, lol. I loved the music, too! I feel like they really put a lot of effort into the music of the DS titles, since they didn’t really have graphics going for them, lol. Although I actually really like the pseudo-3D style of the DS titles...
It might also be oddly specific, but I also loved the Harvest Sprites in this one. I liked befriending them and seeing how each sprite developed as you raised their affection. Every one from every team had a different personality. I remember there was one that would go from being too scared and unable to talk to you to being able to say, “I love you.”
I also liked the insight you’d get into the other characters by having the Indigo sprite team enchant people’s houses and seeing what they had to say. I remember it got kind of dark at one point though, if you married Vaughn and had them enchant your house one of them would say something along the lines of: “Vaughn is living only for your sake, <player name>!” And it was Natsume translating at the time so I’m sure they didn’t mean it to sound the way it came off as, but...
I think the only downside for me was that Alyssa was courtable but not actually a marriage candidate. And that when she was made a candidate in ToTT, she had her personality removed, was made prohibitively difficult to marry, and you couldn’t have a child together....
The perfect one for me was always Friends of Mineral Town on the GBA. 64 was also fantastic, but FoMT was portable so I could play it whenever I wanted. Mineral Town also just felt more vibrant and alive to me. I have a lot of fond memories of my time there.
I’ve always found that it’s repetitive, but it somehow makes it fun.
My personal favorite remains pretty much any Mineral Town iteration. But yeah, GBC2 was pretty neat overall as well, especially at the time.
There's some kind of outbreak of GameBoy obsession happening on NL lately, huh?
Loved BoN, but FoMT on the GBA, was the best to me, with very minor faults
Haven't played this one.
Looks good though!
But for me, the best is still HM DS. The Fomt remake is pretty good too
This game was great for it's time but I think Stardew Valley really took what was great about these early HM games and improved upon it.
I like A Wonderful Life but I recognize it doesn't have enough content to carry you to the end (it has an end). I'll check out GBC2.
Off topic, but has anyone tried Smelter on the switch?
My all time favorite is Grand Bazaar, but I also love FoMT, Magical Melody, and especially Another Wonderful Life (which had major SOS feels way ahead of its time).
As far as handheld HM titles go, I only played the Mineral Town games. I may have to give this one a try though. It looks like a good time.
@Aurumonado I think SE and AWL handled it better with every chapter only taking one year. Made it drag out a lot less towards the middle sections.
Since it was my first Harvest Moon game, I'll always have a soft spot for Back to Nature.
@nessisonett ToTT was my first HM game. I love it
AWL is my all time favorite. It nailed the feeling of time passing in a small town. Other HM games go on forever, which can be fun, but I like the melancholy of AWL and the knowledge that it e n d s.
The SNES original was great and sometimes I think about playing it again. I remember when it first came out and I got a chance to play it. I initially had no idea what it was about. I thought maybe it had something to do with astronomy and when I fired it up, I had no idea what I was doing. I hadn't really conceived of such a game before and it was such a departure from the Megaman or Mario I was used to. Even Dragon Quest, which it vaguely resembled from visual perspective and NPC interaction, was so different.
I was blown away and immediately entranced. Every little detail impressed me. I just loved it. Great game. To be honest, the only time I've ever played another game that was able to recapture that sense of amazement was when I got Back to Nature a couple of years later. Such a phenomenal game and still my favorite in the series. Virtually every other Harvest Moon (or Story of Seasons game, rather) has underwhelmed me since then. Even something like Stardew Valley was a fun game and had a lot of enjoyable mechanics on offer, but it didn't capture any of the excitement or joy of what I loved about the older games. I also never particularly felt like the franchise improved. It changed in some ways. It got different, but I never really felt it was better. Even visually. The 2D art of the original SNES game is still probably my favorite. Though I liked the world of Mineral Town more, those PSX 3D visuals don't quite hold up.
To be honest, I don't think going back to play it would ever have the same impact. I think for games like this, for me, it's a one time, lightning in a bottle experience that had its day already. I'll just have to wait until I find a new game that blows me away in a similar fashion some day.
Oh and.. the Game Boy titles were good, though I'd like to say one thing. All these games are about self imposed goals, for the most part. Having a little more complexity wouldn't hurt HM 2 GBC because you could always choose whether or not to engage with most or all of the expanded elements.
Well, I'd be a hypocrite to raise eyebrows at this POV - the earlier Harvest Moon GB was the first HM I experienced and played for a substantial while before diving into the SNES progenitor. Its winter theme was always a particular video game soundtrack highlight to me, too. But these two games admittedly remain the extent of my Harvest Moon binge so far - despite my general fondness for the series and zero bias towards Natsume's own eponymous works these days, both took a backseat pretty much the day I discovered Rune Factory. That "Harvest Moon where you wield a sword" is still THE farming sim RPG in my book (even the oft-touted Stardew Valley looks like it followed in RF's footsteps more than HM's, mostly just channeling the latter's comparatively Earth-like settings and premises), the perfect quintessence that has only grown more polished with every iteration, although one does need to remember that it would have never existed without what Harvest Moon pioneered and polished on its own. After all, the whole franchise was born from a literal Harvest Moon anniversary spinoff! And the subject of this article is one of the yellow bricks in the road to what Rune Factory would become, too.
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