Unused Content (Harvest Moon: 64)

Items
There's a few items that were either minimized in the final release of Harvest Moon 64, or ended up eliminated entirely.

Dog Ball
Yes, the dog ball was missing from HM64 but it was intended to exist in the item line up. If you’ve played Harvest Moon: Back to Nature, it’s what you threw around to train your dog. So how did you train you dog in HM64? Well, by whistling and having him run after you. Better make a fence and stand on the other side and whistle at him all day.

Baby Bottle
Ever wonder why your wife always said “Please help with the baby”? That's because you were actually supposed to help with the baby. The baby bottle was an abandoned tool, similar to baby toys that appeared in Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility and Harvest Moon: Animal Parade. Next time your wife asks, just tell her you can’t because the Bottle was scrapped.

Gold Egg
Just like Gold Milk, the Gold Egg was supposed to appear in HM64. If you played Harvest Moon: SNES, you’ll remember an interesting event where you can obtain a Gold Egg by climbing a beanstalk you grew (ah, the source of Pete’s fan-given name, Jack, due to the tale of “Jack and the Giant Beanstalk”). It sits unused in HM64, despite having not only a complete Gold Egg sprite but a broken Gold Egg sprite as well. Was there supposed to be a Chicken Festival just like the Cow Festival where the winning animal produced Gold Products? Or was there going to be more to Sammy the Salesman’s “Super Chicken Feed” event where your chickens actually had Gold Eggs? Unfortunately, we didn’t actually see the Gold Egg as an obtainable product again until Harvest Moon: Back to Nature.

Purchasable Dumplings
Remember the Dumpling Shop at the top of Moon Mountain? In some draft of HM64, these dumplings were purchasable and presumably available to give as gifts.

Bovine Hood
The Bovine Hood is a well-known mystery in HM64. A small boy stays for three days on your farm after you agree to house his mother's cows at your barn. He stays in the corner, not saying much at first but then he warms up to you if you speak with him every day. If you've managed to take good care of the cows and befriend John, he gives you an item called Bovine Hood that's supposed to be a charm for problem-free calving. John even has an extra portrait that is only used for this final scene.

Zack's Stand: Full of Goodies
Some of these items you can grab during festivals and eat right away - whether they were intended to be used as held items remains unknown. Given that they have descriptions, it's likely they were headed that way.

Bakery and Flower Shop "Point" Cards
These cards may have been present and viewable in the Japanese version of Harvest Moon: 64 (牧場物語2, Bokujou Monogatari 2). They're just lingering files in the NA release.

Cooking
It was definitely an ambitious goal to add cooking to HM64, and the evidence is there. A hidden menu left behind, different foods available as objects even though they never were held in-game, and the fact that every recipe was made of available produce in HM64. It was scrapped though, and left to be added to Harvest Moon: Back to Nature and future games. Never forget: you could’ve used that sweet kitchen extension for something.

Rick’s Ice Cream Machine
Yes, Rick actually successfully invented something: an Ice Cream Machine. For 10,000G, you could add Milk and an Egg to the machine and get Ice Cream from it. But wait, since you helped out with making it by giving him all those Rare Metals, the Machine is only 8,000G! The curious part about this is that scenes were left in where those random trespass-I mean, visitors to your farm requested your Ice Cream. With no sprites left in, we’ll never know how big this machine was or where it was placed on your farm, but it certainly was big enough to attract the Ice Cream lovers. Ice Cream was later added to Harvest Moon: Back to Nature (albeit a lot less fun creating it). Even though we lost the opportunity of getting Ice Cream, let’s not forget the real loser here - sorry Rick, they took out one of your few invention successes.

Full dialogue is found in the collapsible table below.

Basil Improves Your Crops
A feature that has appeared in many Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons games, Crop Improvement, was meant to be added to HM64. It turns out you could request Basil’s help with improving your produce. The only hints of this were left in Basil’s unused dialogue. As far as mechanics go, it seemed that once you asked Basil to improve one type of crop for 800G, it would affect every plant of that type on your field- changing them to GOOD quality produce. While GOOD quality vegetables were left listed in available items, they weren’t given separate product images, which means it probably was halted after the basic mechanics of it were worked out and subsequently tossed into the scrap pile.

Full dialogue is found in the collapsible table below.

Keeping Wild Animals as Pets?
Some lines were left in the dialogue on your farm that were quite mysterious in their nature. Due to these lines, we have a theory that in the original plans you could keep the wild animals you caught in the woods as pets - something we haven’t seen added again in the series until the late 2000s. It would explain why Pete could carry every animal he found in Moon Mountain. So why was this scrapped? Well…it could be because the nature of the lines found were a bit bleak, and probably not content that would be approved for a children’s game. As it is, you can put Wild Animals in your farmhouse but upon re-entering, they’ve disappeared. Due to the lack of more information, it’s uncertain whether you could only collect bugs and keep them or the other animals were fair game as well. Read more about this content below (tw: death).

Full dialogue is found in the collapsible table below.

Harvest Sprites' Tunnel
It looks like your barn was built right on top of the old Harvest Sprites' tunnel! The door to the tunnel was even left open for viewing. This tunnel was accessible in Harvest Moon: SNES, only after a storm occurs and destroys the tree out in your field to reveal the entryway. It doesn't look like any of the Harvest Sprites use this tunnel anymore, given that they now reside in the caves of Moon Mountain.

Festivals
There's two festivals that didn't make the cut in the final version: both have limited remnants in HM64, so we can only hypothesize what they might have been like by comparing them to later festivals revealed in the series.

Snow Festival
Sometime between the beginning of Winter and the Thanksgiving Festival, HM64 had a “Snow Festival”. The day before, Kent stopped by and told Pete about the event.

What is the Snow Festival?

Snow Festivals are held annually in Japan and usually span over a few days. People build statues out of snow that turn into ice sculptures around the area of the festival, and people enjoy treats from vendors. This isn’t too wild to imagine, considering Zack has his vendor cart for the Fireworks Festival in the square that could easily be stationed at this festival. It wasn’t very far along however in its conception, considering no one has lines for it and there aren’t any remnants of ice sculptures in the images.

This festival has been included in later games, including Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness, Harvest Moon: Sunshine Islands, Harvest Moon: The Tale of Two Towns and Harvest Moon: A New Beginning.

Chestnut Festival
What is this festival about?

Sometime after the Egg Festival, HM64 was supposed to have an event where the villagers gathered chestnuts in Moon Mountain. This is an activity usually performed between an individual and someone they are close to. After the chestnuts are collected, there’s usually a small gathering after.

This festival is hypothetically similar to the Foliage Festival in Harvest Moon: A New Beginning, and provided another opportunity to court your preferred marriage candidate.

Maria's Book
Instead of just seeing Maria's book in one of the scenes, it had a description as an item as well. Was it supposed to be given as a reward for seeing an event, like in Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town? It's possible it was also similar to the items the bachelorettes gave the Player on his birthday if they were at Pink Hearts to stay forever in his rucksack, but they replaced the book with Maria's painting that hangs in your home over your bed.

Maria Warms Up To Your Dog
This scene happens in Block 2 of Flower Bud Village - your dog runs up to Maria, and she's surprised. But wait- she's no longer afraid of dogs...? She even seems happy to see one! This scene was removed, possibly because extra scenes for just one bachelorette would've shown preference to Maria.

Princess Vanilla: Possible Marriage Candidate
There's numerous events for Princess Vanilla that you can view on her page. A few place her at festivals, and she seems to have the same amount of events that the other marriage candidates have as your relationship progresses. There's also the issue of a random line about your child together, wedged between many different lines: yet this line doesn't belong to any of the other candidates.