Yoshifumi Hashimoto has been making video games for many years.  During his career he has worked on numerous titles including Harvest Moon, Rune Factory and Avalon Code.  With Harvest Moon: A New Beginning, the first Harvest Moon title designed for the Nintendo 3DS, releasing on September 20th, we spoke to Mr. Hashimoto about the game and the Harvest Moon franchise in general.  You can read the full interview below.

We would like to thank Yoshifumi Hashimoto for his time and Marvelous AQL for their assistance with the interview.

What new features can fans look forward to in Harvest Moon: A New Beginning?

Well, it's the first Harvest Moon built from the ground up for 3DS, you can customize the town however you'd like, and things like the new terraced field look really great in 3D.

One of the biggest new additions is being able to customise the town you live in for the first time.  How much control do you have over the town's appearance?

It's pretty thorough. Of course you can choose where you want to place buildings, but you can make and move roads, too, and arrange fun little spaces in how you place benches and fountains. You could say that the series has evolved from making just vegetables to making just about everything!

This is the first Harvest Moon title on the Nintendo 3DS.  How have you utilised the console unique aspects? 

With Harvest Moon, the 3D isn't about quick and flashy effects, but rather how to enrich the visuals over extensive play time. So with that in mind we added things like the terraced crop field and focused on how to make the player's vegetables really stand out in 3D.

What new features would you like to introduce into future Harvest Moon titles?

It's hard to say... I like to approach new features one game at a time. I can tell you what won't change, though; I never want the vegetables to grow automatically, or the animals to just get on by themselves. I want the game to give players the experience of raising crops and animals themselves, in a fun way that doesn't feel like hard work or chores.

A Harvest Moon game has appeared on every Nintendo console since the SNES/Super Famicom.  Are there any plans to release a Harvest Moon title on the Wii U?

It's a really interesting platform and I'd love to work on it, but currently we have no concrete plans.

What inspiration did you use for Harvest Moon: A New Beginning?

Mostly my own experience. My father is from a part of the countryside where fields and rice paddies are built in layers up steep hillsides. So I wanted to get some of that feeling into the game, and make it look really nice in 3D.

The Harvest Moon games have a rich collection of characters.  Are any of them ever based on people that the team know in real life?

No, or at least not that I know of. When making characters we generally think of the personality traits we want first and build a person around that - not the other way around!

Harvest Moon: A New Beginning has already been released in Japan and America and has received many positive reviews, some noting that a lot of aspects in previous games have been improved.  Do you try and reflect on feedback when working on a new Harvest Moon title?

I don't focus on the reviews too much, but I do pay a lot of attention to feedback from players. But we don't implement player requests as is - a lot of them aren't really what's best for the game when you take everything into account. So instead, I try to think why a player wants a certain thing, and solve whatever the underlying problem might be. But that's when it comes to polishing and improving existing systems - when it comes to making a new game, I try my best to forget everything and just follow my instincts.

Nintendo's Animal Crossing is a life simulation series, similar in some regards to Harvest Moon.  Have you played any of the Animal Crossing games yourself?

Yes, absolutely. But despite their similarities, the core of the two series is quite different. So when I play Animal Crossing, what I pay the most attention to are things like the kinds of plants and trees they have.

The Harvest Moon franchise has been going strong for nearly twenty years now, what do you think is the secret to the franchise's longevity?

Although all the games have a lot of the same elements, every time we make a new one, we revisit those elements and are willing to rework them just as we would for a brand new game. And just in general, there aren't a lot of games out there that focus on relaxation as opposed to action.

You have worked on the Rune Factory series as well.  Do you have a preference between Harvest Moon or Rune Factory? 

I love them both. I originally had the idea for Rune Factory while working on Harvest Moon, when I thought it would be fun to make a life simulator in a fantasy world. So even though it's newer, Rune Factory would never have existed at all without Harvest Moon.

You've worked on many titles, which has been your favourite title to work on?

I've had fun working on all of them, so I want to say they're all my favorites. Buy if I had to choose, I'd say Avalon Code or the first Rune Factory. There's something about working on a new IP that really energizes the whole development team to make something special.

What project are you working on at the moment?

I'm working on quite a few titles all at once at the moment. Some are from existing series while others are brand new... but I'm afraid you'll just have to wait to find out more than that!