Story of Seasons



Story of Seasons, formerly called Harvest Moon, is a series of Simulation Games based on farming developed by Marvelous Entertainment and translated by Natsume in North America and Rising Star Games in Europe. The original game was released for the Super NES in 1995, and since then there have been over twenty Harvest Moon titles released for a variety of different consoles. (The Other Wiki has a list.) The plot line, such as it is, is much the same for almost every game: the protagonist, a young man (or woman) just starting life on his or her own, inherits or buys a farm. Sadly, its previous owner was unable to keep up with chores on the farm, leaving it in a significantly dilapidated state... and now it's up to you to fix it!

Gameplay is generally fairly simple. The player must clear the fields, plant crops, raise livestock like cows, sheep, and chickens, care for pets like horses and dogs, and gather materials from the countryside to help improve his/her house or sell for extra cash. However, the "business" aspects of play are not nearly the full scope of the game; the social aspect of the series is one of its biggest draws.

In addition to making money through a variety of means, the player is generally expected to integrate himself or herself into the community. Players can make friends with various townsfolk, attend festivals (which range from paralleling real-life holidays like Thanksgiving or Christmas, to pseudo-religious ceremonies, purely social occasions in the community, and competitions where the player can compete himself or herself or enter his/her livestock or pets to compete), woo the local girls (or guys in later versions where you can play as a female farmer), and eventually get married and have children.

There is a distinct flavor of the spiritual in the Harvest Moon games; the player can typically meet a variety of imps, sprites, spirits, fairies, and even the Harvest Goddess, most of which are friendly and will help you out if you give offerings or make an effort to befriend them. Though a game that revolves around doing farm chores might sound ridiculously boring, somehow they managed to make an entertaining, stylish, successful game franchise around the concept. Not to mention ridiculously addictive. Although the series has never achieved massive sales numbers, it enjoys an extremely loyal cult fanbase.

More recent games have included an Unexpected Gameplay Change or two; Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon for the DS has a fantasy setting and some RPG-style elements, such as the ability to fight monsters (and with the releases of RF 2 (DS) and Frontier (Wii), has become a full-fledged Spin-Off Series), while in Innocent Life: A Futuristic Harvest Moon for the PSP, the player character is actually a Ridiculously Human Robot.

In the majority of the games, there is a certain time limit (usually between two and three years of game time) built in, at which point some event (such as the character's father visiting the farm) occurs and the player is "graded"- but it's almost always possible to continue playing indefinitely even after you've received your "grade".

As with most popular series, it has a wiki, two in-fact.

Don't confuse for the Neil Young song, although it could make one good soundtrack for the game, or the Blue Oyster Cult song which would make a decidedly less fitting soundtrack for the games.

The games in the series (North American releases) include:

 * Harvest Moon (SNES, 1995)
 * Harvest Moon GB (Game Boy, 1997)
 * Harvest Moon 64 (Nintendo 64, 1999)
 * Harvest Moon 2 GBC (Game Boy Color, 1999)
 * Back To Nature (PlayStation, 1999)
 * Harvest Moon 3 GBC (Game Boy Color, 2000)
 * Save The Homeland (PlayStation 2, 2001)
 * Friends Of Mineral Town (Game Boy Advance, 2003)
 * A Wonderful Life (Nintendo GameCube, 2003)
 * More Friends of Mineral Town (Game Boy Advance, 2003)
 * Another Wonderful Life (Nintendo GameCube, 2004)
 * Magical Melody (Nintendo GameCube, 2005)
 * Harvest Moon DS (Nintendo DS, 2006)
 * DS Cute (Nintendo DS, 2005)
 * Island Of Happiness (Nintendo DS, 2007)
 * Tree of Tranquility (Wii, 2007)
 * Animal Parade (Wii, 2009)
 * My Little Shop (Wii Ware, 2009)
 * Sunshine Islands (Nintendo DS, 2009)
 * Hero of Leaf Valley (PlayStation Portable, 2010)
 * Grand Bazaar (Nintendo DS, 2010)
 * The Tale of Two Towns (Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS; 2010)
 * A New Beginning (Nintendo 3DS, 2012)
 * Story of Seasons (Nintendo 3DS, 2014)) Xseed is localizing the game instead of Natsume, so the game lacks the title of Harvest Moon.

Spinoffs include

 * Innocent Life: A Futuristic Harvest Moon (PlayStation Portable, 2007)
 * Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon (Nintendo DS, 2007)
 * Puzzle De Harvest Moon (Nintendo DS, 2007)
 * Harvest Moon: Frantic Farming (Nintendo DS, 2009; a sequel to Puzzle De based on Island of Happiness)
 * The Lost Valley (Nintendo 3DS, 2014)) A Minecraft-style spin-off, with the traditional Harvest Moon gameplay.

"Alice: "Well, I guess I'll take it from you. I-It's not like I'm happy about it or anything!""
 * Acceptable Breaks From Reality: Goes hand in hand with logical problems in the series.
 * Adaptational Attractiveness: A majority of the SNES characters had their designs updated to look more attractive and modern in Magical Melody.
 * A Homeowner Is You: Some games let you buy another house.
 * All in a Row: In the Wii games, you can have your spouse, your pets, or one of your children walk with you. They follow obediently behind you in this fashion, and you can create some amusingly Benny Hill-esque chains. (Farmer chased by little boy chased by penguin chased by OH GOD A BEAR!)
 * All-Natural Gem Polish: In most games it's played straight, but it's notably averted in Animal Parade--all the gems you find are uncut and require Mira to appraise and cut them before they're worth anything. And she has a decent chance of failing, too.
 * Anachronism Stew: Most games will include very modern items like TVs or refrigerators, maybe even DVD players, but there will never be any industrialization of the farming industry.
 * An Economy Is You: Especially egregious in Island Of Happiness where not only do you fix up your farm, but pay for bridge and road repair
 * An Interior Designer Is You: Not much, but you do occasionally get to spiff up your house with accessories.
 * Magical Melody added the option to rearrange furniture in your house. Most console games since then have this feature, and Tree of Tranquility, Animal Parade, and DS Cute allow you to change the wall color.
 * Artificial Difficulty: Later games (especially Island of Happiness and Sunshine Islands) make certain goals hard to achieve by simply ramping up the amount of game time it takes to reach them. (Ex. Your child takes three to four in-game years to reach the "walking and talking" stage, where in other games, it would take a year and a half at the most)
 * Artificial Human: The player in Innocent Life.
 * Awesome but Impractical: Several magical items throughout the games which do exactly what they say but aren't worth the time needed to use them or the effort needed to gain them. Not to mention - particularly stamina/fatigue recovery items - are simply inferior to readily purchasable or makable items.
 * Similarly, in many games there is one crop that is significantly more profitable than all the others (e.g. strawberries in Magical Melody, Blue Mist Flowers in Animal Parade), and planting this crop in great numbers for an entire season can easily make you rich. Similarly, many games have "money tricks" that allow you to make loads of money in a short period of time. However, since one of the chief goals of the game is to make money, using these methods can make the game quite boring.
 * Babies Ever After: One of the primary goals of most of the games; if it's not mandatory, it will at least be required to get One Hundred Percent Completion. Find a suitable match, fall in love, marry them, and have a baby with them.
 * Blind Idiot Translation: Since the games are Japanese, every game in the series contains various errors and quirks in the English translation, some worse than others. Natsume misspelled their own name on the title screen of Harvest Moon 64, among tons of other mistakes, as well as at least one character who doesn't even speak English in the translated version.
 * In Friends of Mineral Town, sofa is misspelled as "sopha." It's the old word for sofa but... really?
 * More errors here.
 * In Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life for the Gamecube you can get a "Mae" sheep.
 * In Magical Melody, the "USI" on Blue's hat is the result of an incorrenct Japanese-to-English transliteration; what it should say is "USHI" (meaning "cow" in Japanese).
 * Boring but Practical: In many games, fishing is one of the best ways to make money, especially early in the game, but it can get highly repetitive. However, many games make catching every kind of fish a Sidequest which can be rather enjoyable.
 * Bowdlerise: Natsume has done this several times. They've changed references of alcohol to "juice" and "soda", taken out the thinly veiled Gay Option in one game, taken out religious references in a few games.. They've changed lines in a few games, especially in the Wii games. Gil had an infamous line about wanting to lock you in a basement, which was changed in the translation.
 * Bragging Rights Reward: Marrying the Harvest Goddess--by the time you're capable of marrying her, you've usually done everything else but get married. She doesn't even live with you--you still have to give her a gift in her pond if you want to talk to her.
 * More Friends of Mineral Town also had the Gourmet. You can only talk to him one day out of the year. You have to cook every food available. And once you marry him, he doesn't even stick around--he only comes home for family events, and otherwise, he's gone.
 * The Harvest Goddess (and Harvest King) as purely Bragging Rights Reward candidates is averted in Animal Parade. To woo them, the only thing you have to do is beat the main storyline--and that's hardly anything at all with regards to One Hundred Percent Completion. They still won't live with you, but there's nothing special you have to do to win their favor. (Well, aside from the usual showering them with gifts, but even that's not too difficult, as their favorite items can be easily purchased.)
 * Marrying Alisa in The Tale of Two Towns. She's the last of any marriage candidate to be unlocked (Fall of Year 2 at the earliest), the requirements to woo her are totally different than everyone else's (ex. You have to go on at least 100 dates with her and she has no special heart event) and when you finally manage to wed her (Late Winter, Year 3 at the earliest), you don't even get to have kids with her. Not to mention you have to use the Wonderfuls to wish for permission from the Harvest Goddess to marry Alisa. There's a good chance the option to ask won't come up.
 * Broken Bridge: Areas are sometimes blocked off until certain story events; in Harvest Moon 64, there's a literal broken bridge that leads up to the mountain peak that isn't fixed until near the end of the first year- though a clever player can find a detour around it before then. (You can get back down by pressing A along the cliff next to the tree to jump back down)
 * Christmas Rushed: People generally assume this is why Harvest Moon 64 was released at the end of November, with so many on-screen typos in the in-game English-language text.
 * Continuity Nod: In the Japanese version of Harvest Moon DS, linking it with a copy of Friends of Mineral Town that had linked with a copy of A Wonderful Life will make the grave of your Wonderful Life character appear as DS is set in the same town as A Wonderful Life but 100 years in the future; the English version just makes the grave belong to your Mineral Town character. Perhaps they didn't want the player to buy three games just to unlock an incredibly minor thing in one.
 * This is possible in the English version, too. It's just a really bad idea.
 * Another example is that in Animal Parade, it is mentioned that in the past, during the Flower Festival, a girl from the village would be voted to be the goddess of the festival. That's what was done in Harvest Moon 64.
 * In the same game, Ellen and Gray appear in their long-forgotten Harvest Moon 64 roles.
 * Chelsea has the exact same get-up as Sara however she wears her bandanna rather than having it around her neck.
 * Continuity Porn: For a series with such a flimsy (possibly non-existent) timeline, the games thrive on this.
 * Convection, Schmonvection: The Volcano Island mine in Sunshine Islands. In Animal Parade, you can go so deep in the mines that you reach an area with some land platforms surrounded by a sea of magma.
 * Crystal Dragon Jesus: Harvest Moon games tend to have a church with a clearly Catholic priest, including worship services on Sunday mornings and marriage ceremonies performed as necessary, but they actually worship the Harvest Goddess.
 * If you can get past the idea of goddess worship, consider that this is one of the few games in which a church is played up as a positive, appreciated part of life. In Back to Nature, for example, the priest is pleasant, kind, and not above a good laugh, and he gives decent advice now and then; also, at one point you round up the kids in town and take them to church, and from then on they go to church almost daily, are happy to do so, and even discuss a bit of theology (something about confession ("apologize from the heart")). Tell me another game this positive about religion at all.
 * Ones that don't go out the other side into Narm, anyway.
 * Darker and Edgier: A Wonderful Life. The character development is notably more serious than most of the franchise, giving it something of a darker mood. The passage of time is also more evident than most Harvest Moon games; the game doesn't end until you die of old age!
 * Defrosting the Ice Queen: Each game has at least one suitor (male or female) who fits this trope.
 * Disc One Nuke: In order (note, most of these require extreme precision, some luck, and a lot of planning on what exactly you buy and when):
 * First off, fans have done the math on the crops of all of the games, making it ridiculously easy to maximize your profits. In addition, many secrets, such as power berries, are possible to get immediately (with no reliance on luck or skill) if you know where to find them, making it simple to supercharge your farmer well before you would have been able to via legitimate exploration.
 * The SNES version had the game clock stop at 6 PM, meaning you can clear the entire farm (which is unbelievably big compared to later versions) on the first day, by using the hot springs bath every time you're about to faint. You can't sell anything at night, but you can safely ignore all your other chores until then.
 * In Harvest Moon 64, glitches allows you to immediately bring Karen to max affection (by repeatedly showing her your dog) and level your tools to the highest quality on the first day.
 * Back to Nature has the first mines just a few steps away from the hot springs bath, which restores both stamina and fatigue fully within 1 hour 10 minutes of in-game time. This means you never have to sleep, and the short trip to the mines makes it easy to get several thousand dollars by the second day.
 * In A Wonderful Life it's possible to get a crop-to-seed converter for free by befriending the local Mad Scientist. If you plant some trees, harvest their fruit and turn them back into seeds, your money problems are over because the tree seeds are the most expensive seeds in the game and sell much higher than the actual fruit.
 * Harvest Moon DS has pretty much the most ridiculously exploitable mines ever. By using savescumming techniques, it's entirely possible to (on the first day of the game) get all of the cursed tools, any (or all) of the cursed accessories, and a huge amount of rare gemstones that can be sold for massive profit. By the end of the second game day, it's possible to have the legendary sword, several million G in the bank, and accessories that give you infinite working potential and twice as much time outdoors to work. Generally players are expected to take several game years to get this sort of bankroll and equipment spread.
 * In Magical Melody, if you get insanely lucky, you can make several hundred the first few days finding random things on the mountain to sell.
 * Distaff Counterpart: Several of the games have a "For Girl" version, which is pretty much the same except that the playable character is female and a few features are added, altered, or fixed.
 * Does This Remind You of Anything?: Aside from some of the Getting Crap Past the Radar moments in the series as a total, "Cute" has a few of these. For example the same sex "Best Friend" marriage. In the same game, a bunch of 19 - 30 year old girls keep on mentioning they want to "play" with you and they come over to your house to have play dates in a few events.
 * Downer Ending: Animal Parade plays this to a tee. Helping the Harvest King and finishing the story comes with a terrible price: your character is forced to give up one of his/her very own children. Forever.
 * Drama Bomb: Sweet little old ladies in the series have a habit of dying, just to keep you from becoming too complacent in your relaxing farm chores.
 * An Entrepreneur Is You: Since you usually own the farms.
 * Excuse Plot: Most of the games don't flesh out much beyond the simple premise that you've either purchased or inherited an old farm, and now it's up to you to fix it up and make your living as a farmer. By far the worst is "The Harvest Goddess was punished for calling the king bald. He's to lazy to undo his own curse, so you go fix it"
 * Magical Melody is one of the few that actually has the player trying to achieve a specific goal. The Harvest Goddess turned herself to stone because the townspeople no longer appreciate life like they once did, or her existence; the player must get her back to normal by collecting magical music notes (received by doing a large variety of things in life), and bring the village back to life (so to speak), because he/she is the only person besides Jamie who can see the Harvest Sprites.
 * Expy: Quite a few of the Magical Melody "original characters" have designs and roles parallel to the Flowerbud characters in Harvest Moon 64. The most obvious being Blue, a carbon copy of Gray with a new name. The AWL games have a more subtle version. A blond bartender with romance issues and a brunette Friend to All Living Things? Are we talking about Muffy and Celia or Eve and Ellen?
 * It's a common thing in Harvest Moon, especially the handhelds. Character archetypes are used very often to the point where it's a ritual to some fans. The (usually) hot Asian doctor, the baker, the antisocial quiet guy, the player, the Tsundere, the Bokukko, the Meganekko, etc.
 * Eyedscreen: Used extensively in HMDS cutscenes.
 * Fan Nickname: "Jill" for the female player characters, until their names were eventually revealed to be Claire [the blonde] and Pony [the brunette].
 * Many people refer to any of the male protagonists without an ingame default name as "Jack" despite the fact that the Wonderful Life "Jack" is "Mark", the Magical Melody one is "Tito", the Save The Homeland one is Tony, and most others up until IOH were called "Pete".
 * The Grand Bazaar protagonists have no official names yet, but the fans call then "Hansel" and "Gretel".
 * Fishing for Sole: All of them. In Animal Parade, one of the townspeople actually operates his own recycling service so you can get RID of that junk.
 * Fishing Minigame: One of the main ways of making cash is by catching and selling fish.
 * Fission Mailed: In most of the games since Back To Nature, getting married triggers the credits. But the game goes right back to normal after they finish. One of the exceptions is Tale of Two Towns, where the credits come after the tunnel is fully reopened.
 * Flanderization: The series is extremely prone to this. If someone pops up in another game, expect this to happen to them. It's especially bad in Harvest Moon 64 to Back To Nature, where everyone became more one-dimensional or changed dramatically. For example Popuri became an Adult Child, which got worse in DS and Island of Happiness, when originally she was just a bubbly ditz.
 * Four Is Death: For various reasons, many HM games do strange things if you perform specific actions at 4:44 AM/PM.
 * That's because in Japan, the number "4" is viewed with much superstition and is considered unlucky (much like the number "13" in the West).
 * Frothy Mugs of Water: Used inconsistently. Some games replace alcohol with 'soda' or 'juice', while others rather explicitly use alcohol.
 * Funny Afro: The Black Team sprites in DS.
 * Game Breaking Bug: The PAL version of Back To Nature could not be advanced past your new bride picking your nickname. The North American version of Tree of Tranquility actually has a marriage candidate, Calvin, incapable of being wooed due to a bad freeze during a required marriage cutscene. Harvest Moon DS has numerous game breakers in the first version, which were corrected in the girl version. Naturally, if Natsume deigns to correct any of these bugs, the players who got stuck with the early versions are forced to shell out full price for a new version.
 * Later versions of Tree of Tranquility had the "Calvin" bug fixed, to the delight of many, many female players. (For reference: This is Calvin.) Fortunately for owners of the original, you can (or at least could) exchange a bugged version for the fixed one, albeit through the dubious method of mailing it to the company with a note and return address.
 * Animal Parade has a very nasty one where your children can disappear entirely except for certain events. This guide has more information.
 * Harvest Moon DS has a nasty one where the game will sometimes save improperly, leading to the save becoming corrupt. It is far more common when using a sprite team (especially the fishing team, which is the source of a bug that can make you a billionaire in a night).
 * Gay Option: Averted; though counterparts exist to woo your possible mates if you don't, you can't pursue same-sex couples, except in DS Cute, in which you can only get some of the original haremettes and only in a Romantic Two-Girl Friendship situation- only in the Japanese version, though.
 * Generation Xerox: Technically, DS is set 100 years after Friends of Mineral Town/A Wonderful Life, but everyone's lives and history are utterly identical. Not to mention, why does no one find it unusual that you can buy DVDs of 100-year-old TV shows?
 * They have nothing better to watch or are nostalgic.
 * It's not that unusual. We still have DVD's of Charlie Chaplin's films.
 * Getting Crap Past the Radar: If you accidentally try to milk a bull in A Wonderful Life, instead of being annoyed (or nothing happening), it responds with a green heart.
 * From the same game, one wonders why they even bothered to continue saying "miracle potion" in a game that included bulls in the first place. When you decide to use a "miracle potion,"
 * The "Wonderful Life" sub-series is given the "Adult Situations" rating, unlike the other Harvest Moons.
 * DS/Cute has some, uh, unusual events too. One event in Cute has your friend, Mimi, telling you how she envies you. She married for convenience, whereas you married for love. She wishes she had as nice and romantic a man as your husband. What's so odd about that? She decides to rectify this by announcing that she's going to have an affair with your husband. Your character performs the Heroic Mime equivalent of giving her three "Oh-no-you-di'--n't!" snaps, and she tries to cover herself by claiming she was joking. And this isn't the only adultery joke in the game, oddly...
 * In (More) Friends, when Zack delivers the large bed to you, he wonders out loud what you're going to do with a bed that big (as in most HM games, the bed upgrade is a marriage requirement). He does so with a large toothy grin.
 * Another event in Cute features Rock asking you if you would like to hang out with him at the beach. You are married and he is not. When he realizes that you and him are the only two on the beach, he begins to get a few ideas...but quickly decides against it since he doesn't want your husband angry at him for the rumors about you having an affair that could get around.
 * In Animal Parade, rather than just making you or your spouse pregnant, you actually plan to have children. But when you do so, your spouse makes comments along the lines of, "Well, if we're going to try to have kids, we've got our work cut out for us! <3"
 * The Japanese version of Cute got away with lesbian marriage in an E game by simply slapping the phrase "Best Friend" on everything, even though everything romantic is left intact.
 * In "A Tale of Two Towns", one of the date options for Hiro is "Hiro's Room".
 * Global Currency Exception:
 * The Sprite Casino in DS. Also joked about in DS on the "TV Shopping" station: If they're not selling real items you can use, they're selling items specifically for Harvest Sprites, which use the Sprite currency, Korobos. The sprite who runs the station says, "If you use a different currency, sorry."
 * Also, the Super Lucky Lotto in Grand Bazaar. You have to use bronze, silver or gold coins you find or make. It's the only place you can get the stamina-expanding Magic Water (which also happens to be Emiko's favored gift).
 * Going Through the Motions: Usually avoided by using character portraits rather than models or sprites, but Magical Melody used it, and used it poorly, to great annoyance. Tree of Tranquility does the same thing but with a little more subtlety.
 * Good Bad Translation: Harvest Moon 64 had one of these, up to and including the fact that the distributing company spelled their own name wrong on the title screen. Strikes a few of the other games to varying degrees as well.
 * The names of the DS characters were changed to match their original names, since the Japanese ones had new names for plot related reasons.
 * Gotta Catch Em All:
 * Musical Notes in Magical Melody
 * Sprites in HM DS
 * Sunstones in Sunshine Islands
 * G-Rated Sex: There are an awful lot of babies in the games, and very little actual baby-formation.Eggs will hatch if they're placed in an incubator, even if you only have one bird--suggesting that Havest Moon chickens are hermaphrodites capable of self-fertilization. There generally aren't any bulls, rams, or billies--just "miracle potions" for the different animals, which get them pregnant with no muss or fuss, and their offspring are always female as well. Finally, even your own character is capable of having a child, but you or your wife simply wakes up one day feeling sick and then finds out they're pregnant, with nothing else mentioned of it. However, you do have to keep your spouse's Love Points next to maxed-out for at least a season or more to see the pregnancy event, which does have some... er, implications about the state of your relationship.
 * General exceptions: The two Wonderful Life games and Harvest Moon 3 on the Game Boy Color, which had gendered animals. Breeding was still nothing explicit, however.
 * Heck, the "Best Friends" in DS Cute's Japanese version still had this! One day, the Harvest King would decided to randomly make either you or your "Best Friend" pregnant. Nothing else necessary.
 * The Wii games seem a bit more conscious of where babies come from, especially Animal Parade.
 * Well, the Japanese name for Miracle Potion is Ushi no Tane, AKA Cow's Seed.
 * Green Rocks: Materia Wonderfuls in IoH/SI and Grand Bazaar.
 * Guilt Based Gaming: Just let an animal die. A Wonderful Life also loved to rub it in your face if you were ever a Jerkass to the townspeople, especially if you went through the trouble of romancing a bride only to dump her and marry another girl at the last minute. Let's just say if you didn't immediately hate yourself after ruining Celia's life at the altar, you have no soul.
 * For some reason, people get angry at you if an animal dies of old age...
 * In the more recent games, this has been rectified so townspeople won't get a bit upset when a animal dies naturally. They still get upset if you are the cause of death however.
 * Magical Melody does this the first time one of your animals gets sick. Your character has a dream that the animal dies and Hank yells at you for not giving it medicine when it was ill. Your character then stands before the animal's grave and tombstone while looking miserable before waking up.
 * In Hero of Leaf Valley Bob and Gwen will take care of the sickness for your livestock and your dog respectively for the first two occurrences. The first time, they give you a friendly warning to take care of them better. The second time, however, they hit you in the face, calling you out on letting it happen again due to bad care-taking/negligence and telling you that it's the last time they are willing to care of your animals for you.
 * Guide Dang It: Some of the Scripted Events (as mentioned below), can turn out to be these, often requiring your character to be in a specific place at a specific time and/or day and/or season.
 * Healing Spring: Hot springs in some of the games will rapidly restore stamina.
 * Heart Container: Power berries fill this role in many games.
 * Also mine pitfalls in Island Of Happiness.
 * Hello, Insert Name Here: In the past, you had no default names and must pick a name yourself. Starting with Rune Factory and Innocent Life, you started getting default names, a practice continued in Island of Happiness and Tree of Tranquility.
 * Heroic Mime: In most games. In More Friends Of Mineral Town, your character has an Inner Monologue, and in the DS games, he or she just talks outright.
 * Honest Axe: Used straight in the original SNES version
 * 100% Completion: Generally not defined by the games themselves, leading the fandom to create their own requirements for the different games.
 * The most infamous is definitely HM64's Party Picture, the requirements of which are so stringent that even a good decade after the game's release, the fandom still isn't entirely sure of what exactly is necessary to get it.
 * Hyperactive Metabolism: More justified than most examples; eating food simply restores stamina, rather than healing wounds.
 * Hyperspace Mallet: A rare semi-justified version of this trope, Claire uses the Hammer tool (a giant mallet) on Thomas when he admits that they knew the farm had gone to ruin since its owner died.
 * Invulnerable Civilians: Used and averted; you can't touch other humans, but you can whack both wild critters and your own farm animals around with your tools, either on purpose or by accident. "Attacking" farm animals in this fashion will make them like you less, and may cause them to get sick.
 * Be warned, though: You can attack civilians in Animal Parade. Predictably, this makes them quite angry. Also, your watering can, which in the past had no effect on animals/townspeople, now does hurt them. So if you want to water your crops, make sure your animals and your family are out of the way first!
 * Though devoid of any lasting damage, the same can be done in Magical Melody. Whacking townspeople around with your tools can have a use, however: most festivals will send you off with the person you have the most hearts with, so if you have Theodore at the top of your list after trying to unlock all the buyable land, but don't want to watch the fireworks with a middle-aged man, you need only introduce him to your hammer.
 * Lampshaded here.
 * For whatever reason, in Magical Melody, your baby follows many of the same behavior patterns as your pet dog and pig. So while you can't hurt it, using gardening tools nearby really freak the kid out. Also, the game actually rewards you for hitting the moles with a hammer, because they dig up gardens.
 * Impossibly Delicious Food: Ultimate and Finest Curry. Lots of bachelors and bachelorettes have them as favorite items, and it's generally accepted that everyone in town likes curry. The exceptions are Carter and Alisa.
 * Incest Is Relative: In 64, apparently and potentially. In the original SNES games you marry one of the four bachelorettes. The protagonist of 64 is the former protagonists Identical Grandson. The child of the original protagonist and his unknown wife are one of the bachelorettes. So, if you think about it, you could be courting or even marrying your cousin. The same trope applies to nearly every Official Couple in DS and Cute, however they're distant relatives.
 * Interspecies Romance: You can woo gods, goddesses, and even a kappa! The Witch Princess and Wizard may not be human, either.
 * Instant Home Delivery
 * In-Universe Game Clock: Time passes whenever you're outdoors, so if you waste time, you might find yourself locked out of a store or missing a chance to spend time with your future spouse(!), plus the longer you stay up (and the correspondingly less sleep you get), the less activity you'll be able to do before you get tired.
 * Grand Bazaar and Twin Villages don't stop time when you're indoors either, so you have to doubly careful with time management.
 * Item Crafting
 * It's Up to You: Taken to an extreme in some games in which literally everything that happens in town is a result of the player's actions.
 * Jump Scare: In FoMT, if you enter your house at EXACTLY midnight (0:00) and examine the mirror (assuming you've bought it), you will hear a loud * THUNK* from somewhere in your house, and your character will look around in surprise. Alternativaly, sometimes you will see the image of the kappa pop out of the mirror for a moment, making your character jump back in surprise.
 * Kappa: One lives in the lake in Friends of Mineral Town. He'll give you the useful Blue Power Berry in return for lots of cucumbers. In the Distaff Counterpart version, you can marry him.
 * Kiss Diss
 * Kissing Cousins: At one point in DS and DS Cute, Celia refers to Vesta as "Aunt Vesta." Marlin is Vesta's brother. Marlin and Celia get married if you don't marry one of them. It could just be that she's using "aunt" as a term of endearment because she's lived with Vesta for so long and they're not actually related, but like most character traits in the series, it's open to interpretation.
 * Since it's common in Japan to use "aunt" or "grandpa" or the like to refer to people who aren't actually your relatives, it seems more likely that that is the case with Celia.
 * Celia explicitly refers to her parents once and how Vesta is simply like an aunt to her. As stated above though, this trope may still apply for the series.
 * Law of Chromatic Superiority: Rule of accessories: Green -> Red -> Blue = Good -> Better -> Best
 * Arguably the heart levels for marriage candidates: Black -> Purple -> Blue -> Green -> Yellow -> Orange -> Red
 * Wait, so the Green heart when you "milk" a bull is... Ewww...
 * Loads and Loads of Loading: Tree Of Tranquility.
 * A Wonderful Life Special Edition.
 * Looking for Love In All the Wrong Places: In Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life, Muffy is constantly getting her heart broken. Either the man she's seeing in the city is cheating on her, or she finds out he's already married and that she's the other woman. Despite all this, Muffy continues to hold out hope that she'll find true love. ... she doesn't.
 * Thankfully averted in the DS version.
 * Lost Forever: Particularly in HM64, where Karen and Cliff will leave and never come back if you do not get their relationship values high enough
 * Getting the Goddess Pond Hot Springs in DS require you to befriend Flora, to either a Blue Heart (in the boy version) or to 200+ Friendship Points (in the girl version). In the Boy Version, getting married to anyone who isn't Flora stops you from seeing the event, since it's one of her must-see-this-to-marry-her events. In the girl version, if Flora and Carter get married, or if you marry Carter, you're similarly cut off from seeing the event. The Hot Springs necessary both for completing your shipping lists (items only available from them) and rescuing some of the Purple Sprites.
 * It's actually possible to get the hot spring without marrying Flora: woo her until you see the event, then start wooing the girl of your choice afterwards.
 * Love Interests: Each game has a selection that the player can choose from
 * Luck-Based Mission: Particularly notable when mining in Harvest Moon Island of Happiness. More so early on until you get enough Orichalc (see Unobtainium below) to be able to increase your stamina cap, since you have a random chance every time you move to hit a pitfall on a tile, and a 1-in-5 chance of losing the amount of stamina equivalent to that you start the game with. At least save scumming is possible [and changes the pitfall's depth], but even then, it only helps so much. The hoe tool can also help the player avoid pitfalls.
 * It's also a very good - and very tedious - way to use up the stamina you need to get to the lower floors.
 * Heart Events in Two Towns (Now called "Flower Events") - even using an FAQ, you might not get the proper option to trigger the flower event, rather than a regular date.
 * Magic Tool: Averted; you get a variety of tools, each of which is used appropriately: a hammer breaks up boulders and broken fencing, a hoe tills soil, an axe chops lumber, etc.
 * In a more literal sense, though, you can acquire magical tools to aid you in some games. For example, the first Game Boy game awarded you a magic umbrella if you did well enough in the first year to allow you to summon rain whenever you wanted.
 * Another incarnation might be present in Island of Happiness: mysterious (and rarer than any given ore) are stones called "Wonderfuls" that are used to increase or alter the effects of your tools. Taro's fishing rod is the only tool in the game that cannot use these. Balanced out by the fact that the only difference between cheap tools and more expensive tools is how many of these stones can be set into one of the tools.
 * Marathon Level: Many of the caves, including the 65,535 floor fourth mine in HM DS/DS Cute.
 * Marth Debuted in Smash Bros: To newer fans, this occurs quite often when characters from older games appear in newer ones. Sara for example appeared for the first time in around ten years in a Wiiware game, and her source games are obscure Game Boy games; thus obviously some people thought she was a new character. Characters from the first game in the series have been mistaken for copycats of the Harvest Moon 64 characters, who are actually made as descendants of the originals.
 * Mayfly-December Romance: Wooing the Harvest Goddess, Harvest King, Witch Princess, Wizard, or Kappa.
 * If you marry the wizard in Animal Parade, he lampshades this by saying that he probably will live much longer than you.
 * Mini Game: Many games have a "horse-racing" mini-game at least, but the other games differ with respect to their mini-games. Magical Melody and Animal Parade even offer a few multiplayer games!
 * Minigame Zone: The Sprite Casino in DS / DS Cute
 * Mission Pack Sequel: Sunshine Islands and Animal Parade with respect to Island of Happiness and Tree of Tranquility, respectively. They share roughly the same mechanics and same character pool.
 * Mukokuseki: Averted quite well. A majority of the characters are Caucasian, and whenever someone else of another ethnicity appears it's quite apparent. Albeit, there are unusual cases. For example a lot of the doctors are ambiguously Asian, there have been a fair share of Ambiguously Brown characters, and Kate does not appear to have any Asian traits despite her parents being obviously Asian.
 * Multiple Choice Past: Back to Nature For Girl has your life being saved by a mysterious person...
 * Then Fridge Logic kicks if
 * My Local: Just about every game has a place where you can drink (and possibly meet potential suitors)
 * Nature Spirit: the games are populated by fairies, imps, and sprites as well as humans. Usually, befriending them will make life easier for the player.
 * New Game+: Both the Wii games have this. In the first one, Tree of Tranquility your child is the one who starts a new farm--though they turn into a carbon-copy of their parents. Because the children in Animal Parade actually look like your spouse, this no longer works, so instead, the link between the old game and the new is your child delivering goods to a new game file.
 * No Cartoon Fish
 * No Hugging, No Kissing: You wouldn't think so, would you, given how big a role getting married plays, but your little farmer and their spouse have a surprisingly chaste relationship. The only way to really show affection to your spouse is giving gifts, and the only time they ever seem to kiss at all is during the wedding scene. And in DS, there isn't even that!
 * Much less so in the Wii games--you can choose to spend time with your spouse any time by walking with them, they kiss you, and you have to continue building your love with them even after you're married. (And in Animal Parade, you actively try and have children, which is chock-full of... implications.
 * No OSHA Compliance: The mines from DS onwards. Lampshaded by a miner in Sunshine Islands who remarks on how dangerous the place is.
 * Nonstandard Game Over: If given the option to, the game will fade to credits if you refuse The Mayor's offer to turn the farm over to you.
 * DS/Cute had a variation on this: at the beginning of the game, your dog would attack the mayor. If you chose not to save the mayor, the credits rolled and you'd be taken back to the title screen.
 * Actually, most of the time, The Mayor would ask if you were sure until you agreed. AWL and (M)FOMT did hit you with a Non-Standard Game Over this way, and AWL in particular was chock-full of them: not getting married after the first year, neglecting your farm in the second chapter (which would result in Nami or Muffy leaving and taking your son with her, ending your game), etc.
 * Special Edition makes it even easier. When Takura asks you if you want to own the farm or not just press no and... Game Over before the game even actually begins.
 * Apparently, in DS/Cute, if you grow a Level 99 Poison Mushroom and put it in the soup at the Harvest Festival, you will poison the entire village and cause this. Growing a Poisonous Mushroom to Level 99 in incredibly difficult, though.
 * Oddly-Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: The two Unexpected Gameplay Changed spinoffs are called Rune Factory and Innocent Life; the fact that they're actually Harvest Moon games is only mentioned in the subtitle.
 * The Japanese title for Back To Nature is The Farm Story: Harvest Moon, with the female version being The Farm Story: Harvest Moon For Girl; they're the only games that use the western title.
 * Official Couple: The series tries its best to avert this, but it still shows. For example in the Wonderful Life games Celia and Rock take a liking to you according to your gender, and their events are easy to get even if you don't interact with them (it doesn't help that Marlin and Gustafa are rather hard to court than to Rock and that Celia increases in attraction when you buy seeds and such from their farm); you also can't divorce Celia unlike the other two girls. Magical Melody has you and Jamie, likewise the Island games have you and your psuedo-character. Cute seems to imply that the protagonist marries Marlin, Skye, or one of the Special Girls. An accurate Harvest Moon 64 guide states that Elli is the canon love interest for that game.
 * The fact that Karen (in Harvest Moon 64) and Nami (in Wonderful Life) get vastly more character development than the rest of the other love interests can make it come off like they're the ones you're supposed to get with. Especially since they leave if you don't.
 * One Game for the Price of Two: Several later games had content that could only be unlocked by connecting another game to it. [Ex: Inserting Friends Of Mineral Town into your DS to unlock the five Mineral Town brides in HM DS]
 * Don't forget the "Girl Versions". They aren't very different, besides the rivals turning into bachelors and the bachelorettes turning into rivals, some new things were added (such as clothing) and dialogue slightly changed.
 * An odd variation occurred for quite a period. Back To Nature is essentially a topsy turvy port of 64 to the PlayStation. Back To Nature gained it's own Distaff Counterpart version, the first in the series. The games were later ported to the Game Boy Advance in enhanced 2D remakes.
 * Old Save Bonus: Unlocking bonus content in the DS games by connecting them to the GBA games.
 * One Steve Limit: The various Expys throughout the series are usually kept separate--there are two separate but very similar Basils, for instance, though they're from different games--but DS brushes up against this. The priest from Mineral Town's church is named Carter. The professor who runs the excavation site is also named Carter. They'll both send you New Year's cards if you're friends with them. Erm.
 * In a lighter variation, Friends of Mineral Town has both an Ann and an Anna. (Say that five times fast.)
 * There's also "Ann" from SNES and Magical Melody, and "Ann" from the Mineral Town, DS, and N64 games. Justified that the second Ann was made as a grand-daughter to the original, and thus was named after her in-game.
 * Two protagonists are officially named "Mark". Both the "Wonderful Life" protagonist and the "Island Of Happiness" protagonist.
 * There are two Daisy's in the series. One from an obscure Game Boy game, and the other is from Grand Bazaar. Incidentally, the latter has an eerie resemblance to a character from the Game Boy games named "Choco", who reappeared in My Little Shop.
 * Opening the Sandbox: All games start like this, it is a Wide Open Sandbox series after all, but it is not truly like this until you unlock all the villagers, upgrade all the shops, etc.
 * Panicky Expectant Father: If you're playing a Distaff Counterpart version or a female character, your PC's husband will be this during the "child born" event. Even if you marry the town doctor, he will probably be a panicky wreck.
 * Patchwork Kids: Your children in Animal Parade are made up of your character's face with your spouse's hair and eye color. Even the weird ones--so yes, Phoebe's children will be teal-haired, and Wizard's kids inherit Daddy's Mismatched Eyes.
 * Pamphlet Shelf
 * Perverse Sexual Lust: The goal of the games is actually to try and invoke this, as there's a girl/boy to cater to every taste. How else are they going to get you to want to marry them?
 * Pet Interface: In nearly all the HM games, your horse serves as a mobile shipping bin. The Dog's usefulness varies from game to game
 * Playable Epilogue: As mentioned above, you can keep playing indefinitely even after receiving your "grade", though in some games, your character will eventually die of old age!
 * The first game is perhaps the only one that doesn't allow this, making this a case of Early Installment Weirdness.
 * Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Animal Parade is a... bizarre case. When you eventually have children, in their very first (newborn) stage, they will always be swaddled in a blue blanket. The difference between boys and girls is the girls have longer eyelashes. However, when your rivals have children, the boys will be in the standard blue blankets... and the girls will be in pink! No eyelash difference at all. We can't explain it, either.
 * Puppy Love: Stu and May (BTN and Mineral Town), Hugh and Katie (DS\DS Cute), Charlie and Eliza (Island of Happiness), Rahi and Ying (Tale of Two Towns)
 * Quicksand Box: Experienced Harvest Moon players will likely have an idea and clear goals in mind when they first start a game, but for a neophyte, the complete freedom and lack of concrete goals can be easily overwhelming. Grand Bazaar seems to be an intentional attempt to avert this trope.
 * Quietly Performing Sister Series: The River King games, which actually predate Harvest Moon, but aren't nearly as popular.
 * Relationship Values: Used to judge your progress with wooing potential mates; sometimes used with other characters as well, to determine how they react to your character or if they'll give you certain items.
 * Retraux: My Little Shop and Magical Melody invoke this. Various characters from previous games, even very obscure ones like Sara and Choco, are shown in their original roles (or parallels). And the Fandom Rejoiced.
 * Retro Universe: It's hard to place a majority of the games. Some look like they could take place in the early to mid 1900s, but there are various aspects of them that are more modern. Although ostensibly set in something resembling the present day (in one game you can buy a DVD player for your house, and in another, there's a modern periodic table hanging on the wall in the school, and the hospital in every game is generally very modern), everyone gets around on horse-drawn carriages, the designs are often 70s at best in their ruralness, and other technology is deliberately retro. More recent games seem to be becoming more modern though.
 * Romantic Two-Girl Friendship: In the Japanese version of DS Cute, Claire or Pony can end up with a girl instead, but as "Best Friends"... even though you still have to propose, you still need the two-person bed in your house, and you eventually adopt a child.)
 * RPG Elements: DS/Cute goes surprisingly "RPG-y." The mines are filled up with monsters you have to fight with your tools--there are even "bosses" on some levels--and there's even one tool, a Legendary Sword, which exists more or less specifically so you can fight monsters. The same games also have a "Doghouse Battle" mini-game, where you participate in very, very... strange fights against the other townspeople in RPG-style.
 * Saintly Church: Technically, in each game, you're only going to find one or two people at the church, but the general running theme with it makes it fall under this trope.
 * Save Game Limits: Saving your game is done by writing in your diary, which can only be done immediately before going to sleep. So, although you can technically save whenever you like, as soon as you do your day is finished. Some later Harvest Moon games allow you to continue working even after you've saved, or even save anywhere, excusing the very presence of the diary in some of the tutorial TV shows by saying "some people like it".
 * Save Scumming: Practically the only way to get rare mining items - without blatantly cheating.
 * The easiest way to get to the lower floors in Island of Happiness's mines (alongside a large stock of cheap'n'easy restoratives).
 * Schmuck Bait: Golden Lumber. Expensive as HELL and in some games, just possessing some will lower friendship levels with the entire town.
 * Using it for fences will lower your approval as being showy and audacious.
 * Scripted Event: Lots and lots of them! Some are triggered by certain days of the year, while others are the result of your Relationship Values.
 * Second Place Is for Losers: Fail to win a competition - even if you come in second - and many of the villagers will react like you finished ninth in an eight-man race.
 * She Cleans Up Nicely: The bookish, shy, often-bespectacled girl is always jaw-droppingly gorgeous on her wedding-day. This applies to all the other brides as well, but on those girls it's more noticeable.
 * Shout-Out: Someone was having fun with Tree of Tranquility and Animal Parade. The most blatant one most people will probably get, in Animal Parade: Innkeeper Jake has found the Wizard's crystal ball and doesn't want to give its magical powers up. What does he say? "My precioussssss..."
 * In another of Animal Parade's events, Calvin can find Owen and Luke attempting to demolish a very historic wall in the mines and, scolding them, cry that "It belongs in a museum!"
 * Yet more in Animal Parade: The Pantsuit item has, as its description, "A suit for taking care of business and working overtime.
 * The animal parade examples keep piling up!, watch a bear cub's max level trick and tell me it isn't a shout out to Pokemon
 * Talk to Julia in Island of Happiness while she's engaged to Elliot and she'll tell you she's "so excited, she just can't hide it".
 * Show Within a Show: In several games, you can watch programs on the TV in your house.
 * Sidequest: You could go through the entire game doing nothing more than planting and harvesting crops, but a lot of the fun stuff requires you to go exploring.
 * Sleeping Single: Strangely, in several games, the Big Bed is not for you and your spouse to share, but your spouse and your child. Your character still sleeps in his/her own little bed.
 * Oddly enough, the separate beds are a creation of the latter games: In the original and HM 64, you and your spouse shared a bed and your child had his own.
 * In a couple games, you, your husband, and your child all have your own separate beds.
 * In the newer games, you and your spouse share a bed while your child is given a crib by the town.
 * Slice of Life
 * Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome: Very dramatically in Animal Parade. Your rivals' children go from being infants to 5-6 year old kids in two weeks. Your own children take "only" eight weeks in comparison.
 * Socketed Equipment: You use Wonderful Stones this way in Island of Happiness.
 * Sprint Meter: As you work, you start to lose energy, and you farmer will display various states of exasperation, like wiping the sweat from his/her brow, or panting heavily. If you work yourself too hard, you'll collapse and be unable to work for the rest of the day.
 * Island of Happiness took this to a new level: when falling down the mines via pitfall, you lose stamina in an exponentially increasing way. Falling down one floor takes 1 stamina, but falling down five floors takes around 100 stamina. Save Scumming helps, however.
 * Sugar Bowl: About the worst thing that ever happens in the Harvest Mooniverse is that animals occasionally die --everything else is pretty idyllic... which makes the occasional Drama Bomb that much more powerful. A Wonderful Life is something of an exception to this, with a generally darker tone than the norm for the franchise.
 * Super Title 64 Advance: Harvest Moon 64, Harvest Moon DS.
 * Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Quite a few characters that were cast out completely from other games. The most noticeable being Claire to Sara, and Pastor Brown to Carter. Most substitutes aren't disliked though, due to the flexibility of the fandom and due to the fact they originals simply unknown due to the games they appeared in.
 * Take Your Time: With the exceptions of A Wonderful Life, Grand Bazaar, Twin Villages and Tree of Tranquility, time doesn't pass while in buildings, so you can screw around to your heart's content without missing anything. Especially glaring in some games where you can buy a greenhouse to grow crops in -- meaning that you can have absolutely massive fields of produce, and since a greenhouse is a building, it takes literally no time to plant, water, or harvest them all.
 * Talk to Everyone: In most HM games, an option, and path to secret items.
 * The Computer Is a Lying Bastard: In IoH and SI, you're told not to leave your animals out overnight. As long as you have them in an intact, fenced-in area (with grass to eat for your cows and sheep) and the weather is calm leaving them outside is good for them. Not to mention this advice runs counter to what every other HM game tells you ("Leave them outside as much as possible").
 * Tenchi Solution: In the original SNES version, you could woo all 5 girls without getting married for a special ending.
 * Took a Shortcut: Many characters you leave in one building will show up in the next one you travel to, even if you used a Teleport Stone to get there.
 * A particularly painful version happens when you are trying to talk to someone on a deadline, accidentally overshoot to the next screen on the path or they cross the screen line before you, and they're suddenly nowhere to be found.
 * Tsundere: Not as reliable as the Yamato Nadeshiko, but a few of the brides definitely qualify. Luna from Tree of Tranquility is the uber-example for this series, with the multiple Karens a close second. Antoinette from Grand Bazaar is another example.
 * Natalie from Island of Happiness.
 * Arguably Nami from A[nother] Wonderful Life although she does borderline Kuudere territory as well.
 * Male version: Gill from Tree of Tranquility and Animal Parade. Hie's in "tsuntsun" mode most of the time and gets pretty deep into Suspiciously Specific Denial territory when it comes to his feelings for your character, should you choose to court him.
 * Alice in Hero of Leaf Valley. So much so that when you give her a birthday present she goes so far as to use some classic tsundere lines.


 * The Ugly Guy's Cute Daughter: Gannon and Eliza from Island Of Happiness
 * Unexpected Gameplay Change: Several entire games do this; Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon and Innocent Life: A Futuristic Harvest Moon are both Exactly What It Says on the Tin, though the entire rest of the series are in realistic modern day settings, barring some various fairies, imps, and sprites, not to mention Puzzle De Harvest Moon, a not very well received Puzzle Game -- not of the Match Three subgenre, despite what anyone who hasn't played it will tell you.
 * Unwanted Harem: In A wonderful Life it's pretty easy to unintentionally get Muffy and Celia to fall for you, without even talking to them sometimes.
 * Updated Rerelease: AWL Special Edition, which added in an extra love interest, changing outfits, and potential daughters. But at the same time, the graphics actually got a little worse.
 * This of course was because the original was a Game Cube exclusive, while the special edition was released for the PlayStation 2.
 * It also got Loads and Loads of Loading for everything.
 * Marvelous has been doing these a lot lately. Distaff Counterpart related games, games that are basically the same games with extras (dating back to the GBC), remakes, etc.
 * Ultimate Authority Mayor: The government in each game apparently consists entirely of the local mayor.
 * Unlucky Childhood Friend / Victorious Childhood Friend: Karen and Rick in Friends of Mineral Town and More Friends of Mineral Town. If you choose to marry either Karen or Rick [depending on your version], the one left over will be an Unlucky Childhood Friend; if you choose to marry someone else, the two will eventually get married, and they'll be a Victorious Childhood Friend.
 * The latter happens in both versions of Back to Nature, where the childhood friend in question is revealed to be . Harvest Moon 64 is also an example, but any of the bachelorettes could end up like this if their Relationship Values are high enough, in which case the girls the player doesn't choose as a spouse become Unlucky Childhood Friends.
 * Unobtainium: Usually in the form of Orichalcum, Adamantite, and/or Mythic Stones
 * In Island of Happiness: There are special floors that occur regularly [and the game tells you where they are when conditions are met], some of which are almost exclusively for one of these Unobtanium ores. Of course, junk ore STILL manages to show up there...
 * Averted in Grand Bazaar, where you can easily buy the Orichalcum and Adamantite from Lloyd's stall for only 9800 G.
 * Urban Legend of Zelda: The perma-locked sheds in A Wonderful Life and the many non-existent ways to open them.
 * Also from A Wonderful Life, the many little animals running around the valley wearing neckacheifs, and the many ways to 'recruit' them onto your farm.
 * Ascended Fanon: In Sunshine Islands, once you raise Animal Island, you can befriend the animals there and have them do certain chores for you - like gathering lumber and grasses.
 * Vendor Trash: Weeds, stones and branches are universally this, for those who pick them up. Garbage obtained fishing (trunks, tires and cans are common) and mining (junk ore) are also available in games with those features. This issue is compounded in the later games that allow item stacking, meaning you can have 99 Junk Ore before selling them off.
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential: IoH's Chelsea and Mark react in the "really likes" range for all gifts. So you can raise your affection levels with them by feeding them a steady stream of weeds, rocks and fishing trash.
 * You can also woo all the girls, and in some games this even seems to prevent them from marrying your rivals...
 * In BTN and FOMT: There's also not telling Cliff about the job at Duke's winery. If you don't tell him, he'll run out of money and leave Mineral Town for good a week later (doubly cruel if you're playing the Distaff Counterpart or if you don't want to marry Ann)
 * In 64, if you don't befriend Karen and the Harvest Goddess and wish for Karen's winery to be fruitful again, Karen runs off.
 * In A Wonderful Life, you could purchase a goat starting from the second year. You couldn't sell it, so once you bought it you were stuck with it permanently, and it only gave milk for one in-game year and then stopped producing anything, essentially becoming a wasted space in your barn. In order to free up the slot in their barn, many players resorted to killing it by leaving it out in the rain and not giving it food. Mercifully, Another Wonderful Life added in the option to sell your goat.
 * In Magical Melody, your horse's heart level determines what race you can enter it in, and you can't enter it in any lower-ranked races. If your horse's heart level surpasses the limit for the race you want to enter, you're forced to abuse your horse to get its heart level back down if you want to enter the lower-ranked race.
 * Oh, yeah, and in Animal Parade you can flat out attack people with axes...including your loving pets, children, spouses, and livestock.
 * Virtual Paper Doll: The A/nother Wonderful Life and DS/Cute Distaff Counterpart games first gave the ability to change the character's outfit. It was limited to the same style, however, just with different colors. This changed in Tree of Tranquility, which allowed outfit customization for both the male and female characters, but was still somewhat limited. Animal Parade gave a much bigger range of outfit customization, including the ability to customize your kids' outfits.
 * Wasted Song: The full-on fanfare of the bells in Animal Parade. You'l have to sit on the screen where Finn is congratulating you to hear the whole thing, or watch the credits... which requires you to lose your old game.
 * Warp Whistle: The Teleport Stone from several games. In some of them, it's a difficult-to-find late game item. In DS, get the Sprite Casino open, and you probably won't have to walk anywhere starting around Day 10 of Year 1.
 * It's literally a whistle in Animal Parade; once you rescue all the animals from Theodore's circus, you can summon them with the whistle to take you to certain places on the map (but not the mine district, for some reason.)
 * We All Live in America: Despite apparently taking place in a Western country, most games are quite Japanese and don't attempt to hide it at all.
 * What Could Have Been: In A Wonderful Life there was supposed to be circus. The characters were scrapped, and eventually used for DS. For the enhanced edition, instead of a daughter that resembles the father your daughter was supposed to have multiple looks (similar to your son) but was scrapped due to technical limitations and time.
 * Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: Seriously? Her name is Pony?
 * Wide Open Sandbox: Narrower than some other examples, perhaps, but there's still a startling amount of ways to go about playing these games.
 * With This Ring: In the HM universe, you propose through means of a feather, so there's no need to worry about rings... Except in Tree of Tranquility and Animal Parade, where they somehow make the Blue Feather into a ring after the proposal [?] and it becomes a wearable accessory.
 * Wizard Needs Food Badly: Your character will visibly grow more and more tired as you burn through his/her stamina.
 * (Has nothing to do with giving food to Wizard in Animal Parade.)
 * Yamato Nadeshiko: Most games feature at least one as a marriageable girl/rival. Look for the girl with the short brown hair and/or apron.
 * Your Favorite: Most characters have several favorite items that will tend to revolve around a particular theme - usually one of your crops. In most of the handheld games ((M)FOMT, DS (Cute), IOH/SI), characters actually have 1 precise favorite food that can score you more heart points than anything else.