Revealed: New Harvest Moon titles announced for Europe

SPOnG was handed some surprisingly good news this morning at the Rising Star Games press launch event at London’s swanky Metropolitan Hotel.

Located at the top of the Park Lane hotel the notorious Met Bar usually plays host to coke-addled D-list celebs hoping to get their filthy mugshots in the next day’s tabloids and gossip rags. Things were thankfully somewhat different on this dull morning, in a top floor suite overlooking an overcast West London. There were no drug-addled celebs or paparazzi in sight, only a load of truly stunning handheld games. And some very special news indeed.

Rising Star, which is focusing heavily on releasing quality Japanese titles in the West, has this morning announced forthcoming handheld and console versions of Harvest Moon. Woohoo! SPOnG whooped and hollered with joy. Well, not really, but we smiled big massive grins inside.

Rising Star is to bolster its 2006 line-up with ‘Harvest Moon DS’ (for Nintendo DS, obv!) and ‘Harvest Moon Magical Melody’ for Nintendo GameCube, across PAL territories this coming Spring.

The Harvest Moon games occupy a special place in SPOnG’s heart, with their charming combination of life and resource management. It will be interesting to see what these fresh iterations bring to the series. We’ll be sure to bring you more world exclusive news of Harvest Moon goodness as soon as we hear it.

“Harvest Moon DS and Harvest Moon Magical Melody are fantastic additions to our publishing portfolio,” said Martin Defries, C.O.O. Rising Star Games. The Rising Star Bossman went on to say that; “the Harvest Moon series has grown in quality ever since the initial release in 1997. These two titles will be the best yet, evolving ideas present in the original game and introducing new twists on the much-loved gameplay. We’re really excited about both. More so, that we are able to work so closely with Nintendo’s distribution companies to ensure that the reach of Harvest Moon is greater than ever before.”

As well as the Harvest Moon announcement, SPOnG was also treated to playtests of some of its other choice games scheduled for UK release this Easter, including Pilot Academy PSP, Bubble Bobble Evolution PSP, Rainbow Islands Revolution DS and SBK: Snowboard Kids DS. Its hard to pick the best of the bunch, but we can say this much. All four games rock!

Further Rising Star titles scheduled for release include Lunar Genesis DS and Space Invaders Evolution PSP (out Feb) and Rainbow Islands Evolution PSP (out June). Full SPOnG previews and reviews on all the above will follow as soon as we manage to snag some code from our new favourite publisher of 2006.