The Harvest Moon series will be celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, and to celebrate, Natsume promises that there will be “few surprises” in store, also adding that they hope that new and old fans will celebrate with them.

Here’s the full New Year message posted to Facebook by the CEO of Natsume – Hiro Maekawa:

“Happy New Year to Our Worldwide Fans!

This was a very exciting year for Natsume, as we released a variety of titles internally developed for different devices and consoles, as well as several licensed titles, like River City: Tokyo Rumble.

This past January, we released the first full Harvest Moon title for smartphones, Harvest Moon: Seeds of Memories. Designed and developed in-house, Harvest Moon: Seeds of Memories follows the formula of early Harvest Moon titles with all the features that have made the Harvest Moon franchise so popular today. Both the iOS and Android versions have performed well beyond our expectations. Just recently, we released an update with new animals and other new content that has sold amazingly well, and we expect the momentum to carry into the new year.

In November, we launched Harvest Moon: Skytree Village for the Nintendo 3DS. After the launch of Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley, we received a variety of feedback from critics and fans alike, some of it positive, and some of it negative. Before developing Harvest Moon: Skytree Village, we carefully went over all of the feedback and tried to implement everything we could into this new game. We wanted to give our fans a voice into the development.

And thanks to that feedback and the loyal support of the Harvest Moon community, Harvest Moon: Skytree Village has performed extremely well — both digitally and physically — this holiday season! We expect that this momentum will remain throughout the upcoming year.

2016 also saw the re-emergence of two classic franchises: River City and Wild Guns!

River City celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2016, and we were excited to be part of it with the release of River City: Tokyo Rumble for the Nintendo 3DS. Fans have been extremely appreciative to us for bringing back this cult classic, and hopefully we will be able to do more in the future.

One of the first titles I personally worked on when joining Natsume was Wild Guns for the SNES roughly 22 years ago. I have a special fondness for the franchise, and I couldn’t be happier with the release of Wild Guns Reloaded for the PlayStation 4. With new characters, weapons, and a four player mode, this game is sure to impress new and veteran players alike!

Digital download has become an important pillar in our business model. We have numerous downloadable titles available for the Nintendo eShop, PlayStation Network, the Apple App Store, Google Play, and soon for the PC. We plan to continue to increase our portfolio of downloadable titles this new year and beyond.

Thanks to the strong support from our fans all over the world, we can continue to develop quality titles in the very challenging video game industry. Whether you love Harvest Moon, Reel Fishing, Wild Guns, or one of our many other titles, we certainly appreciate your support!

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the Natsume fans, especially our loyal Harvest Moon fans everywhere, for their enthusiasm and dedication to the series over the past 19 years! This year will be 20th anniversary of the Harvest Moon franchise! We plan to have a few surprises for this joyous occasion, and hope that new and old fans will celebrate it with us!

Our company mission for the past 22 years has always been, and will continue to be to “Make Everyone Happy,” with exciting, interactive entertainment software for the entire family. At Natsume, “everyone” means all of our customers, Natsume employees, and all of the people we work with, such as our development partners, our distribution partner, retailers, financial institutions, media, and all of the people who are directly or indirectly connected with Natsume and our products.

We at Natsume are committed to continuing our corporate mission to “Make Everyone Happy,” and we would appreciate your continued support.

Wishing “Everyone” a very happy, healthy, and wonderful New Year!

Hiro Maekawa
President & CEO of Natsume Inc.”

It will be interesting to see what Nastume has in store to celebrate one of their most successful series’ second decade!

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