64 Memories: A Little Taste of UseNet
We're going back to the past again! This time, we're looking into UseNet. For folks that don't know, the simplest explanation is that UseNet was basically an early form of message board that was established in 1980 where people would gather and discuss whatever was on their minds, but it could also be used for things like file sharing and it didn't really have a central server that people relied on. It's also still around today, but there's not a lot of people actually using it for discussion anymore. Most any post made in the 2020's on an old gaming group is probably just spam.
So, for today's looksee, let's see what the oldest post about the series is...
Whoa!! Though it seems like it's in response to a post that might be deleted, so the full context isn't quite there, the whole post is nevertheless amazing to see. Yasuhiro Wada, series creator, is responding to a post where a user (who mistakenly refers to it as "Makiba Monogatari," though Wada corrects them) is failing to find the game anywhere in-stores, as it had been sold out. Mind you, the date of this post is August 28th, 1996, so the game has been out less than a month!
Wada goes on to say that the game was tough to sell to distributors who didn't understand the game and that the initial sales were in the low single-digits before favorable reviews caused it to sell out. He then confirms the second shipment will be on October 4th, 1996. The rest of the post talks about the two main negative points about the game, based on survey responses from postcards, which were how monotonous the game can be and the lack of variety. He rather candidly says he can't recommend the game to people who find repetitive tasks tedious. For lack of content, he states there was just not enough storage space to create more and a lot of content was cut from the planning stage. It sounds a lot like things he said in the GDC talk in 2012.
The thread goes on for a bit more, with a user named Toyama asking if those issues can be fixed in a rerelease, but Wada says that, while it's possible to do more work and re-flash the master, in reality, content-related issues are almost never fixed like that. Though he adds that there are cases where his company has done it in the past, but then those games never got a re-release. Then a user introducing themselves as Matsuoka of Enicom chimes in and responds to the initial post asking about the game and talks about fun things like dropping a poison mushroom into festival's hot pot and spending the Starry Night Festival with Ellen. Honestly, that kind of post of just talking about the game is more of what I expected to find, so this whole thread was a whole big nice surprise.
Trying to find the oldest "Harvest Moon" post instead of a "牧場物語" post is a fair bit harder, since "Harvest Moon" is a pretty common term outside gaming. So, I tried "Harvest Moon 64" instead. Most early posts about the game are generally positive and looking forward to it, but largely out of necessity as the Nintendo 64's library wasn't kind to many genre enthusiasts. Since "life sim" wasn't a common term back then, it was usually lumped together with RPGs which were something the Nintendo 64 desperately needed. Of course, for many, something laid back and far from epic in scale wasn't really good enough...
I guess it might be hard to imagine nowadays, since the Nintendo 64 is often placed on a pedestal for its relatively small handful of high quality titles that everyone owned. Still, with a lot of people actually looking forward to Harvest Moon 64 in particular due to this drought, I can't help but wonder if that's why it made such a notable mark on the console's library. People were starving, and a surprising little farm sim (and Quest 64) were all they really had to survive on, making it an instant classic in a way the original SNES game really isn't considered. The game would continue to appear in most anticipated lists and got some light discussion about little things like favorite girls and such, but as the millennium approached I think people were largely moving towards fan sites and message boards for deeper discussion.
Well, that's about it for this dip into UseNet. There's millions and millions of posts on there, so there's a chance that even more interesting buried treasure is lurking... Maybe we'll make another trip there some day.
