The people who live in the nearby town also make a significant contribution to the game's open-ended vibe because their comings and goings give you something to do when you're done tending your farm for the day. Most of the adults in Mineral Town work in the local shops, and you can interact with them in a consumer capacity or just pop in to say hello. Each store has its own open hours and off days, which you'll need to keep track of. Before and after work, you can see people milling about on the streets, heading to their jobs, or going to their favorite hangouts at regular, appointed times. Each person develops his or her own opinion toward you, which you can influence by individually talking to them and giving them gifts. Building friendships is important, since that's the only way to trigger most of the milestone events that tell the story of Mineral Town. Many of these seemingly modest events also have far-flung consequences on how your game plays out. Ann is one of six potential girls in the game that you can flirt with and ultimately marry. Initially, your rival for her attention is Cliff, a jobless beatnik with serious thoughts of leaving town forever. At one point, the owner of the local winery asks you to come over and help with the grape harvest. If you invite Cliff along, not only does he choose to remain in town, but he ends up with a job as well.
Horse racing is one of at least 20 different minigames in Harvest Moon. You can actually bet or participate.
Marriage is another aspect that makes Friends of Mineral Town unique and interesting. There are six young and single girls living in the village, each with her own different likes, dislikes, schedules, and birthday. By giving them gifts and talking to them, you can cause them to develop feelings for you. Over time, this changes the tone of the comments they make toward you and triggers a number of cute event sequences. Ultimately, your constant attention will transform your chosen sweetheart's love indicator from pale black to rose red. If you've shelled out the funds to add a kitchen and a queen-sized bed to your house, you have the option of asking your girl to marry you. You'll get to see a festive wedding and can decide whether or not your wife stays at home or continues to work in town, and, eventually, you'll welcome a new baby into the world. Courtship isn't foolproof, however. Give a girl the wrong type of gift or answer her questions inappropriately and her opinion of you will sour. There are also other guys in the village trying to woo these women too, and they'll end up marrying the ones that you don't make decent progress with within the first couple of years. The cruel part of this setup is that the game makes sure you witness all of the major courtship events related to these budding couples, so you get to watch every step of the way as another suitor lands the woman of your dreams.
If you're a longtime follower of the Harvest Moon series, you've probably figured out from the previous paragraphs that Friends of Mineral Town isn't a brand-new game. Instead, it's a remake of Harvest Moon: Back to Nature, which originally came out for the PlayStation in 2000. Before you write the game off as an attempt to rehash and make a quick buck off of an established classic, you should know that Natsume has gone to great lengths to fix the problems that were evident in the original game, and they've implemented new features that ultimately make the GBA version a fresh experience. The menu options have been streamlined to the point that most actions can be accomplished with one or two button presses; a save option has been added to the pause menu, which means that you don't have to run back to the house every time you want to save your progress; the prices for most items and livestock have been lowered to make it easier to build up your farm more rapidly; farm-related minigames have been added that give you a way to train harvest sprites in a fun and hands-on fashion; and there are new events and tool upgrades that increase the variety of tasks you can perform in the mountain and village areas outside of the farm. The game also just seems to work better in the portable format. Most chores and tasks only take between a few seconds and a minute to complete, which falls in line with the kind of intermittent play sessions that people generally get out of their pocket game systems.
Even though Harvest Moon developed a loyal following, primarily due to the games that were released for the PlayStation and Nintendo 64, the graphics and audio in those games didn't really live up to the capabilities of the hardware they were on. For various reasons, what didn't seem so hot on the home consoles actually looks and sounds quite nice on the GBA. The graphics are plain, but there's a lot of detail to notice in the buildings and characters that you come across. The way the background lightens and darkens as daylight changes throughout the day is a great touch, as are the seasonal colors that paint the trees and ground depending on what season of the year it is. In the wintertime, your character actually leaves little footprints in the snow that fade over time. The details evident in the game's audio are equally as impressive. There are different theme songs for various areas around the farm, mountain, and village, which change depending on what time of day it is or what season you're in. The use of realistic sound samples for animal calls--from dogs, cows, chicken, sheep, and so on--contributes to the game's authenticity more than standard sound effects possibly could, as do the audio effects used to portray various weather conditions, like wind, rain, and snow.
Give your girl plenty of gifts, and you'll be able to ask her to marry you.
As it seems to be the case with most GBA games nowadays, you can use Nintendo's connectivity cable to link Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town up to its GameCube counterpart, called Harvest Moon: It's a Wonderful Life. Depending on how much you've played both games, you'll unlock a number of cool bonuses in the GBA game, including GameCube characters that visit your GBA town and a seaside cottage that you can't earn during the normal course of the game.
All in all, Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town manages to package farming, cooking, and dating together into a game that's both fun and time consuming. You could play through it for a good 30 hours--roughly one year in game time--and still not uncover everything there is to see and do. There are a few problems with the way in which the original Japanese dialogue was translated into English--and it's annoying that it's so easy to accidentally toss items away while shuffling through your inventory--but neither of these flaws will keep you from enjoying what is one of the GBA's most unique games.
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