Trimming Back The Tangle: The Story Of Harvest Moon The TL;DR - Japanese company hires English-speaking company to translate and publish their games in the west - Because they picked it, the translated title is technically the intellectual property of the English-speaking company - Japanese company decides to translate and publish the games themselves - Because they don't own that translated title, they are legally not allowed to use it, so they come up with a new one - Meanwhile, the English-speaking company decides to capitalise on their ownership of the title by using it to make their own series of games - Everyone gets very confused But the longer explanation is a little more complicated than that.Back in Japan, though, a video game designer named Yasuhiro Wada was dreaming of a game that represented his idyllic childhood in rural Japan.Here's what IGN had to say about Bokujō Monogatari 2 — translated to Harvest Moon 64 — in their glowing 1999 review: "It's a rare occasion nowadays that a game with such simple graphics would even make it to store shelves, but Harvest Moon has that rare quality of being totally engaging and challenging.[2000-2012] is when a lot of the best games came out Between the year 2000 and 2012, Natsume Inc. continued to localise and publish the Bokujō Monogatari games in North America (and occasionally Europe) as "Harvest Moon".Compounding the issue was the fact that the original developers of Bokujō Monogatari were becoming less involved with the games."