The Gamecube version (not mineral town for GBA) is supposed to have 40 characters. I know they will not be all girls, but I certainly hope there is more than 5 in this one. The only girl I was interested in the SNES version was Eve. In the N64 version, it was basically only Karen that I liked. A bigger and better selection would be nice. The hybrid crop thing sounds cool, and I like how each cow has a fence around it's stall so it can't escape. I hated it when you were in the middle of milking & brushing and the cows and other animals wandered around everywhere. It was easy to lose track of which one's you had milked/brushed/talked to. The third GBC Harvest Moon had a lot of fish and crops and the such, so I'm hoping that this is true with this HM as well, seeing as how they will be working with a larger storage medium. And lastly, I hope the game is LOADED with events. Events are what keeps the game fun after the first year or so, but there hasn't been enough of them in any HM game. Regardless, this is a must buy for me.