Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns localization blog #3, Hamtaro not coming west

XSEED’s third Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns localization blog is now available. The latest post covers the many cats and dogs that can be had in the game.

On the topic of pets, some of you have been asking if Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns will keep the Hamtaro collaboration pet in the west. Unfortunately, the answer is no. XSEED did what it could to include Hamtaro, but it just wasn’t possible.

Regarding Hamtaro, XSEED explained:

One question I keep seeing on forums, Facebook posts, and Twitter is, “Will Hamtaro be in the game?” For those of you who hadn’t heard, the cute hamster character is featured as a pet in the Japanese version of Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns, complete with a little voice clip.

Sadly, Hamtaro will not be in the North American release of the game. I can’t get into the specifics of why—the reason is more complicated than the usual licensing fee problems you might expect—but I will say that you’ll be hard-pressed to find new, official Hamtaro merchandise on sale in this part of the world. While many remember the character from his TV debut over a decade ago, Hamtaro doesn’t really have an official presence in North America anymore.

It goes without saying that we were gutted by this development and tried to keep Hamtaro in. We hate releasing a game that doesn’t have all the features of the original version, but in this case our hands were tied. For those of you who were looking forward to raising Hamtaro, I’m very sorry. But even without the little guy, there are still more varieties of pet to raise than ever before. We hope you enjoy all the different ways animals play a part in the world of Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns.

XSEED’s latest Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns blog can be read in full here.