I'm a huge Harvest Moon fan, and after the disappointment of Harvest Moon DS (which I rebought yesterday out of sheer boredom) I was pleasantly surprised by the series' next installment on the DS, Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon. Now if you're not quite sure what Rune Factory is, it's everyone's favorite farming game Harvest Moon plus FUCKING DRAGONS AND SHIT! Yeah. Not only do you farm but you go into dungeons battling monsters. Instead of milking cows, you milk... MONSTERS! Yeah, its all sorts of crazy shit.

Well anyways, the first Harvest Moon Wii game, Tree of Tranquility hasn't even hit stores here in the North American regions (I'm not even going to guess when for Europe, Rising Star games seems to hate you) and we are getting magazine pictures of Rune Factory: Frontier for the Wii thanks to GoNintendo.




Not much is known about the game but GoNintendo has managed to get a few details out which are as followed

-Everything is upgraded from the DS game (Duh)
-The main character Laguna is searching for a girl
-Takes place on an island called Tranrupia, you have to obviously farm it and make a settlement
-Giant floating island shaped like a whale (Zelda anyone?)
-The better you do the island will visibly prosper
-2008 release for Japan (which means hopefully NA will get it in late 09)

And from what I can tell, you have at least the same character model for your character and Mist from the first game is in there too. Also, in the second page it shows off how the game supports both 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios... woo?

I'm excited, with the fact that you actually have to settle the island and pioneer it, it seems that a new level of depth will be added into the game. Nothing was said about dungeon crawling, which seems like if the focus is pioneering then it may be scaled back a bit, which is fine with me.

In other Harvest Moon news, both Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness and Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility are set to hit the DS and Wii on July 30th, if Natsume doesn't fuck up like they usually do. Harvest Moon: Shining Sun and Friends (an upgraded IoH) and Rune Factory 2 are both out for the DS in Japan with no word on any localizations.