Story of Seasons seems a lot like a Harvest Moon game, but answering if they’re actually the same requires a bit of context to answer. Let’s dive into a brief history of the divergence of Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons.
Is SoS: A Wonderful Life a Harvest Moon Game?
- Story of Seasons is developed by Marvelous Inc.
- Marvelous Inc. developed the original Harvest Moon games
The simple answer is yes, Story of Seasons is Harvest Moon. Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life, in particular, is a remake of the 2004 Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life. The studio developing SoS is also the same one that developed Harvest Moon, but legal reasons led to the series getting renamed.
Why was Harvest Moon Renamed to Story of Seasons?
Natsume used to handle localizing Harvest Moon and distributing the series in America. So, when Marvelous Inc. added its own division to translate and distribute the games, the studio had to rename the series to Story of Seasons as Natsume still has the rights to the name Harvest Moon.
Natsume has used its rights to the name Harvest Moon to continue developing games, which has added confusion to the situation. I recently learned about the reasons behind the name switch, and it answered a lot of lingering questions I’ve had regarding both Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons as series.
Both Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons have games releasing this summer, and we’ll be covering Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life here at GameSkinny, writing guides to help out players who didn’t get the chance to play the original Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life and those who have forgotten it over the years. Additionally, Marvelous Inc. has made a number of changes for SoS: A Wonderful Life to modernize it.
