Whenever a new Harvest Moon or Story of Seasons game is announced, there’s invariably some confusion. Why? Because the current Harvest Moon series isn’t the same as the old Harvest Moon series. Story of Seasons is.
Confused? Let’s start at the beginning.
In 1996, Amccus developed a farm simulation game called Bokujō Monogatari, created by Yasuhiro Wada. It was published in the west by Natsume, who localized the title as Harvest Moon.
In 1997, Victor Interactive Software and Yasuhiro Wada made a second game in the Bokujō Monogatari series, which Natsume again localized under the Harvest Moon title. This continued for many years. In 2003, Victor Interactive Software was acquired by Marvelous Entertainment, who went on to develop the rest of the Bokujō Monogatari games. Natsume continued to localize the series as Harvest Moon.
Yasuhiro Wada produced the games until 2010, after which he spent some time with Grasshopper Manufacture before leaving to form his own company, Toybox Inc. Marvelous maintained the Bokujō Monogatari series without him.
However, Marvelous announced in 2014 that its subsidiary company Xseed Games would take over the distribution of Bokujō Monogatari games in North America. There was just one problem. Natsume still owned the rights to the name “Harvest Moon.” In fact, they had released two puzzle game spin-offs on their own prior to the shift. If Marvelous used Xseed as its publisher instead of Natsume, they would not be able to call them Harvest Moon.
So when Marvelous developed the next Bokujō Monogatari game, it was released in North America by Xseed under the new title Story of Seasons, which became the official English title for the series from then on. (Nintendo of Europe adopted the same title to keep things from becoming even more confusing than they already are, thank goodness.)
Meanwhile, Tabot, Inc. developed a new farm simulation game for Natsume under the title Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley, and Natsume has continued to publish its own Harvest Moon games ever since.
To summarize, the Bokujō Monogatari series was localized as Harvest Moon until 2013. It’s now localized as Story of Seasons. Any games released with the Harvest Moon title from 2014 onwards are part of a different series created by Natsume.
And what about the original creator, Yasuhiro Wada? His new company went on to make Birthdays the Beginning (which is being remade for the Switch as Happy Birthdays), Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters, and the upcoming Little Dragons Café, a PS4 and Switch game that looks like it might try to capture that original Bokujō Monogatari spirit—but with dragons.
