The Harvest Moon Guides Gallery
One farm, sixty-one pieces of print.
Harvest Moon may be the most guided farming series ever made, and almost nobody has ever laid the whole shelf out at once. America got one licensed book per game, when it got one at all. Japan got rival books for the same game, sometimes three, in formats America never saw: complete guides, professional guides, "have more fun" books, ultimate guides. And underneath the guides sits a stranger shelf: a manga that introduced a heroine before her game existed, children's novels, encyclopedias of 3,800 entries, and a fan-made guide written because the official one never came. Every book below is verified to exist; every cover is the real book, shown at its honest size. Where no cover could be verified, the gold owl stands in and the caption says so.
AMERICA: ONE BOOK PER GAME
Prima, BradyGames, and the branch line
America · Prima Games · 2000
The first English Harvest Moon print guide there ever was.
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America · BradyGames · 2006
One volume covers both the GameCube game and Harvest Moon DS.
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America · BradyGames · 2008
Released alongside the Tree of Tranquility guide for the series' 10th-anniversary push.
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Cover gap · BradyGames · 2008
The book behind the gap: BradyGames' 176-page Wii guide, published the same year as Island of Happiness. No honest cover has verified yet; it is on the recheck list.
America · BradyGames · 2009
By Rick Barba and Mary Louise Kelly.
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America · BradyGames · 2009
By Casey Loe.
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America · BradyGames · 2010
Released April 13, 2010: the last English Harvest Moon print guide. Grand Bazaar, Tale of Two Towns, and A New Beginning never got one.
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America · BradyGames · 2008
The branch line: Rune Factory spun off Bokujō Monogatari, and BradyGames guided it too.
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JAPAN: THE EARLY BOOKS
Super Famicom, Game Boy, and the Nintendo 64 pair
Japan · Koei · 1996
The original game's guide, published in September 1996, weeks after the game itself.
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Japan · ASCII (Famitsu Bros.) · 1998
A 79-page pocket guide for the pocket farm.
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Japan · ASCII · 1999
Released February 1, 1999, illustrated by Mari Sugiyama with series designer Igusa Matsuyama.
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Japan · MediaWorks (Dengeki) · 1999
Dengeki's rival HM64 book, out eleven days after ASCII's, with an original comic inside by Michi Michiru and Teruko Shioya.
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BACK TO NATURE & MINERAL TOWN
The PlayStation and Game Boy Advance years, when rival publishers shared one game
Japan · Koei · 2000
Koei's complete guide, February 2000. Japan got three books for this one game; America got one.
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Japan · Koei · 2000
The Professional Guide followed three months later; scholars of the series still cite its page 172.
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Japan · Koei · 2001
The separate girl-version book. Match it to the exact version of the game; the two PlayStation farms are not interchangeable.
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Japan · MediaWorks (Dengeki) · 2001
Dengeki's official guide for the first PlayStation 2 farm.
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Japan · Koei · 2001
Koei answered Dengeki with a complete guide of its own for the same game.
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Japan · Koei · 2003
Koei's complete guide to Mineral Town, edited by Chōonsoku.
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Japan · Koei · 2004
The girl-version complete guide, 167 pages.
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Japan · MediaWorks (Dengeki) · 2004
Dengeki's rival girl-version guide, released January 16, 2004. Two publishers courted the same farmers.
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WONDERFUL LIFE & THE DS YEARS
GameCube, PlayStation 2, DS and PSP
Japan · Koei · 2003
207 pages for the GameCube farm, October 2003. America never got a guide for this game at all.
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Japan · MediaWorks (Dengeki GameCube)
Dengeki GameCube's happiness guide, the cheerful rival to Koei's complete book.
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Japan · Koei · 2004
Koei's complete guide for the girl version.
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Japan · MediaWorks (Dengeki GameCube)
The girl version got two competing Japanese guides, Koei's and Dengeki's. Both are on this shelf.
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Japan · Shogakukan · 2005
Shogakukan's kid-friendly Bokujō guide line, with newly drawn manga inside.
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Japan · Enterbrain · 2005
Enterbrain's complete guide to the PlayStation 2 edition; the same game, a third Japanese book.
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Japan · Koei (Studio WOW!) · 2005
Publishes all 101 Korobokkol rescue conditions, per Koei's own description.
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Cover gap · Koei (Studio WOW!) · 2006
The book behind the gap: Koei's complete guide for DS Cute. Its cover survives mostly in marketplace photos; it is on the recheck list.
Japan · MediaWorks · 2005
Japan's 205-page Magical Melody book; BradyGames covered the same game for America a year later.
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Japan · MediaWorks · 2006
The PSP port of Back to Nature, complete-guided by Dengeki's editors.
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Japan · MediaWorks · 2006
The branch line again: a futuristic Harvest Moon, guided like family.
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THE LATER HARVEST MOON BOOKS
Wii, DS, and the 3DS close of the line
Japan · Koei (Studio WOW!) · 2007
Part guide, part fan book: Koei's Motto Asoberu format takes over the late line.
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Japan · Koei · 2008
The Japanese counterpart to BradyGames' English guide, the same year.
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Japan · Koei · 2008
Koei's fan-book treatment for Sunshine Islands, December 2008.
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Japan · Shogakukan · 2008
A series first: a two-book set (Basics + Complete Data), with a special manga by character designer Igusa Matsuyama.
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Japan · Koei · 2009
The Ultimate Guide era: Koei's deep-data format for the bazaar economy.
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Japan · Koei · 2009
Covers all 15 rescue plans and 500+ events, per Koei. The same game also closed the English guide line.
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Japan · Koei · 2009
Koei's fan book for the Wii parade, January 2009.
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Japan · Koei · 2010
Two villages, one Ultimate Guide. A separate Shogakukan guidebook for the same game is named by Marvelous but still unverified.
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Japan · Koei · 2012
Koei's Ultimate Guide for the 3DS town-builder; two more Japanese books for this game follow on this shelf.
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Japan · Shogakukan · 2012
Shogakukan's Wonder Life Special volume for the same 3DS game.
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Japan · MediaWorks (Dengeki) · 2012
Three Japanese publishers guided A New Beginning. The cover's own Dengeki branding settles who made this one.
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THE STORY OF SEASONS ERA
The same Japanese series under its new Western name, 2014 to today
Japan · Shogakukan · 2014
The new era's first book, with character commentary and a short comic by Igusa Matsuyama.
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Japan · KADOKAWA / Enterbrain (Famitsu) · 2014
Famitsu's perfect guide for the same game, with a bound-in mini-book. Shown at the publisher's own master size; it never circulated larger.
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Japan · Enterbrain / Famitsu (KADOKAWA) · 2016
A 704-page brick: the thickest book in this entire census.
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Japan · Dengeki (KADOKAWA) · 2019
Mineral Town guided again, sixteen years after Koei's GBA complete guide on the earlier shelf.
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Japan · Dengeki (KADOKAWA) · 2021
Includes character designs and commentary by Igusa Matsuyama. The cover carries its obi strip, as sold.
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Japan · KADOKAWA (Famitsu) · 2021
The same game got both a Dengeki guidebook and this bigger Famitsu perfect guide, a month apart.
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Japan · KADOKAWA Game Linkage · 2023
Forget-Me-Not Valley, guided for the third decade running.
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Japan · KADOKAWA (Famitsu) · 2025
544 pages, October 2025: the newest book in this census, and proof the line never stopped.
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THE UNEXPECTED SHELF
Print nobody would predict: manga, novels, encyclopedias, and a fan-made guide
Cover gap · Preorder bonus only · 1999
The book behind the gap, and the shelf's rarest story: series designer Igusa Matsuyama drew an original manga for a grade-school magazine in 1997–99; its Claire arc introduced Claire before her game existed. This collected volume was never sold, only given with PlayStation preorders. Its cover is on the recheck list.
Japan · Koei (Brain Navi) · 2004
The series' first 4-koma comic book, gag strips about life in Forget-Me-Not Valley, cover newly drawn by Igusa Matsuyama.
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Japan · Marvelous (publisher unverified) · 2012
The 15th-anniversary art book: all 27 games surveyed through character illustration, including guide-only and magazine-only art and unseen design sketches. ¥2,800 on release.
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Japan · Koei · 2012
All 27 games crammed into 3,800+ illustrated entries on every character and animal.
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Japan · Koei (Chōonsoku) · 2003
An encyclopedia built around the GBA to GameCube link cable: how to enjoy both games together and max out their link bonuses.
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Japan · Koei · 2005
A variety-format companion mixing extreme-play challenges with farm puzzles, quizzes, and 4-koma manga.
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Japan · Gerry's Guides (self-published) · 2019–
Not official, and labeled so: a 386-page fan-written guide for the one classic that never got an English guide, designed to resemble the hero's in-game diary. It even translates the Japanese guides' TV-show and library texts.
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Japan · KADOKAWA · 2015
An original-story novelization for young readers by Mie Takase, illustrated by Eku Uekura, supervised by series producer Yoshifumi Hashimoto.
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Japan · KADOKAWA · 2016
The second Tsubasa Bunko novel, unconnected to the first, with a different protagonist.
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Cover gap · Tokuma Shoten / Ambit · 2021
The book behind the gap: a 132-page illustration collection bundled free with Nintendo DREAM magazine in 2021, surveying series art from the SNES original to Pioneers of Olive Town. The booklet's own cover rarely circulates apart from the magazine; it is on the recheck list.
The census behind this gallery was built from publisher catalogs, the National Diet Library's records, the Ranch Story wiki's merchandise archive, and the Library's own Harvest Moon articles, and it stays open: covers still missing are on a dated recheck list, and the shelf grows when one verifies.
