The Harvest Moon series has always been a favorite of mine, and I was thrilled to see both upcoming games playable. Though the games aren't yet ready for North American release (evident by both the amounts of Japanese text and the mangled English text), it was still an adventure to dive into the games, even for a short period of time.

Mineral Town is set in the same location as Harvest Moon: Back to Nature, released on the PSX. The same friends (and romantic foes) return again, with many of the same goals: make the farm prosper, fall in love and get married, and life happily ever after with ten chickens and eight cows. Graphically, the new GBA incarnation looks almost identical, with many subtle changes.

The nice part about Mineral Town (not counting the fact it's portable) is the new link-up function that's used in conjuction with Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life. Though both are completely different towns, they can be linked up together via Connectivity, and can transfer data back and forth between the two towns. Since there was no demonstration of this feature, it's hard to say precisely what data can be transferred, but it's certainly a feature to look forward to.