Nintendo Wii Fanboy

Harvest Moon: Magical Melody was released on the GameCube in 2006 in the US. Rising Star Games, Marvelous's European branch, then ported it to the Wii with new motion controls, releasing that version in March of this year. This makes sense for Europe, since the Wii was out by the time the GameCube version would have been released.

According to a Siliconera interview with Natsume president Yasuhiro Maekawa, the company is considering an American release of that ported Magical Melody. "If we were to release the Wii version of Magical Melody", Maekawa said, "we would most likely be looking at a limited release aimed at our hardcore and loyal fans. We have had quite a few requests to release this game and are looking into it." Limited-edition releases have the power both to tempt fence-sitters and to save money for publishers, so this approach is a smart one.

The rest of the interview discusses the history of the series and of Natsume's involvement, and is an excellent read for anyone with an interest in fake farming.

Back in April, Rising Star Games announced that Harvest Moon: Magical Melody, which never made it to the GameCube in Europe, would be released as a Wii game. This port hasn't been heard from in a while, and in fact had disappeared from Rising Star's website, leading Spencer Yip from Siliconera to think that the game had been cancelled.

A representative from the publisher reassured him that the disappearance was due only to a website redesign, to which the link was accidentally not added. The spokesperson asserted that the game was on track for a March 2008 release.

However, no correction seems to have been made, and Spencer was not actually provided with any link. Maybe they just made a snap decision to go ahead and release the game in response to Spencer's email.

After all this time, will the game have some new content? Will it even have pointer controls?