Happy Farm'n Friday! I'm not going to bother with the standard "I'm growing blah blah blah" this week. Let's just get started!

The Return of Friends of Mineral Town

This week Marvelous announced a remake of a fan-favorite Bokujou Monogatari game for Nintendo Switch. Called Bokujou Monogatari: Saikai no Mineral Town (Mineral Town's Reunion), this new entry into the series is a recreation of the original Gameboy Advance game from 2003. XSeed Games have also announced the localization of this new game, now called Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town. The Japanese version will be released on October 17th of this year (both physical and digital), with North American and European versions to be assigned an official release date at a later time.

This remake includes the original characters from the GBA game, but will be a combined version of Friends of Mineral Town and More Friends of Mineral Town. Players can choose to play as a male protagonist or a female protagonist in the same game, as well as choose to play as the original overall-wearing Pete and Claire styles, or upgraded yellow-hoodie Pete and Claire styles. The original character designer for the Bokumono series, Igusa Matsuyama, redesigned the characters for a fresh look to the classic characters.

Marvelous has opened the official website for fans to visit see the updated character designs and the quality-of-life improvements that have been added to the game:

• 牧場物語再会のミネラルタウン｜Nintendo Switch

New Promo Video

A short video of the game was also released, showing the game in motion and its various new features:

• Players can interact with the streetlights; walking past one shows an A button prompt.
• Crops have Star Rank (1-star to 5-star), but eggs, fish, milk, and wild items do not have Star Rank.
• Mayor Thomas is awesome, as usual!
• The watering pond appears to have moved closer to the entrance to the farm instead of being south of the farm house.
• The game now includes additional varieties of the standard animals as well as new animals such as angora rabbits and alpacas. The rabbits reside in the poultry barn.
• There are also new crops (soybeans, chili pepper, etc.), though the official website implies there are no winter-season crops (just like the original game)
• Seeds are sown in a 3x3 square.
• You can now walk across the crops (couldn't do that in the original game)
• The players stamina appears as a number value on the screen.
• The step-counting Pedometer is back!
• Items now stack in the rucksack instead of each item taking up one slot of space.
• It appears the same heart events are in the remake, as the video shows the beginning of Popuri's blue heart event (at 50 seconds) and the end of Cliff's yellow heart event (at 52 seconds).
• The record player is shown in the player's farm house, which is an item that originally could only be obtained through the Gamecube connectivity with A Wonderful Life. The Switch doesn't have a GC connection cable, so there's bound to be an easier way to unlock the Record Player in the remake!
• There are also new pet options like cats, penguin, and capybara.
• A new marriage candidate for each gender will be eventually revealed.
• Like the other villagers, the Goddess and Kappa have also been redesigned. Kappa has a sporty new beatnik look.

The game still includes original features like hiring the "Nature" sprite team, mining, and festivals such as the horse race, dog frisbee at the beach opening day, fireworks, and harvest festival. The villagers are event standing in the same locations during the Fall 3 festival as they do in the original game:

Pre-Order Bonus

There are also several Japanese retailers offering perks to entice farmers to pre-order the game from their stores.

• An original reversible tote bag from WonderGoo
• A strawberry cow keychain from Beak Takarajima
• Badge pins of Cliff+heroine and Rick+heroine from Stellaworth. HMV also has a pin badge of a strawberry cow, and Animate has a pin badge of a chicken
• Four bean dishes (i.e., little plates) with cow motifs from Ebten
• A wearable duck costume download code from Rakuten. There's also a wearable sheep costume download code from Geo, and a wearable dog costume download code from Joshin
• Amazon.jp has a wearable chicken costume download code and a cow-themed notepad

You can see images of the protagonist costumes and other goodies on the pre-order benefits page.

Name-The-Daisy Contest

Until July 10, Marvelous invites fans of the series to vote on a name for a new species of Gerbera Daisy. The winning name will also appear as a flower in the game. The vote is being hosted on the official Bokumono Twitter account, where players can choose between "Orange Venus," "Corobokuru Smile" (woo go smile!), "Farm Shine," and "Marriage Fleur." There is also a secondary retweet-and-win contest that is only open to players in Japan. Retweeting the specific tweet will enter players into a drawing to win a Nintendo Switch. More information about picking your choice for the flower name can be found on the official Bokumono website:

• Flower Naming Contest

Bokumono Now on Instagram

The PR team for Bokujou Monogatari now has an Instagram account to go along with their existing Twitter account.

Doraemon Updates

It's week 3 since the release of Doraemon: Bokujou Monogatari in Japan. Famitsu reports that third week sales were about 8700, putting its total sales at 65,500 copies.

A second DLC was made available for download today (the 5th), updating the game version to 1.03. The latest patch makes some corrections to in-game events and festivals, and made adjustments to stability and usability. A future update, version 1.04, will make additional in-game balance adjustments.

Mobage July Events

This month in the social online Bokujou Monogatari for Mobage there's a hamster-themed Harvest Event scheduled from July 1 until July 9, a Large Crop event starting on July 11 and ends on July 19, and finally a Bingo event from July 21 until July 30.