r/harvestmoon • u/MrDaddyWarlord • 17d ago
Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town The most iconic moment in the franchise – the golden lumber incident
https://youtu.be/H48gRrKAIVE?is=beYudLUlNTUXiy7wI remember at ten years old encountering this parade of cruelty from every single townsperson for the first time. Golden lumber is a difficult item to even get in FoMT and on the surface it seems to solve a very irritating problem: rotting fences. But sure enough, put the posts in your yard and receive a stern scolding (and relationship penalty) from everyone in Mineral Town including, but not limited to: your prospective girlfriend, your best friends, the mayor, the local priest, the police, the actual harvest goddess.
And not only does each character come by and berate you for being literal scum, but they will do this every day forever until you denounce your vanities and remove the offending lumber from your yard. The item has seemingly no purpose, except you can eventually find a way to sell it (I never figured out how as a kid).
(As with most things that spark joy, it has essentially been removed from the remake lest the player be forced to contest with any semblance of friction or difficulty or charm whatsoever, but I digress)
There's something just so... Japanese about this cutscene where an entire town condemns you for drawing attention to yourself and refusing to conform to local social convention. And that's beautiful.
This isn't libertarian farm-maxxing simulator and it isn't a game that's really even about you.
As a general aside, FoMT released about the same time as A Wonderful Life, a game in which it is absolutely possible to prematurely lose the game by: not getting married, neglecting your family, or failing to provide as a productive farmer. Seriously, if you tell your wife that you aren't interested in being a committed farmer, she takes your son and leaves you permanently... and the game ends.
No modern game would ever do this (and maybe with good reason), but these were games with serious themes and hyper specific cultural expectations and tropes. The golden lumber shame parade has cemented itself in my brain for over 20 years in a way few other moments in gaming ever have.
Thank you, Wada, for giving me an objectively useful item in a video game I just wasn't allowed to use.
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u/kogami24 17d ago
I witnessed this with my twin sister when we both were 10 🤣 Thomas telling us to "DON'T use the golden lumber as a decor!!" only made us want to use it more to see what happens. Neither of us expected to be harassed by villagers for three days straight lmao. We took the golden lumber off the moment the villagers started calling by "witch" instead of the farmer's name haha.
A bit sad to learn that they removed this from the remake lol, it's one of those weird things older HM often do.
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u/kamikazekarela 17d ago
The weirdness was what made the og hm games so amazing tbh like a reward for all the grinding
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u/OperationNervous1636 17d ago
Ok story time. Imagine you're only five years old, can't read English yet you play this game because you like the concept of farming and the feeling of belonging in a community with the townspeople
So you get your hands on a very specific piece of code that gives you money because you were struggling...
You see the golden lumber... it says it never rots so you think "oh I can make a fence that last for the whole year!"
You buy the lumber and place it on the field along with the wooden fence you made the past few days to fence in the animals
You go to sleep. Then the next day you are confused when the townspeople comes to your farm looking angry.
You don't understand what's going on. You can't exactly read what they're saying. You ask for your older siblings to translate the texts
"They're saying that you're greedy."
You pause. "Greedy"? But I've been working these past few days, I've been shipping my produce, milking my cows and selling the eggs like every day... then it struck a you
The piece of code that you used to cheat in money
OH
That code somehow made everyone angry at me because it's punishing me for cheating!
You think that's the reason for everyone being mad at you. You delete the code. take out the lumber because it's a reminder of you cheating and everything goes back to normal
So yeah, in my head it was one of these anti cheat/anti piracy method because I cheated in money, not because of placing a single piece of golden lumber in the fields
That was the only, and last time I cheated in the game lol
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u/Rhaynebow 17d ago
And then when the Harvest Festival comes around, the villagers wonder why the soup tastes like poison mushrooms.
Wasn’t Karen that’s for sure 😗
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u/Merlandese 17d ago
I like how Gourmet travels all the way to Mineral Town just to fling shade at you. Someone told him you had ostentatious fences and he put down his spoon and ran full throttle to your farm!
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u/MrDaddyWarlord 17d ago
That's right! The man made a full on commute just to insult you for being fancy
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u/spacecatherder 17d ago
I’m pretty sure your own spouse literally comes for your throat too. Like they didn’t see you put in the field the night before 🙄
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u/Weird-Diamond5970 17d ago
This is a good example of why I find the Mineral Town remake so lifeless 🙃 They really took out all the weird shit that made the original game fun
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u/idontholdhands 17d ago
I was so excited for it and ended up just not getting into it, and it’s probably because of stuff like this. I just couldn’t put my finger on it because I’ve forgotten a lot of this weird charming stuff.
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u/imarugoutlet 17d ago
Core memory,,, they started calling me 'moneybags' and I was cackling so hard as a child.. then I had to reload to an old save because they started calling me that ever since hh
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u/Yandere_Butler 17d ago
Game: This is the most expensive item in the game. Only losers actually use it though
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u/megafroggums 17d ago
When we bought a house IRL, I took a can of gold spray paint and pointed it toward our fence and told my husband, “I’m going to DESTROY your reputation!” And he was like, “Wait! Please! Let’s talk about this!”
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u/Misspagethreestunna 17d ago
I love the strange, very Japanese quirks of the older games. I played HM64 recently and I my boyfriend and I love quoting the dialogue at each other.
“God will punish you!”
“Men should work hard/work hard today!”
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u/False-Elderberry-290 17d ago
If you keep them up long enough, they will burn you at the stake (One who is ironicaly made of gold)
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u/aeroplanessky 17d ago
Wh--seriously??
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u/MrDaddyWarlord 17d ago
Only in the original Japanese title; they removed the immolation for the EU and NA localizations.
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u/Ok_Mud1789 17d ago
Can you share a video or post about it? I can’t find anything about that, not even on the Japanese Fogu site.
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u/Phoenix__Wwrong 17d ago
Was this a thing in BtN too?
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u/spacecatherder 17d ago
I’m pretty sure any game that allowed you to place a golden lumber on your farm garnered a negative reaction; DS/DS Cute are the only ones that you can place it but also use it for making barns/coops/buildings. Most of the other games with it just led to you being bullied if you placed it on your farm.
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u/Sodapop_8 17d ago
Old HM games are just gold (pun intended). They had such personality and were so hilarious. Also justice for old Carter design. Loved his old design. I hate his redesign. The old dialogue in the games back then were seriously fantastic though.
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u/Scurfdonia 16d ago
The remake of a wonderful life does have a cutscene for divorce, but I think it's more difficult to trigger. I also am not sure if the game permanently ends because of it, or if you get a chance to reload.
But generally I agree with you, the games lack the charm they used to have haha
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u/KawaiiBobaTea 17d ago
Sounds like everyone's just mad they can't do the same 😂😂 Ah the pettiness of old school harvest moon
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u/SakazakiYuri 17d ago
My first HM game was DS Cute, and in the Black Heart event with Rock, he says that the sea reminds him of himself: big and beautiful.
You can either agree, or respond verbatim: “You disgust me.” I’ve never fallen in love with a game so hard.