#pony town's home customization is super fun i want more of that

[bittybatarts]

yearning for the days of kids mmos with cool 2d customizable houses

[flute-fields]

Ooh nooo I did put animal crossing! I feel so dumb now I meant harvest moon. Sorry about that!

that’s fine! considering your mom wants one for her DS, i’m going to list the DS games available for Harvest Moon and offer my two cents on them since the DS games are the ones i have the most experience with lol so you’re in luck

to add another note, keep in mind that Harvest Moon has rebranded as Story of Seasons, so SoS is the same HM we all know and love; Natsume took the Harvest Moon title and released a bunch of horrible games to catch peoples’ interest with the familiar title, so the title shifts in this list. i only used the name Harvest Moon when discussing the games out of familiarity/force of habit; later on down this list, the title changes. i’m also adding the 3DS games.

i’ll link you to the games as well so you can go over them yourself/she can check them out herself to see what she’d prefer. i wrote a lot but not nearly enough to cover the controls/functions/story line/overall goal/townspeople in each game.

1) Harvest Moon DS/Harvest Moon DS Cute. considering one of your mom’s favorite HM games are AnWL, i think she’ll like this the best; the game is set in Forget-Me-Not-Valley with a huge amount of characters from AnWL! in DS, you can only play as Jack/Pete. in DS Cute, you can choose to play as either Claire or Pony/Jill. DS/DS Cute is probably one of my favorite title games because it’s so similar to AWL/AnWL, so i think she’d really enjoy this one. i don’t have much to say on the story/goal of the game since it’s basically AWL/AnWL for a DS. out of all the games i go over here, i think she’ll like this one the best.

2) Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness/Harvest Moon: Sunshine Islands. these two are very similar to Tree of Tranquility/Animal Parade because they’re essentially the same game with major differences. in IoH, the player character is washed up on a new island during a horrible shipwreck after a violent storm/lightning strike and sea and never makes whatever their original destination was; those who survived the crash make a new life on the island they washed up on (it sounds bleak but i promise it’s not).

however, in SI, the MC sails to SI for a new life and all of the villagers have an established life there. the two games have different goals and slightly tweaked characters, but are functionally relatively the same, with SI adding in more marriage candidates. this series is also one of my favorites, but one thing to add is that the art is very chibi-fied. not sure if your mom will mind it, but it kind of bugged me at times. i personally prefer SI.

3) Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar. this was one of my first HM games, and it’s very cute and charming; the art, however, is more cutesy than the previous titles, so at times it kind of feels like everyone is a baby lol. the game is a little different from usual - there’s no shipping bin, because the goal is to sell everything you produce at a bazaar that’s held once a week (or at a shop in town if you don’t want to wait that long). you don’t mine in this game either, since you buy ore in shops or find them in rocks during winter. overall, it’s a cute game, but maybe not the most memorable? i remember enjoying it a lot, but i can’t remember that much about it. >_> it’s one of the more cutesy games as opposed to the little bits of realism/somberness in AWL/AnWL

i’m skipping Puzzle de Harvest Moon/Harvest Moon: Frantic Farming because neither of them are farming simulators, they’re puzzle/matching games

4) Harvest Moon: Tale of Two Towns. one of my favorite games! you play as a farmer starting in one of two towns situated on either side of a mountain, with a blocked tunnel connecting them. your goal is to bring the two towns together again through cooking festivals, which will unblock the tunnel; until then, you travel between the towns by climbing the mountain, which is great for foraging but eats up some time in your day. one town is focused on farming crops, the other is focused on farming livestock; you can do both in either town, but your farm will be devoted more to main export of either town. for example, in Konohana has a lot of fields for crops and a small barn. it’s the opposite in Bluebell.

your residency in one town isn’t permanent, though; i think at the end of every season you can choose if you want to move to the other town and you can keep doing that indefinitely. another addition to the game is dating, where you go on dates with marriage candidates rather than just leveling hearts and proposing! it brings a tiny bit more realism into the romance lol. this game is available for 3DS as well.

5) the Rune Factory games. i haven’t played a lot of RF (only 4 lol ._.) but they’re all titled as fantasy Harvest Moons, meaning you have a farm and farming is a major focus, but there’s also magic and elves and fighting monsters in dungeons to get good loot! RF title games for the DS are Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon, Rune Factory 2: A Fantasy Harvest Moon, and Rune Factory 3: A Fantasy Harvest Moon. Rune Factory 4 is a 3DS title and the only one i’ve played but i liked it a lot and intend to play the other titles!

i don’t have too much to say on the series since i haven’t played a lot, but i really enjoyed RF4! the games are much more story driven than Harvest Moon, which i found really fun since it felt like i had more of a goal than just “farm for the town”. i will add though that i loved all of the bachelorettes(minus Amber)/bachelors up until gearing toward proposing, because a lot of their Marriage Events suddenly had like...weird stuff? i won’t spoil anything but suddenly things like possessiveness/jealousy/weird unhealthy relationship stuff came up and i was like WHOA WHAT WHERE IS THIS COMING FROM O_O because it was all SO drastically different from everything else up to that point. i didn’t romance any of the bachelors but it was there for the bachelorettes so idk if it’s the same.

there are more HM games, but these next ones are for 3DS. i’m not sure if your mom has a 3DS (i know u said DS but i call my 3DS a DS all the time so idk if it’s the same thing for you or not >_>), so i’m adding these next titles because i’m on a roll, but keep that in mind! i will also add that, with your mom’s preference in her favorite games, she’d probably enjoy the games i listed above waaaaaay more than these next ones, since that’s how i feel too.

1) Harvest Moon 3D: A New Beginning. this is the title where things feel... very different. i didn’t really enjoy it that much, if i’m being honest, because it brought in a weird focus away from farming where you reorganize the town and build new buildings and stuff. it felt a lot like the sims, minus making characters. this is the first title where you can customize the player character though! which i love! since your mom’s favorite games are AnWL and Animal Parade and MY favorite games are AnWL and Animal Parade and i didn’t enjoy this game much, she probably won’t either. the tutorial stage is also really, REALLY, horrifically long -- it stretches over a week in-game time of just basically doing nothing. most of the characters are REAL charming though imo, and they lose the cutesy chibi art which i was really happy about. the art and characters made me stick through the gameplay since i enjoyed them. they also brought in older characters and renewed their designs; i loooooved Witch Princess and Amir in this game so much i was so stoked to unlock them. but overall yeah one of my least favorite titles in the series since it brought so much focus away from farming to me and while characters/romance are nice, a huge draw TO the HM games is the farming

2) Story of Seasons. first game to be hit with the rebrand from Harvest Moon! any game after this was released (FEB 27 2014 in Japan) with the title of Harvest Moon is NOT Harvest Moon anymore! it’s Natsume up to their dirty tricks of using a great brand and stealing the name to release bad games.

anyway, SoS was... pleasant! i enjoyed it. it didn’t stick with me like the older games, though. but i loooved the art and the town, and the villagers were charming. you compete with other farmers in town for certain fields located in different places, all of which are best suited for certain kinds of crops. i liked the rival aspect, but it is very different from older HM titles. you can also select the difficulty to play in either Veteran mode or Seedling mode; i recommend Seedling mode, both because prices aren’t as high and because HM (to me) is a game to relax and have fun farming, and Veteran mode is just stressful.

3) Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns. i love this one. (well, for the most part). this is the first game that introduces your family! you start off as a young adult still living at home with your mother, father, and younger sister, and decide to move out and become a farmer. your father is furious at this idea but you are eventually set to live in the same town as your Uncle Frank, who is a farmer, to measure your farming ability. if by the end of three years, you haven’t proven to your father than you have what it takes to be a farmer, you’re leaving the town forever. the bleakness reminded me a lot of AnWL, for some reason; i loved the aspect of your father being strict and hard on you since it felt a little bit more somber than the super cute, super peppy titles in the series of recent years.

that’s where the bleakness ends, tho. i will say that, despite loving this game and the characters, i really, REALLY hate the three-town system. you start off on your farm to three crossroads that lead to three different towns that all unlock by summer in your first year. and yes, it’s fun! the different towns yield different crops and resources. but it doesn’t feel at all like Harvest Moon to me. it feels way bigger and with way more things to do. it also makes days a LOT longer, since you run from all of the towns to complete errands in part-time jobs. it needs more of your focus than other games. i haven’t finished the game yet, and while i love it, i love it separately from other HM titles. it doesn’t hook me in the way the older titles did, which i think is because of the modernity of it with three different towns and being bigger and and having such consistently bright colors as opposed to one small town and muted color scheme of, for example, AWL. it feels, like ANB, very different from the vibe Harvest Moon usually gives you. idk how to describe it. i feel like this game exists in a separate niche.

i like how your family feels more real in it, though; they periodically send you letters and visit you. it really feels like you had a life before coming to the town(s), rather than starting off as a blank slate at the beginning of the game.

anyway i hope that helped! lmk if you need any clarification or want to go over other things or want any other recommendations. i hope ur mom finds a game she likes! ^_^

[deehollowaywrites]

It’s something of a pilgrimage, watching racing.

The facts are these: I live in a metropolitan area that is home to a Thoroughbred track. This track is 40 minutes and about 18 miles from my apartment. Suffice to say, at times when Tampa Bay Downs is not hosting live racing, I resort to the redoubtable practice of Twitter-watching major races. However… this weekend was the Breeders’ Cup. And despite being an utter fucking hermit, I wanted to engage in one of our most prized American pastimes: publicly enjoying sports. See, it’s easy to be a sports fan in public in this great, accommodating nation. Any sports bar and most other bars will have at least one TV screen playing a major sport at all times. There’s gear aplenty, jerseys and shirseys, hats, jackets, and numerous other ways to adorn yourself in the college or professional team of your choice.

Then there’s Thoroughbreds.

You will not find a mock-up of the Juddmonte silks in Target--at least not in a Tampa Target. Maybe in Lexington’s. Anyway, I wasn’t betting on Arrogate (and wasn’t that wise of me? Actually it would’ve been a draw. I guess we can say, categorically, that my preferred pony is at least as good as Arrogate on an off day). I haven’t been at this long enough to have accrued a collection of track gear. There’s a Tampa Bay Downs sticker on my laptop, but that’s about it. The idea of ordering something from the Breeders’ Cup online store without actually… you know… going seems like a poseur move, and I already have enough impostor syndrome to staff an entire lit magazine. So I pinned a horse brooch onto my collar and went out to do battle.

My city houses many fine establishments with liquor licenses and humane hours (that is, open ‘til 3AM); it was merely a question of selecting one in the center of my Venn diagram: close to home, multiple TV screens, and low likelihood of stranger danger.* Finally I decided on the Bricks. I could get there nice and early, around 4PM EST for the beginning coverage, and live at the bar until they called the Distaff by 8. Asking them to keep NBC on one of the screens once Todd Pletcher’s facial hair showed up would certainly not be the weirdest thing an Ybor bartender had ever heard.

(Todd Pletcher’s facial hair did not make an appearance, as you probably know. However: yay for Destin, one of my legion of gray babes!)

Is that a horse? asked a gentleman of true insight sitting to my left as the camera zoomed in on Sharp Azteca looking fine in the paddock. That, I replied, is a topic of conversation.

He wasn’t super interested in conversating.

I’m not convinced that Thoroughbred racing is regarded as a sport by the American public at large. Perhaps it’s a regional thing; I assume if you live in Lexington, Louisville, or certain parts of New York there’s something of a culture, the way that living in Gainesville will immerse you in Gator Nation whether you’re looking to be involved or not. Tampa has football and hockey to some degree, and when the Lightning play, the dive downtown hosts not only a slew of Bolts fans but also that one guy in a Red Wings jersey who gets bounced by the second quarter for calling Kucherov a little bitch. I look forward to the day when I live in a place where I can mosey into a bar--any bar, maybe, not just an off-track betting establishment or a track lounge or a sports bar across from the Red Mile--and encounter people with opinions. Horse opinions. Trainer opinions. It seems pleasing, this idea of blundering into an argument about two-year-old races with someone I’ve never met before, the way I’ve observed friends screaming with strangers about Eli Manning. For horse fans in--as we would say in the LDS Church--the mission field, there’s a couple ways of engaging:

Watch at home, on cable or with a streaming option

Head to your local watering hole and micromanage the bartender

Get lucky in your locale and visit a racetrack for better coverage than NBC (maybe even on the infield Jumbotron! Fancy)

It depends on what kind of interaction you’re seeking. On days when I’m at home Twitter-watching, I can editorialize on trainers’ facial hair, don’t have to fight anyone for the bathroom, and am not paying out the ass for artisanal boiled peanuts. A bar has some appeal, as I do enjoy a whiskey-based beverage while watching the ponies run, and there’s always the possibility of some Area Innocent asking why on Earth we’re watching a lot of people wearing bright purple on a Friday afternoon. It’s fun to talk about things you like. I consider myself fairly good at proselytizing (courtesy of aforementioned Church raising); the key is to save your really impassioned speeches for the Internet, which has handy buttons for blocking and muting. A track bar at least guarantees that the people around you understand why you’re excited… but there’s a certain malaise to being, without doubt, the youngest person gazing intently at Gabby Gaudet’s smiling face.

Also, apparently ‘I love him’ isn’t a good reason to bet on a horse? Apparently this type of language is frowned upon by the graybeards clustered around the simulcast? Who knew.

Do I seek the nominally familiar, unsure whether the major factor in common is enough to outweigh everything else? Do I horn in on public spaces as is my right as a sports fan (ha) and hope to get other queermo Millennials chilling in an Ybor bar interested in a niche pastime by dint of my mere presence? It doesn’t seem quite fair, the give and take. America claims horse racing one whole day out of the year as something uniquely American, historically American, the Derby a nice little punch bowl of culture for all to get hammered on. Is that enough to make up for the other 364 days of blithe apathy?

Oh, I said, could you leave this channel on for like three more seconds? The race is almost over.

Oh, said the bartender as Forever Unbridled morphed into Captain America, I didn’t realize you were watching that.

Today’s hunch bet: Fair Regis, #5 in the 5th at Aqueduct. Juarez had a good day yesterday and it’s just too bad all the big boys are back in town and sucking up the custom.

*’Stranger danger’ in the context of horse racing includes but is not limited to middle-aged men who are still angry at Andre Fabre 25 years later, young men trying to pay for your Del Margarita knock-off, crunchy hipsters lecturing about why racing is inhumane, and irate football fans hogging the screens.

[itsworn]

Original Owner Still Enjoys His Unrestored 1968 Chevrolet Camaro Z/28

Darn Mick Yonkers! Leave it to that rascal to go and buy the exact car Joe Koski wanted a 1967 L79 Chevelle, down to the color and all. Both gearhead guys ran together on the loud streets of Chicago, growing up during the 1960s. Among their friends and Chevy-lovin’ crew, there was one take on performance: small-block. “They seemed to deliver lots of horsepower without breaking as much as the big-blocks,” explains Joe, who still lives in the Windy City. “Of course, we all knew the great things Grumpy Jenkins and Dave Strickler were doing with them at the dragstrip.”

When 1967 rolled around, Joe was ready to buy his own car (returning his dad’s 1965 Impala). He searched high and low for what he wanted most, a 1965 L79-equipped Chevelle. “I liked the power, and a lot of that was due to the cam, pistons, and the Holley on an aluminum high-rise manifold,’ he says. “Those small-block motors sound and perform great. I still dig the sound of a car with a performance camshaft at idle.”

Shortly after buying the hot car, Joe Koski added an alarm, complete with mercury switches and an ignition cutoff. Gas station staff were foggy on the Z’s equipment, but thieves weren’t. “I didn’t want to lose the car to burglary or somebody with a tow truck,” says Joe. “Chicago’s nice, but I wanted to feel secure parking it on the streets.”

Turns out, he wasn’t alone. Even used, those special Chevelles were few and far between, leaving Joe no choice but to pony up and order one new. “I finished the spring college semester, returned home, and was all prepared to go place my order,” he says. His family’s dealership of choice was nearby Brigance Chevrolet, home of Chicago muscle car sales icon Mr. Ed Schoenthaler.

Then came the news of Mick Yonkers and his shiny new ride, and Joe’s plan screeched to a halt. “I always took Mick for a Mopar man since he drove and raced his father’s 1965 426 Wedge Coronet,” says Joe. “Turns out, he liked Chevys, too.”

Mick’s move ended up being a blessing in disguise. It led Joe to the car he would come to cherish for life.

Wanting to be different from his pal, Joe waited to see what the 1968 Chevelle redesign would bring. His hopes rose when news broke that they’d have the L79, but those hopes dropped fast when he learned it would lack the aluminum intake and Holley carb. “Back to the drawing board I went, thinking, How else I could get that combo?” Ruling out the pricy Corvette, within the Chevy lineup those power parameters zeroed his search to just the Camaro Z/28.

Any time the car needed maintenance, Joe easily got it in the Brigance Chevrolet service department. “Several mechanics were buds, but no motor work was ever done. It has never been apart.” Joe estimates that there’s around 15,000 miles on the car. The odometer broke at 11,780, and he never bothered to fix it.

Joe was in a great spot to see those cars up close. That summer (and the summer of 1969), he worked at Brigance. Most days he could be found in the parts department, then the service department, answering customer calls, bringing cars to mechanics, and occasionally filling in as a service writer and drafting work orders. The daily tasks changed but not the high-powered machines constantly around. “All day long I was surrounded by nothing but performance,” he recalls. “The dealership was moving 435-horse Corvettes and 396/375-horse Chevelles, Camaros, and Novas all day long. I’d come to work on Monday, and first thing in the morning we’d be loaded with cars that had been to the track on Sunday and already needed repair.”

One of the guys responsible for moving that Chi-town muscle was salesman Len Dudas. He was the Koski’s go-to guy, and naturally, Joe sought him to order his 1968 Camaro Z/28. Joe was all of 19 that May, with his birthday just around the corner.

This photo, dated July 1968, shows Joe’s Camaro still wearing its window sticker. He took delivery of his Camaro on Memorial Day, which means he either left the sticker in the window for weeks or, more likely, it took a while to finish the roll of film.

Black was his first choice of paint color, but because it was unavailable, he selected his second favorite, Cordovan Maroon. “That matched Dad’s Impala, also ordered from Len,” says Joe.

Most of his limited teenage budget was taken up by the car’s base price, but he dug deep and tacked on a few options, including tinted glass and an AM radio. Like most heavy right footers buying these cars, Joe left off power steering. “Any added belt on the drivetrain was robbing horsepower,” he recalls with a smirk. “That’s not something I wanted.”

The sports car was delivered on a glorious Memorial Day weekend. Right away, Joe saw firsthand how little people knew about the new Chevy offering. “Driving home, I pulled into a Shell station to refuel.” A curious attendant came out and recognized the car, but because of the stripes he couldn’t figure out just what in tarnation it was. “He walked around and around then finally saw the fender badge,” Joe says. “He paused, looked up at me, and said, ‘What’s a Z-2-B?’”

While many folks Joe encountered sought to know what the car was, many more cared to know what it could do. “People constantly wanted to see how fast it was on the street. I always made sure the motor was in tune, just in case something came up.”

He got plenty of street time to dial it in, but even more on sanctioned strips. On any given warm weekend, he’d be at Oswego Dragway in Oswego, Illinois, competing in the E/Pure Stock class. “You’d remove the hubcaps and trim rings, pop on your seatbelt, and with street tires and closed exhaust, you’d be off and running.” The gearhead was constantly lining up against 400 Firebirds, Road Runners, Super Bees, and ram air 4-4-2s, fighting to be competitive.

“The Z’s tires weren’t wide enough for getting off the line well,” Joe remembers. “I’d pop the clutch at 3,000 rpm and feather and dance with the throttle. Once they hooked and I got going, I’d be fine.”

Although they were close to home, the track’s pits weren’t paved and were quite dusty. “It was never fun lying under the car in dirt.” After hearing of Union Grove, Wisconsin’s Great Lakes Dragaway and its asphalt-coated lots, Joe started frequenting there, as well as the US 30 Drag Strip, just over the state line in Indiana.

His biggest boost in top-end power came from a trip back to the dealership. “Once the car had its 1,000-mile warranty check-in, off came the smog pump and belt,” says Joe. “The parts department sold plugs that fit perfectly into the exhaust manifold.” Another trick he did was swapping in six-cylinder distributor springs, which were stiffer and kept better timing.

When Joe slowed down, he’d be found cruising to the local Topps Big Boy on Ogden Avenue. “I’d back in with the parking lights on and watch the other muscle cars parade through.” The joint was known for juicy burgers, but Joe would instead grab a steaming-hot pie from down the street at Villa Nova, a pizzeria still in business today.

Summertime in the Z was splendid, but come those frigid winters things got dicey. “With those skinny tires, that engine power, and rearend, I’d spin on frost,” Joe recalls. Helping him further take it easy was the 4.88 gear he installed in the rearend. He did it to own stoplight romps, but it did make his highway drives more relaxed. So much so that on December 22, 1969, Joe was interstate cruising, heading home from college, when his mirrors lit up blue and red. “The officer pulled me over for going under the speed limit. I explained the situation and the state trooper laughed, letting me go with a warning.”

Joe would go on to get his degree, leaving Brigance Chevrolet and moving on to his teaching career. His first position was teaching math at the Thomas Middle School in Arlington Heights. Now with a 30-mile commute, Joe sourced a well-loved 1957 Chevy Nomad to drive daily.

Decades haven’t changed Joe’s passion for his Z-2-B (as some called it).

Wedding bells tolled for Joe in 1975, followed by four kids in the years to come. The new dad kept the Camaro around, always figuring out a way to keep it garaged. “My single buddies, like Mick, would go from one fast car to another, kidding me that it was time for something,” says Joe. “I’d always reply that my kids are going to drive my car. Sure enough, it’s been around long enough for that to happen.”

Special thanks to model Eva Le Rouge and car owners Mark Knecht, Chuck Casey, Bob Cyr, and Mike Kohanski for taking part in our photo shoot.

At a Glance 1968 Z/28 Owned by: Joe Koski Restored by: Unrestored Engine: 302ci/290hp V-8 Transmission: Muncie M20 4-speed manual Rearend: 3.73 gears with Positraction Interior: Standard black vinyl bucket seat Wheels: 15-inch steel Tires: P215/60R15 Goodyear Eagle ST Special parts: Sun Super Tach

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