Story of the Seasons: A Wonderful Life producer Hikaru Nakano discussed the origins of the remake. This comes as part of an interview with the Japanese magazine. Famitsu.
Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life was originally released on GameCube around two decades ago. Back on Switch with new content and features, including new events, improved festivals, more cooking recipes, new cultures and a camera function.
Here is our translation of the Famitsu interview in which Nakano explains how Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life was born:
First, tell us how you decided to remake A Wonderful Life in a series like Bokujou Monogatari (Story of Seasons), where there are so many games to choose from.
All games in the Bokujou Monogatari series have their own unique characteristics, and as creators, we want people to fully enjoy all games. A Wonderful Life is considered a very memorable title by many fans. We see these kinds of comments on social media today, but we receive the same kind of comments by letter before we even had social media. So that’s one of the reasons we decided to do it again this time.
So players have been waiting for a new version for a long time, right? What parts of the game do you think fans really enjoy?
The gameplay of A Wonderful Life really had a certain unique feel and charm to it. The feeling of Forget-Me-Not Valley and the feeling of living in this town was something very special. I think living in this place in the game makes A Wonderful Life particularly special among Bokujou Monogatari games.
Were there thoughts of remaking A Wonderful Life on the development side as well?
Yeah, when we made the game there were some technical limitations that kept us from fully doing everything we wanted to, so I had been looking for an opportunity to do it again.
The game also sold very well overseas, and the support and approval from our overseas companies, not just the Japanese publisher Marvelous, is another reason why we were able to embark on this new version.
About when did you decide to redo the game?
We started talking about it in the summer of 2020 and the actual development started in the fall of this year. It takes time to go from “I want to do this” to realizing it.
Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life is now available on Switch in Japan. It will follow on June 27, 2023 in North America and Europe.
Translation provided by Simon Griffin and Kim Louise Davis on behalf of Nintendo Everything.