Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar

EA Sports' annual footie fiesta FIFA 12 has stuck the boot in to last week's number one Gears of War 3, landing top of the chart.

Fur real.

The cutesy farming series Harvest Moon has twinned with an actual real life farm. Surrey Docks Farm.

Pre-order Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar and Rune Factory 3 with Game and you'll get exclusive character artwork.

King of Fighters XIII launches in the UK on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in October, Rising Star Games has announced.

Farm shopping for the original DS.

Nintendo DS farm sim Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar will launch in Europe this year, Rising Star Games has announced.

It's been a while since there's been a portable Harvest Moon to rival Friends of Mineral Town, which was lodged in my GBA's cartridge slot for the whole of 2004. The series has ambled off in several different directions since, turning your farmer into a robot boy or or an island castaway or a spiky-haired amnesiac youth to spice up the process of building and tending to an agricultural empire, but it always loses something in translation. Every exciting new addition is tempered by some unnecessary annoyance, and they usually end up balancing each other out.

In this context, Grand Bazaar looks promising. You're simply a farmer, girl or boy, with a spot of land next to a small town – no caves with monsters in, no magic gems or impending disasters. You start out with a hoe, a watering can and a pack of turnip seeds, and off you scamper to tend to them until your first harvest.

But there's a huge change to this familiar scene – instead of popping your crops and produce into a box that mysteriously turns them into money, you have to sell them yourself at weekend market days, setting out a stall and ringing a bell to attract customers.

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