Have you ever been so overwhelmed by an emotion that you end up behaving obnoxiously in a public place? Walking to the Harvest Moon setup in the LA Convention Center, I was nearly overcome by all the adorable-ness and “SQUEED!!!” the ears off of my friendly and ever-patient Natsume guide. Natsume’s E3 lineup featured eleventy billion new Harvest Moon games, all due out this year for just about any Nintendo platform you can think of. Here is Harvest Moon: Animal Parade, but check out for my reviews of Harvest Moon: Sunshine Islands, Harvest Moon: My Little Shop and Harvest Moon: Frantic Farming.

Harvest Moon: Animal Parade (Wii, September 2009)

Uh oh! As is the norm with the Harvest Moon games, the Harvest Goddess is in trouble! The divine tree is weakening, the cute critters are leaving the island in droves and the five bells have lost all their powers! It’s up to you to ring the bells, bring the Harvest King back and revive the Goddess. Though this game comes equipped with an actual plot, Animal Parade focuses primarily on the doe-eyed critters that inhabit the island as well as on growing crops, expanding your farm and building a family.

For those familiar with the previous Harvest Moon game for Wii, you’ll be happy to see there are a number of improvements. The world map is significantly more detailed, showing you a ton of useful information for each individual location, including building hours and the people you can find there. There are many more outfits and accessories for both boys and girls, but alas, no cross-dressing capabilities. (I asked, and yes, that’s just the way my brain works.) Farming has been augmented to improve the process for selecting plants to hoe/water/harvest/etc. In the previous Wii installment, it was often difficult to figure out which plants you had selected, resulting in wasted energy when you accidentally watered empty squares. The new view mitigates this issue by allowing you to lock onto plants with a clear, overhead perspective.

You can tame and train Beagles, Great Pyrenees, bears, tabby cats, black cats, rabbits, snakes, turtles, raccoons, pandas and even penguins! Each animal has new and different tricks they can learn, but you have to make sure to invest time into taking good care of them and earning their love. It’s pretty darn cute to watch the various animals dance. If you train them well enough, they can even compete at the monthly circus that comes to town. Even better, in the words of my Natsume guide, “basically you can ride anything big with four legs.” Cows included. (SQUEE!)

If looking for love in a virtual world is more your style, you can check out the island dating scene. The hardcore romantics can even get married. There are several new love interest possibilities in Animal Parade, including a witch, a warlock and even the Harvest Goddess herself.

You can document all of the fun activities with a new camera function. Snap photos of your your family, various aspects of the island and even your animals. Rather than take a measly screenshot (as is often the case in other games), you can zoom in to frame a nice shot, then set the camera timer to have a delay — leaving time for you to scramble into the picture to mount a horse/cow/etc. (do something else cute and photo-y). If the shot is particularly precious, you can even send it along to your friends via WiiConnect24.

Assuming the game ends up as charming as it appeared at E3, this installment of Harvest Moon looks like it will appeal to longtime fans and new converts to the kingdom of cute.