Happy Farm'n Friday! Two weeks ago Mr.Fogu had a work conference to attend in Orlando, Florida, so I went along to spend some much-needed time away from the office. The first week was his conference, but the second week we spent in Disney World! I'm a fan of pressed coin machines, and had saved up a lot of pre-1982 pennies to squish. US penny coins minted after 1981 are copper-coated with zinc cores, whereas pennies minted in 1981 or older are all copper. The zinc-core pennies will eventually tarnish after being pressed, so using all-copper pennies results in a better pressed coin. With the large number of coin machines surrounding the parks, I was going to need the two weeks we were there to snag them all!

There is a lot of animal characters at Disney World, but not a lot of cows. Clarabelle the Cow was the only cow-based character I spotted at Magic Kingdom, and she was only included in parades or on the TV cartoons back at the hotel. I had some better luck with cow-spotting over at Animal Kingdom. The Ankole cattle at the Animal Kingdom Lodge had some very impressive horns. There was also a cow at the petting zoo up at Rafiki's Conversation Station along with some sheep for visitors to interact with.

We also watched the filming of the holiday specials that air on TV on Thanksgiving and Christmas, and watched music performer Sting sing Soul Cake a few times because they needed several recordings of it. At night there was firework filming, but the Disney film crew would only light off a few fireworks at a time so they could film the displays in spurts. The downside is that they were still filming at midnight, and our hotel room was across the lake from Magic Kingdom, so no sleep for us! Kabooooom

Overall it was a nice trip. We smashed a total of 724 pennies and 45 quarters!

Farm'n Got-chas!

So things were fairly quiet in the video game farm'n genre while I was away. There's no new information on the overseas localization of Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town yet. Natsume's latest mayhem party game, Harvest Moon: Mad Dash is now available on Steam for $29.99 USD. While the beginning levels are pretty easy to clear, that changes rather quickly. At level 30 the challenges became more chaotic, especially when trying to play solo. I was cursing like a naughty sailor because I kept failing levels after having lava dropped on my head and being run over by boars while at the same time trying to maneuver around obstacles to place crops on once-empty field spaces that suddenly have water ponds generated on them so I can't put down my crops anymore and OMG how am I suppose to handle all this chaos by myseeeeelf?! Mr.Fogu was implying that perhaps I should be asking for help when trying to play a party game. Maybe he has a good point.

Aaaaanyhow, I thought I'd cover something I experienced that caused a bit of a stumble in my in SoS:FoMT game:

During fall season you can grow Sweet Potatoes and Adzuki Beans on your farm. The sticky point is knowing when the crops are mature enough for harvest. A mature Sweet Potato does NOT have any purple tubers poking out from under the plants' leaves, and Adzuki Beans have just a slight change in color when they're harvestable. In Trio of Towns, crops that are ready for harvest won't receive water when the watering can is used on them, making it easy for players to determine when a crop is ready to be picked, but in Friends of Mineral Town the mature crops can be sprinkled with the watering can. Basically I spent most of a season watering the ripe Sweet Potatoes instead of harvesting them. Only after I hired a Sprite to harvest the other crops did I realize that the fellow was also harvesting what-I-thought-were-unripe Sweet Potatoes. So lesson learned I guess.

Game Sale Data

According to Weekly Famitsu, the Japan release of Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town has reached about 99,300 copies sold. Just a few more and it will reach 100,000! It is currently at spot #19 of Famistu's Top-30 list.

And the #15 spot? That fabulous Fishing Spirits game for Nintendo Switch! Bandai Namco recently released a patch for their Japan-only arcade fishing game that updates the controller options for those who are playing on a Switch Lite and can't detach their joycons. Probably won't be localized into English, but it is available for purchase on the Nintendo JP eShop. Hmm...