Switch Online's N64 Library In Japan Is Getting One Extra Game

This news fills me with a void only the announcement of 6 other Farming Sim games could possibly fill. If only

Who needs Harvest Moon 64 when the new Story of Seasons you can play as Boy / Girl and can have same gender marriage ? 😁

I've never played a HM before. NSO would have been a great opportunity.

Just give me micheif makers and snowboarding kids already. Oh and diddy kong racing and donkey knong 64.

They are not "getting" the extra game. It is merely loaned, as part of an expensive subscription. They cannot own N64 games on Switch.

@Larams
Well, I'm sold with the option to have same gender marriage since from Friends of Mineral Town on Switch / PS4. 😏
I dun ker with the girls over there.
I'm hunting for the dudes, the handsome looking one. 😝

@Moistnado
Yup.
The subscription is just only rent the game, not owning the game.

Yup, I saw that. Luckily I've got a Japanese Nintendo account so I have all versions of the apps. Definitely makes the price more bearable with version differences, design and just the collection aspect of it all.👌🏻

It's too bad we'll never get the original here due to the Natsume Marvelous situation regarding the Harvest Moon copyrights over here in the west.

Please nintendo, let us buy n64 games to own you greedy gits

I was hoping the exclusive game would be Animal Forest, ahhh well...

Nice of them to throw a middle finger to me personally I guess. Really hope they can work it out to get it in the west at some point.

@pandizzy You’re the one dragging politics into this while it has nothing to do with it. Some people want to marry a guy in their game, get over it. The game’s not forcing you to do so, so it shouldn’t affect you in any way.

@SapphireBlaze Shocked they haven’t released that one since the wii or wii u only thing that’s probably stopping them is extra programming for the time to sync correctly

Aw. Hope we get that one. Or something in its place. They sometimes do one for them and one for us instead. Or maybe they don't get 007 from the looks of it? I don't think that would have been as big over there?

Crazy how we still can`t have DK64 and Diddy Kong Racing. 2024?

Harvest moon 64 was the first in the series I fell hard for, hopefully it'll end up on our NSo soon enough.

Man they sure are hitting all my harvest moon nostalgia

@Fizza likely has to do with the licensing issues in the west. But there are plenty of modern bokumono games on switch.

@Mana_Knight Japan gets goldeneye as well.

@Ryu_Niiyama Oh, lol. Never mind. MAYBE we will get another exclusive later on...

Chameleon Twist is what I want. I don't know why. I just liked it a lot.

@Xiovanni There were a few.....

It’s a shame we don’t all get the same content or at the very least they don’t get some west only released games to balance it out. There were a few back in those days that didn’t get world wide releases.

I do hope the map for either region is a bit more than that. It's pretty bare on offerings. Still missing Diddy Kong Racing, Banjo Twooie, Perfect Dark, Megaman 64, DK 64.

Considering the N64 library is relatively small, I was really hoping for at least GB to be added this year. Looks like I'm delaying my NSO purchase for a bit longer

Is Japan getting the original Pokémon stadium that didn’t include every Pokémon at first?

@Moistnado that why the headline says the 'library is getting an extra game'... not the Japanese themselves..

And of course realise that owning a digital product (or even a physical cartridge containing a digital product) is rather relative these days...

OK, I don't get this one. Typically a game doesn't join the service on the West because it was never localized to begin with. But Harvest Moon 64 was officially localized, sure there are some grammar issues here and there, but overall I see no reason why this can't also release in the West like the rest of the games.

Just give me the game in Japanese, I've played HM64 so much that I know what's going on... But at the same time, do I really want to put in more of that work in for the 4th time??? uh, decisions...

@tabris95 i don't know what else you've done with your life but this comment is a truly grand achievement

Seems to be the direct of farming sims! I love Rune Factory 3 and the Harvest Moon GC remake. I feel like between Stardew and RF4, however, I have a lifetime supply of farming on the switch. Seems like items I would definitely pick up in a sale. I'm glad to see the GC remaster - I heard the GBA remaster was to mixed reception.

Surely it's not coming to the west because of the Natsume license thing.

Darn! I really like that one. Used to play it on an emulator on my Windows 98 as a kid because I couldn't afford a used copy.

@duffmmann It's because there's a licensing issue between Marvelous and Natsume.
And maybe the fact that Natsume wanted to hold on to the western "Harvest Moon" trademark so much that they created their own franchise to keep using the name (forcing the current localization rights holder Xseed to rename games in the original franchise "Story of Seasons").

That makes me wonder if they gonna release N64 Japan exclusive animal crossing, I mean animal forest for online service.

Okay, time to clear up some issues here.

I am well aware Harvest Moon 64 is the black sheep of the golden era games. Many people think Back to Nature is its replacement, but that is not true at all and Harvest Moon 64 strongly stands as its own title in the franchise. Hell, Back to Nature was supposed to just be a port of 64 to PSX, but I digress.

Licensing would not be an issue since that would have meant Harvest Moon 64 would not have saw release on the Wii U Virtual Console in 2017, three years after Natsume split with Marvelous. And if it was a present issue now, then Harvest Moon 64 would have to be delisted on the Wii U first for that argument to make sense, such as was the case with the Donkey Kong Country games disappearing for a little while from Virtual Console.

This is simply the case of Nintendo most likely summarizing that the west does not care about Harvest Moon all that much and Story of Seasons' lack of sales is most likely to blame for that. In Japan, the franchise still sells modestly well, but has failed to keep up those numbers overseas. As such, they were already thinking this way as early as us losing the first Harvest Moon on the Super Nintendo, which Japan has on their SNES emulator.

Finally, in regard to people talking about localization, the game was originally in English already. It literally came out ten months after the Japanese version. Only PAL regions lacked Harvest Moon 64 until the Wii U in 2017. It really is as easy as them just putting in the English ROM for us, but they will not do it. I genuinely have no idea why when the work has already been done. And it is not like these games are on individual sale, so they do not have to worry about it "not selling" when these games simply come with the subscription that is already overpriced to begin with and thus, has much more room for games.

And I say that with the Super Nintendo game as well, though I will admit Intuitive Ranch Master is the much better method to play that one. Preferably with the Infinite Night version so that the game is properly beatable. That aside, I am baffled that one missed the release window overseas as well.

I would personally love both of those games, especially Harvest Moon 64, to make it onto the Switch. They are easily amidst the best in the franchise and it will be a shame if newer generations of people miss out on them since the Wii U was too forgotten for that release to count as a return besides the happy PAL gamers who got to experience it for the first time that way.

Please, Marvelous. Let us have this one.