Editorial Review

Well, if Pokémon can catch on in this country,there's no reason why Harvest Moon can't, too. This game takesthe farming-simulation concept from its Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64counterparts and shrinks it down, removing some favorable aspects butincluding many more.

The new version expands on the first Game Boy version, providing abigger world in which to tend your farm. There are also more tasks to doin a given day, such as planting this and milking that, and all of itmust be done at a frantic pace if everything is to be completed. Thepace of the game is what really makes it addicting, but players can alsotake the day off and play minigames, which are fun as well.

The one thing this game lacks is the dating and marriage aspect of theconsole games. This was one of the cutest features of the series, butthere still seems to be enough to warrant a play-through. --RobbGuido

Pros:

• Seemingly unlimited tasks to complete every day of the game
• Fun minigames

• No dating for the lead character

Features

• Sim farming game
• Become a farmer, a rancher and find a wife
• Beautiful 3-D graphics
• Delightfully compelling gameplay
• For 1 player

Reviews (258)

Great Game...this is coming from a punk
ok farming and punk dont seem to mix qiute good, but that does not apply for this game...HM 64 is the best HM game ive played even when wonderful life came out for GC, the girls are cute, and bein freinds w/ cliff rocks, the graphics are good for an N64 game..im proud to own Harvest moon 64...and u should too

Marrige FAQ
I have been playing this game for a long time and have been trying to find all it's secrets. I think harvest moon games are some of the best games money can buy. Trust me if you buy one of these you won't be at all dissapointed. I havent been able to but i know a bit about the marrige stuff. For starters you need to see all the girls heart events of which there should be about 5. You need to give the girls stuff they like wrapped up at the supermarket. You need to have over 100,000g to marry as well and it helps if you are friendly with the girl's family. I will be adding more to this site later. Hope you like it!

Reviews (451)

Stange is good
Majora's Mask is a strange game: while it is a direct sequel to Ocarina of Time, it is clearly a Zelda game of a very different shade.

It begins with Link slowly trudging deep in the Lost Woods, with his trusty horse, Epona, when he is attacked by a masked and mischevious Skull Kid - who steals his precious Ocarina and Epona. Worse still, the Skull Kid turns Link into a Deku form of himself, and Link finds himself in a strange Mirror - like Hyrule. Things turn even worse when Link finds the moon slowly getting bigger over the course of 3 days...

Majora's Mask features the very same Gameplay as Ocarina of Time, with a few exceptions. The entire course of the game is set within 3 days or 72 hours - and hours seem to pass like minutes, giving a player a total of just over an hour. While this may seem off-putting, it is implemented very well - people have set schedules over the course of the game, meaning you will be pottering around the Clock Town while not in dungeons, with the promise of an upgrade - or even a new mask.

Masks, as the title suggests, play an important role - some make you run faster, talk to enemies, summen foes or sooth arguements and more. There are a total of 24 masks to collect, the reward being a mask containing "The Merits of all masks". The best of the masks are the ones that allow transformation. (Let's face it, who HASN'T dreamed of swimming as a Zora or rolling as a Goron) The Zora Mask, the Goron Mask and the Deku mask. they allow you to transforminto all your favourites from Ocarina, each with the gifts of the species - Super fast swimming, Incredible strength, and, er, spitting nuts.

Majora's Mask is harder, darker and more original than Ocarina of Time - the unique aspects of the game are implemented very well but the way the game is played may be off-putting for some. Brilliant and totally original.

P.S. the start bits kinda boring.

The darkest in the Zelda catalogue
If only that damn site IGN didn't take my idea first. They described this game as the Empire Strikes Back in Zelda and it's true. It's more darker, more gloomy and at times it can even be depressing. Unlike Ocarina of Time which oozed coolness and wonderment or Wind Waker which was cheery and uplifting due to its look, Majora's Mask is quite different than other installments but in no way is it bad, it's just different.

Story: I always considered this game more like an epilogue to Ocarina of Time rather than a full sequel. At the start of the game directly taking place after Ocarina, Link is in a forest and gets ambushed by Skull Kid and is turned into a Deku(they look like tiny trees with a long mouth) and enters a portal. From here Link finds himself in Termina, a land that is gonna be destroyed by a falling moon in 3 days. So it's up to Link once again to save the day using the powers of time and this weird masks.

Graphics: Reviewing this game in 2005 with such games as Metroid Prime, Halo and Metal Gear Solid 3 of course puts Majora to shame but remembering the graphics at that time, it's more of an extension of Ocarina only darker and not as vibrant. Due to maybe the Expansion Pak or just the game itself, the game does have framerate issues and some rough textures. Beware that the Gamecube re-release on the Collector's Edition sometimes freezes the game.

Gameplay: All Zelda games pretty much to this day revolved around some kind of "gimmick": in Ocarina it was time travelling, Wind Waker was controlling the wind, Minish Cap was the ability to shrink to thumbnail size and the Oracle series revolved around time travelling and season changing. Majora's Mask revolves around, yep you guessed it, masks. Link with the benefit of 24 masks(25 if you get all 24), Link can turn into different characters such as the Deku race, Goron race(big tough creatures with a taste for rocks) and the Zora race(fish people roughly). Or there's different masks like Postman, Ghost, or Bunny mask which makes him run faster.

The other aspect for the 3rd time in Zelda's history revolves around time travelling, once in Ocarina and the other in Oracle of Ages. Only this time it's different. You see the game's clock makes 3 days take about roughly 50 minutes before the moon crashes so with the Ocarina you can go back to Day 1 and start over, even make the time go slower so you have more time. This is quite annoying to say the least since your funds, arrows and bombs revert to zero if you go back to Day 1, your items are intact, your extra stuff isn't. And also you could be in the middle of a dungeon to be really close only to be on the final day and have to reset to Day 1, which incidentally cancels any progress you made in the dungeon.

Not to say the game is bad(it's just slightly hard) but it's quite enjoyable to go through, if you don't mind it's tone anyway.

Reviews (103)

Enjoyable
I got this game two weeks after it came out. At first i was nostalgiac of the first game, i liked the first game more. But after I got over that, i noticed how fun this game was compared to the first game. Each level was harder and more complex than the first. And even though there are only 8 levels, compared to the 10 in the first, it took me longer to beat this one. The graphics, i have to admit, were very impressive for a sixty-four bit console. The game itself was very hard and challenging, but in a good way. This was the right way to make a sequal.

Feels different from Banjo-Kazooie
Even though this is the direct sequel to the Rare 1998 classic Banjo-Kazooie, and features much of the same gameplay and similar characters, I think that it just feels like a different game. It seems almost as different from Banjo-Kazooie as Donkey Kong 64 or Conker's Bad Fur Day does. The game just emanates a completely different atmosphere. I guess it's a combination of very different music, different moves, and new characters. Kudos to Rareware on that. People usually like a game that play the same as another game but feels different. I mean, it's a different game, isn't it? Who likes a game that plays AND feels the same?

Ah well. Banjo and Kazooie's final N64 adventure takes them to the world beyond the valley in which they live in. It's a large world, larger than the cavern that Gruntilda calls her lair. The levels really aren't that much larger than the mammoth world featured in Banjo-Kazooie or even Donkey Kong 64, but it's amazing how Rare has fresh ideas even after creating over a dozen massive levels for the two aforementioned games. Ah well. The difficulty level of Banjo-Tooie seems to be tougher. It's sometimes harder to figure out what the heck to do for certain Jiggies, and there are so much more stuff to find this time around. Not only are there jiggies, but there are also: Jinjos, Cheato pages, honeycombs, and everybody's favorite notes! The massive amount of extra moves can also get overwhelming. Boss fights, which were MIA in Banjo-Kazooie are now here, and in every stage. The extra modes of play are a nice change to the typical Banjo-Kazooie formula. I haven't had a chance to play as Kazooie without Banjo, but I did get to control Mumbo. It wasn't really as I had expected, but fun nonetheless. The 1st-person shooter mode was obviously a chance to cash in on the successes of GoldenEye and Perfect Dark, but they were actually well done. The 1st-person shooter level in Mayahem Temple freaked me out, but hey. It's all about atmosphere.

Rare has always been good at having distinct "tastes" to their games. I suppose what helps them are their awesome musical staff. Although the music in Blast Corps got on the nerves of some people, it definitely added to the feel for it. The somewhat-like-variations of the Bond theme in GoldenEye gave that game a unique feel. So on and so forth. Banjo-Tooie had good music that adds to its different mood, but it just didn't feel as excellent as Rare's fantastic score for Banjo-Kazooie. Maybe that's a good thing. Having the Gobi's Desert tune stuck in your head for hours is not exactly a pleasant experience. As far as sound effects go, Banjo's deep utterance for every jump is JUST NOT RIGHT! Argh! I can't stand it. Oh well. It's a good game nonetheless.

Editorial Review

Editorial Review

The idea behind The Sims is this: the ultimate goal of life is to achieve happiness, and the way to achieve happiness is to satisfy your Sims' needs. That's right, The Sims allows you to create, direct, and manage the lives of SimCity's residents. Each need (Hunger, Comfort, Hygiene, Bladder, Energy, Fun, Social, and Room) can be met by interaction with other Sims or objects: throw a party with the help of a rockin' stereo system, and watch your Sims' Social and Fun ratings improve. Have one of your Sims whip up some food from the refrigerator, and you'll satisfy the Hunger needs of your guests. Or have your Sim engage another Sim in a game of chess: not only will their Fun and Social moods improve, both Sims will gain some points in their Logic skill rating--which might help on the job.

Mismanage your new, simulated family, and you'll be faced with the worst of MTV's The Real World--with a touch of teenage angst drama thrown in for good measure: jealousies will ignite, fights will break out, jobs will be lost, and the house will fall apart. Bringing about such a calamity is almost as much fun as guiding these Sims to material paradise, and takes considerably less time.

A good general rule is that the more expensive the object, the better its ability to satisfy Sim needs. One gameplay goal is to improve your Sim so he or she can climb the career ladder, which nets him or her more money, which allows the purchase of higher quality stuff, which lets you improve your Sim even more. Eventually, your Sim will have a mate, kids, and a mansion with an indoor pool.

Before you decide how to fix your Sims' health and happiness, you need to craft each of your simulated people: pick a name and a gender, decide on personality/astrological sign, and then choose a look from a variety of heads, bodies, and skin tones.After the creation, the next step is to find a place to live. Again, the player can choose from among the empty houses in the neighborhood or decide to buy some land and design a dream house. Building houses is a blast, and the easy-to-use house design interface could almost be its own game: players design the floor plan, put up walls, pick carpet, wallpaper, and siding, and fill the house with furniture, decorations, fixtures, and appliances. You're limited only by your imagination--and your Sims' pocketbook. But the choices you make in designing and decorating your Sims' house are vital.

Triumph or tragedy, each significant event in a Sim's life is captured in a snapshot and saved in a photo album for later viewing. Players can also take photos any time they wish. The photo album feature is cool by itself, but the best part is that you can upload the album to www.thesims.com and share your Sims' sagas with the world. Entire families can also be uploaded and downloaded, as can houses. Want to re-create and manage your own version of Friends? Download the free face and body editor and make Sim clones of Ross, Rachel, and the rest. Want to go really crazy and perfectly re-create the set? Snag the free wall and floor texture editor. With The Sims, you can create whatever--and whomever--you desire.

Toying with the lives, successes, and emotional states of dozens of little Sims is undeniably fun. In the same way that SimCity players develop a condescending attitude toward real-world city planners, The Sims players will begin to see life as a series of needs-satisfying challenges; the game gets in your head. But that's OK: limitless gameplay, endless variety, cool Internet features, and the ability to play matchmaker/landlord/counselor/God makes The Sims a great way to increase your own Fun score. --Mike Fehlauer

Pros:

• Unique, addictive, fun gameplay
• Included photo album feature records triumphs and tragedies
• Free uploads and downloads expand the game and allow swapping with other players
• Sims are smart--it's sometimes best to just let them act on their own

• Addictive gameplay may cause loss of sleep, job
• Complex behavioral modeling program--requires serious computing power
• No pets other than fish