Mother,[b] officially known outside of Japan as EarthBound Beginnings, is a 1989 role-playing video game developed by Ape Inc. and Nintendo and published by Nintendo for the Family Computer. It is the first entry in the Mother series and was first released in Japan on July 27, 1989. The game was re-released in Japan along with its sequel on the single-cartridge compilationMother 1+2 for the Game Boy Advance in 2003.[1] The game follows a young American boy named Ninten as he uses his great-grandfather's studies on psychic powers to put an end to the paranormal phenomena spiraling the country into disarray.
Writer and director Shigesato Itoi pitched Mother's concept to Shigeru Miyamoto while visiting Nintendo's headquarters for other business. Though Miyamoto rejected the proposal at first, he eventually gave Itoi a development team. Modeled after the gameplay of the Dragon Quest series, Mother subverted its fantasy genre contemporaries by being set in an offbeat parody of the late 20th-century United States. Itoi sought to incorporate standard RPG staples within the framework of a modern-day setting, parodying Western culture and Americana. As such, throughout the game, players use medication and hospitals to restore their health, utilize baseball bats and toy guns to fight enemies, and encounter aliens, robots, possessed objects, and brainwashed animals and humans. Mother uses random encounters to enter a menu-based, first-person perspective battle system.
Mother sold around 400,000 copies upon its release, where it was praised for its similarities to the Dragon Quest series and its simultaneous parody of the genre's tropes, though its high difficulty level and balance issues polarized critics. A North American localization of Mother was completed and slated for release as Earth Bound, but was abandoned as being commercially nonviable. A finished prototype was later found and publicly circulated on the Internet under the informal title EarthBound Zero. Though many critics considered Mother's sequel to be similar and an overall better implementation of its gameplay ideas, Jeremy Parish of 1UP.com wrote that Mother importantly generated interest in video game emulation and the historical preservation of unreleased games.
In 1994, Mother's sequel, Mother 2: Gīgu no Gyakushū, was released in Japan for the Super Famicom, which was localized and released in America in 1995 under the name "EarthBound". EarthBound initially flopped in the U.S., but later gained a cult following and became retrospectively viewed as a cult classic. EarthBound was followed by the Japan-only sequel Mother 3 for the Game Boy Advance in 2006. To commemorate the 20th anniversary of EarthBound's U.S. release, Mother was released globally as EarthBound Beginnings for the Wii UVirtual Console in June 2015, and was released alongside EarthBound for Nintendo Switch Online in February 2022.
Gameplay
Screenshots from battle sequences in Mother (left) and Dragon Quest III (right). The battle system of Mother, including its interface and first-person perspective, drew inspiration from the Dragon Quest series.
Mother is a single-player, role-playing video game[2] set in a "slightly offbeat", late 20th-century United States as interpreted by Japanese author Shigesato Itoi.[3] Throughout the game, the player fights hippies, undead zombies, mind-controlled humans, animate objects and vehicles, extraterrestrial life, robots and crazed animals.[4] The world is composed mainly of towns, deserts, swamps, forests, and caves the player must venture through. The game deliberately avoids traits of its Japanese role-playing game contemporaries: it does not strictly adhere to the fantasy or science fiction genres, despite numerous instances of each occurring within the game.[3] The player fights in warehouses and laboratories instead of in standard dungeons, and rather than trekking from to each town on foot, the player is able to take trains to travel from area to area. Instead of swords, assault weapons, and magic, the player uses baseball bats, toy guns, frying pans, knives, and inherent psychic abilities.[3] The game's main protagonists, Ninten, Lloyd, and Ana, are roughly 11–12 years of age.[5] The player can press a button to have Ninten "check" or "talk" with nearby people, animals, and objects. The game shares similarities with its sequel, EarthBound: there is a game save option through using a phone to call Ninten's father, an option to store items with one of Ninten's twin sisters at home, and an automated teller machine for banking money (ATM). The members of Ninten's party are all visible on the overworld screen at once, and are analogous to EarthBound's party members in style and function. Differing from the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest series, Mother'sworld map does not keep locations separate, instead connecting all areas in one game world. The landscape's structures are portrayed with an oblique projection, requested by Itoi at a programmer's suggestion.[6][7][4]
Like the Dragon Quest series, Mother uses a random encounter combat system. The player explores the overworld from a top-down perspective and occasionally enters a first-person perspective battle sequence where the player chooses attack options from a series of menus.[3] On their turn, the player selects between options to fight, guard, check enemy attributes, run away, use items, or use offensive, defensive, or healing psychic powers. The player can also set the battle on autopilot with the "auto" option.[4] Upon being assigned a command, the party members attack in an order determined by a random number generator and the character's speed status. Critical hits register with the series' signature "SMAAAASH" text and sound.[4] If the enemy or character's HP reaches 0, the battle is won and the opponent becomes unconscious; if a character or separate enemy becomes unconscious, it can only be reversed by using PSI on that character or enemy. If every character becomes unconscious, the game transitions to a blank screen, where it asks the player if they want to continue; an affirmative response brings Ninten, conscious, back to the last save point, with half the money on his person at the time of his defeat. Upon winning the battle, the player may receive experience points, new psychic powers, and other points to improve their overall status. Enough experience points will increase the character's level, which somewhat determines the increase of the character's physical and psychic points. There is also a chance an item can be obtained after an enemy is defeated. Once the battle is won, Ninten's father deposits money into an account, which can be withdrawn from an ATM. In towns, players can purchase weapons, items, and food from fast food restaurants and department stores. Weapons and equipment, such as pendants, medallions, and bracelets, can be equipped to increase a character's strength and defense. Items can be used for a multitude of purposes, such as healing, clearing obstacles, and unlocking doors. Towns also contain useful facilities such as hospitals, where players can be healed for a fee; in one town, it is half of whatever cash the player has on hand at that moment.
Plot
"Ninten" redirects here. Not to be confused with Nintendo.
In the early 1900s, a young, married couple mysteriously vanish from their rural American town. Two years later, the husband, George, inexplicably returns and begins a strange study in complete seclusion. His wife, Maria, is never heard from again. In 1988[c], the home of a young boy named Ninten[d] is attacked by a poltergeist. After Ninten fends it off, his father tells him that his great-grandfather studied psychic powers, and asks him to investigate crises occurring across the world. Resolving some in his hometown of Mother's Day[e], Ninten travels to the land of Magicant, where its monarch, Queen Mary, asks Ninten to collect the parts of a song that appears in her dreams to play them for her. Ninten returns to Earth and befriends Lloyd[f], a child prodigy who is bullied at Tinkle Elementary School[g]. The two travel to the town of Snowman to deliver a lost hat to Ana[h], a young girl with psychic powers. Ana tells Ninten she saw him in a vision, and joins the party in hopes of finding her missing mother.
Ninten and party exploring the overworld
Finding multiple parts of Queen Mary's song, Ninten is harassed at a karaoke bar in the town of Valentine[i] by a gang leader named Teddy. Surrendering after a fistfight, Teddy joins Ninten's party to avenge the deaths of his parents, who were killed at Holy Loly Mountain[j]; Teddy forces Lloyd to stay behind. In a cabin at the mountain's base, Ana pulls Ninten aside and asks him to always be by her side. The two dance and profess their mutual love. A giant robot[k] then attacks the group, with Lloyd arriving in a tank to destroy the robot; the robot escapes by ripping a hole in space, leaving the party burned, Teddy critically wounded, and allowing Lloyd to rejoin the party. They take a boat out on a nearby lake, and a whirlpool pulls them into an underwater laboratory; in it, they find a robot named EVE, which claims to have been built by George to protect Ninten. When the laboratory floods and they are sucked back out into the lake, they leave for the mountain's peak. After the escaped robot returns with an upgrade, it attacks them, and EVE self-destructs to destroy it, leaving behind the seventh part of Queen Mary's song. The party then warps to Magicant, where Ninten plays the collected melodies to Queen Mary. Upon recalling the rest of the song, she teaches Ninten the eighth and final melody and reminisces about an alien named Gyiyg[l] that she had loved as her own child. Revealing that she is George's wife Maria, Queen Mary vanishes; Magicant, actually a mirage created by her consciousness, vanishes with her.[m]
The party is warped back to Holy Loly Mountain. Large rocks had blocked the mountain peak's entrance, but were cleared by Maria's consciousness. There, the party encounters the mother ship that the fully-grown Gyiyg is on. While attacking them, the alien expresses its gratitude to Ninten's family for Maria having raising him, but explains that George stole vital information from its people that could have been used to betray them, proceeding to accuse Ninten of interfering with their plans. Gyiyg offers to save Ninten alone if he boards the mother ship, only for Ninten to decline. The party then begins to sing Maria's lullaby, while Gyiyg tries to quiet them through its attacks; they persist and finish the song, causing Gyiyg to be emotionally overwhelmed at the memory of Maria's motherly love. Gyiyg swears they will meet again and flies off in the mother ship; the party then faces the player as the credits roll behind them.[n]
Development
Producer Shigeru Miyamoto approved the Mother project based on his confidence in Itoi.
Mother was developed by Ape and published by Nintendo.[2] While visiting Nintendo for other work, copywriter Shigesato Itoi pitched his idea for a role-playing game set in contemporary times to the company's Shigeru Miyamoto. He thought the setting would be unique for its incongruence with role-playing genre norms, as daily life lacked the pretense for magic powers and they could not simply give the child characters firearms as weapons. Itoi's project proposal suggested how the natural limitations could be circumvented. Miyamoto met with him and praised the idea, though he was not sure whether Itoi "could pull it off".[10] As an advertiser, Itoi was used to concept proposals preceding the staffing process, but Miyamoto explained that video game concepts needed people who signed on to "make" the product.[10] Itoi was overcome with "powerlessness".[10][o]
Miyamoto was also hesitant to work with Itoi at a time when companies were pushing major celebrity product endorsements, as Itoi's involvement would be for such a game. When the two met next, Miyamoto brought the documentation from a text adventure game and told Itoi that he would have to write similar documentation himself. Miyamoto said that he knew from his own experience that the game would only be as good as the effort Itoi invested, and that he knew Itoi could not invest the appropriate time with his full-time job. Itoi restated his interest and reduced his workload, so Miyamoto assembled a development team. Upon assessing for compatibility, they began production in Ichikawa, Chiba. Itoi had said earlier that he wanted his work environment to feel like an extracurricular club consisting of volunteers and working out of an apartment, which Miyamoto tried to accommodate.[10] Itoi wrote the game's script[3] and commuted from Tokyo, a process he found "exhausting".[10] Even with asking Itoi to prioritize the development process, Miyamoto received criticism of acquiescing to a celebrity and of hiring a copywriter not up for the task. Miyamoto said that his decision to pursue the project was based on his confidence in Itoi.[10] According to Itoi in a 1989 Famitsu interview, the word "mothership" was the influence for the game's title[11][12], although he stated the title was drawn from other sources; in particular, the song "Mother" by John Lennon, which moved him to tears and inspired him to create a game to move its players in the same manner.[13]
The logo design was inspired by that of the Elvis Costello record Blood & Chocolate.[14] The design of the planet representing the letter O was drawn to appear as an unrecognisable version of the familiar planet Earth.
Release
Mother was released in Japan on July 27, 1989, for the Famicom[15] (known as the Nintendo Entertainment System outside Japan).[2] The game was backed by an advertising campaign highlighting Itoi's involvement as a celebrity, including a promotional video where he urged potential players to not rush through the game.[16] It also revolved around a live-action television commercial, where child actors portraying Ninten, Ana, and Lloyd destroy a giant robot with psychic attacks before setting off for Holy Loly Mountain.[5] Additionally, the advertisement featured two taglines: "No crying until the ending” and “Guaranteed masterpiece".[17] Merchandise based on the game and its commercial was produced, along with the Mother Encyclopedia, a guidebook which contained expanded information about the game's world and characters.[18]
The game's soundtrack was composed by Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka. Tanaka was a video game composer working for Nintendo who had previously composed for games such as Super Mario Land and Metroid, while Suzuki was a composer and musician for bands of many different genres.[19] Tanaka joined Mother's team under orders from his superiors[20] and originally did not understand what Shigesato Itoi wanted from his score; over the course of the project, he came to comprehend Itoi's vision, and a relationship of trust was built between them.[12] While Tanaka programmed the game's music and sound effects, Suzuki was hired to write the game's soundtrack[21]; Itoi asked him to base his compositions off pop music and to write the game's songs with real lyrics, something rare in Famicom games at that time.[22] Suzuki considered the game's American atmosphere to be easy to write for, and found it fun to circumvent the Famicom's audio restrictions to produce sounds that had not been attempted before.[22] The team's approach to writing Mother's music was "…to establish the rules that governed the audio for this world. There were considerations in terms of how time and space were related, how characters were associated with one another, and how the concepts of good and evil were represented".[21] Itoi was particularly excited about using music to expand and deepen the game's world.[12] The Famicom was only able to play three notes at a time, which Suzuki and Tanaka noted greatly limited what they were able to produce, as they could not create some of the sounds they wanted.[23][21] Suzuki also worked with French musician Louis Philippe on a song for the game's soundtrack titled "Flying Man", which ultimately went unused; the song would later appear in Mother 2 in several forms.[24]
A sample of the "Eight Melodies" song from the Mother soundtrack album, based on the melodies that Ninten has to collect in the game; the song became well known and played in elementary schools for its simplicity.[25]
An eleven-track album of songs based on the game's soundtrack was recorded in Tokyo, London, and Bath and released by CBS/Sony Records on CD and cassette on August 21, 1989. The album was produced at Crescent Studios in England by Tanaka, Suzuki, and Itoi while Mother was still being programmed; Suzuki and Tanaka worked with Takeshi Saitoh, David Bedford, Louis Phillipe and Michael Nyman during the making of the album. Several artists recorded vocal renditions of many of the game's songs, including London singer Catherine Warwick, Jeb Million from the band Blazer Blazer, and child soloists Jeremy Holland-Smith and Jeremy Budd from St. Paul's Cathedral Choir. Budd and Holland-Smith's performance of the "Eight Melodies" track would be used extensively in promotional material for the game. Additionally, "Flying Man" appears in the album.[24] The album was written and recorded in English by Linda Hennrick under Itoi's direction with the intention of being released internationally; this would not transpire until 2015.[26] The album was likened by RPGFan reviewer Patrick Gann to compositions by the Beatles and for children's television shows. He found the lyrics "cheesy and trite" but appreciated the "simple statements" in "Eight Melodies" and the "quirky and wonderful" "Magicant". Only the last song on the album is in chiptune. Gann ultimately recommended the 2003 remastered release over this version.[27] The game's soundtrack contains several tracks later used in subsequent series games.[4]
English localization
Screenshots from Mother (left) and Earth Bound (right). The cross present in the church is absent in the localization, with the church now being referred to as a château.[28]
An English localization began for Mother in 1990 and was completed in September of that year.[29] The localization was headed by Phil Sandhop, who had previously worked on the English version of Final Fantasy.[29] In accordance with Nintendo of America's content policies, all religious iconography, blood, breastnipples, cigarettes,[p] and references to violence and alcohol were removed.[28] Additionally, NPCs similar to Peanuts characters were altered to avoid potential legal prosecution.[30] Several features and enhancements were added to the original, including a run button, several in-game options, and an expanded ending.[31]Holiday-based town names were renamed to appeal more to mature audiences, while some maps and graphics were redesigned for difficulty or aesthetic purposes.[30] These changes were implemented by Sandhop, who rewrote the game's script himself, and it was then sent to Nintendo Co., Ltd., where it was approved by Shigesato Itoi, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Mother's development team before being programmed and sent back to Nintendo of America for further testing.[29][32] Phil Sandhop also coined Mother's English title as Earth Bound for the game to appeal to American audiences;[33][34] Nintendo of America trademarked a separate title, Space Bound, as a potential title for the game's sequel.[33][35]
Plans finalized for Earth Bound included an English release of the Mother album soundtrack, along with an 80-page instruction manual styled after a diary belonging to George, which would end on a ripped page after taking the player halfway through the game.[29]Earth Bound was advertised and scheduled for a fall 1991 release, but was delayed and subsequently shelved.[36][3]Earth Bound's cancellation has since been attributed to Nintendo of America's marketing division deeming the game unprofitable, due to the lack of market interest in the RPG genre, the cost of Earth Bound's added cartridge size and supplementary materials making it difficult to promote and manufacture, and the game's planned release being late into the NES's life cycle in light of the impending US release of the Super NES.[29][37][38] In 1994, efforts were renewed to release Earth Bound in the United States and in Canada, but were shuttered due to the endeavor's perceived costs.[29] According to Phil Sandhop in an interview with LostLevels.org, "the Mother project and localizing it really opened up a few eyes at Nintendo. They began working closer with Nintendo of America and the other subsidiaries to produce artwork for games that would be appropriately received anywhere in the world and not need localization".[29] The name Earth Bound would later be carried over as the English title of Mother 2, EarthBound, with minor changes.[38]
Emulation
The "TK-69" cartridge, which was sent to Nintendo of Canada in 1994 to be evaluated for a Canadian release. It is notable for being the first game made by Nintendo to be made publicly available through dumping.
In 1998, a completed prototype cartridge of Earth Bound was found by a fan translation group named Neo Demiforce (or just Demiforce), who had been working on a preliminary English translation of Mother before the prototype was discovered.[40][39] It had been sold earlier that year for $125 to an unknown buyer named "Kenny Brooks" by a game collector named Greg Mariotti, who had discovered the prototype several years earlier at a game retailer.[33][39][41] Interested in acquiring the cartridge to publicly dump its ROM for preservation purposes, Steve Demeter, the head of Demiforce, "bullied" Mariotti to disclose Brooks' email address; Mariotti ultimately severed ties with Demiforce.[40][33] A Mother fan named "EBounding" in contact with Brooks soon gave the information to Demiforce, desiring to play the game himself.[39][41][42] Demiforce then entered into negotiations with Brooks, and as part of them, the EarthBound fan community would donate $400 for Demiforce to temporarily obtain the cartridge from Brooks in order to dump its ROM. To distinguish Earth Bound from EarthBound, the prototype's title screen was altered to display the name "EarthBound Zero", a tribute by Demeter to Street Fighter Alpha (Street Fighter Zero in Japan).[33][3][41][39]
On April 27, 1998, EarthBound Zero was released to the public, along with an original back-up of Earth Bound's code.[39][41][42] In order for Earth Bound to work on one of the most proficient NES emulators at the time, NESticle, a single byte of code in the ROM was modified; however, this led to a checksum being triggered at various points in the game, which would indefinitely lock the game on an anti-piracy screen.[39][40][42] Another byte was modified to disable the screens entirely, and it was publicly distributed once again.[39][42] Skepticism about the cartridge's authenticity soon arose from dubious members of the EarthBound fan community, initially positing alternative theories as to how the cartridge surfaced; they later came to regard the prototype as real, mainly due to Phil Sandhop confirming the cartridge's likely authenticity and the changes in Earth Bound being present in Mother 1+2.[39][4] The prototype was later sold by Brooks for $1000 to a collector named Andrew DeRouin, who gave it to a friend that kept it for fourteen years; DeRouin would reacquire the cartridge from the friend for free.[29][33] The cartridge, dubbed the "TK-69" prototype, was dumped once again in 2020, as Demiforce's original back-up had gone missing since its initial release.[43] Since the discovery of the "TK-69" cartridge, multiple prototype cartridges have surfaced outside of Nintendo, with one confirmed prototype residing within the headquarters of Nintendo of America.[42][44][45]
Mother was the sixth best-selling game of 1989 in Japan,[51] where it sold about 400,000 copies.[7][52][53]Mother received a "Silver Hall of Fame" score of 31/40 from Japanese magazine Famitsu.[15] Reviewers noted the game's similarities with the Dragon Quest series and its simultaneous "parody" of the genre's tropes.[3][4] They thought the game's sequel, EarthBound, to be very similar[4][54] and a better implementation of Mother's gameplay ideas.[3] Critics also disliked the game's high difficulty level and balance issues.[3][4][54][55]
Jeremy Parish of USgamer described the game as a mild-mannered parody ("between satire and pastiche") of the role-playing game genre, specifically the Dragon Quest series.[3] He noted that Mother, like many Japanese role-playing games, emulated the Dragon Quest style: the windowed interface, first-person perspective in combat, and graphics, but differed in its contemporary setting and non-fantasy story. Parish commented that Atlus's 1987 Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei was similarly set in the modern day, though it devolved into science fiction and fantasy in ways Mother did not. He added that the game has "a sense of wonder and magic realism ... in the context of childhood imagination", as Ninten can feel more like someone "pretending" to be a Dragon Quest-style hero than a hero in his own right.[3][q] Parish said this makes the player wonder which game events are real and which are Ninten's imagination. Parish cited Itoi's interest in entering the games industry to make a "satirical" role-playing game as proof of the genre's swift five-year rise to widespread popularity in Japan.[3]
Cassandra Ramos of RPGamer praised the game's graphics and music, and considered it among the console's best, with "rich, ... nicely detailed" visuals, Peanuts-style characters, and "simple but effective" audio.[4] In contrast, she found the battle sequences aesthetically "pretty bland" and, otherwise, the game's "least interesting" aspect.[4] Overall, she found Mother "surprisingly complex ... for its time", and considered its story superior to (but less "wacky" than) its sequel.[4] She especially recommended the game for EarthBound fans.[4]
Parish credited Itoi for the game's vision and compared his ability and literary interests with American author Garrison Keillor. Parish felt that Itoi's pedigree as a writer and copywriter was well suited for the space-limited, 8-bit role-playing game medium, which privileged Mother ahead of other games written by non-writers. USgamer's Parish noted how the game's non-player characters would "contemplate the profound and trivial" instead of reciting the active plot.[3] He added that the game's lack of an official North American release has bolstered the reputation and revere of its immediate sequel.[3]
While Parish said Mother's script was "as sharp as EarthBound's", he felt that the original's game mechanics did not meet the same level of quality. Mother lacked the "rolling HP counter" and non-random encounters for which later entries in the series were known. Parish also found the game's balance to be uneven, as the statistical character attributes and level of difficulty scaled incorrectly with the game's progression.[3] Rose Colored Gaming, a company that made custom reproductions of the NES cartridge, noted that the Japanese release's was more challenging than the unreleased English localization.[55]RPGamer's Ramos similarly found balance issues, with a high number of battles, difficult enemies, reliance on grinding, and some oversized levels.[4] Parish wrote earlier for 1UP.com that in comparison to EarthBound, Mother is "worse in just about every way", a clone where its sequel was "a satirical deconstruction of RPGs".[54] He wrote that the game's historical significance is not for its actual game but for the interest it generated in video game emulation and the preservation of unreleased games.[54]
Legacy
Re-releases
In 2003, as part of a promotion for Mother 3, Nintendo released a Game Boy Advance compilation titled Mother 1+2, which compiled Mother and its sequel, Mother 2, into one combined cartridge presented only in Japanese.[4] As part of its conversion to a handheld format, Mother received numerous changes to its interface, graphical display, and soundtrack, which were all either compressed or altered to fit within the confines of the Game Boy Advance. Additionally, the game retained many of the changes present in the unreleased English version of Mother, including its altered enemy sprite and extended ending. Commenting on the changes to the Famicom original, Phil Sandhop stated in an interview with LostLevels.org that it was most likely due to convenience: "In software development, each subsequent version is usually derivative of prior versions. Once the program was changed, they would have continued to use the revised program and plugged in their old text modules."[29] The Game Boy Advance version of Mother also contains its own alterations from the original, including revised text, tile-based movement similar to Mother 2, and a new item called the "Memory Chip", which can be collected after EVE self-destructs and enables the party to warp back to EVE's remains at any point.
Since its release, Mother, alongside its sequels, EarthBound and Mother 3, have been consistently lobbied for official commercial re-releases by fans, critics, and journalists of the gaming industry alike. Despite Nintendo Power readers ranking Mother the fourth-highest most desired game for the WiiVirtual Console (with EarthBound as the most desired) in 2008,[56] a release ultimately did not materialize. Inspired by the success of EarthBound's Virtual Console release[57] and to commemorate the 20th anniversary of EarthBound's release in the US, Nintendo would rerelease Mother on the Wii U's Virtual Console service in Japan on June 14, 2015, and internationally the same day as EarthBound Beginnings.[58] While the Japanese Virtual Console release of Mother retained many of the changes enacted from the Mother port in Mother 1+2, the international Virtual Console release utilized the same ROM as the unreleased NES localization of Mother, Earth Bound, with no inherent modifications. Like its successor, EarthBound, EarthBound Beginnings became one of the best selling titles for the service, particularly in North America and Europe; it ranked slightly less in Japan, behind the digital version of Splatoon.[59]EarthBound Beginnings and EarthBound were both released for the Nintendo Switch Online service in North America on February 9 2022, and internationally the following day.[60]
A sequel entitled Mother 2: Gīgu no Gyakushū was developed and released in Japan for the Super Famicom in 1994, and was localized and released for the Super NES in 1995 as EarthBound. EarthBound was initially met with poor critical and commercial reception in the US, but has since garnered a dedicated fan community and has been critically re-evaluated as an influential cult classic. Development for the third game in the series, Mother 3, began in 1994 for the Super Famicom before shifting to the Nintendo 64 and its disk-based add-on in 1996, where it lasted for two years before switching to the system's standard cartridge format. It was cancelled in 2000, due to further development siphoning resources from the GameCube, but its development was restarted in 2003 for the Game Boy Advance and released to critical and commercial acclaim in Japan in 2006. It is the only game in the series to have not been officially localized by Nintendo, despite much demand; in 2008, a fan translation spearheaded by Clyde Mandelin was released and was lauded by fans and critics alike. Shigesato Itoi since stated that he had no plans to create a fourth series entry, effectively ending the franchise.
Starmen.net hosted a Mother 25th Anniversary Fanfest in 2014 with a livestream of the game and plans for a remixed soundtrack.[61] Later that year, fans released a 25th Anniversary Edition ROM hack that updated the game's graphics, script, and gameplay balance.[62] On October 19, 2019, a fan-made documentary entitled Mother to Earth was released, developed by a film group known as 54&O Productions. The project was funded by Kickstarter, with 560 backers donating $37,000 to reach the minimum $35,000 needed for the documentary's production. The documentary focuses on the road to Mother's localization and eventual release as EarthBound Beginnings in North America, and includes interviews with key people behind the process, as well as notable figures within the gaming community.[63] Additionally, merchandise and psychical media centered around the documentary is available on the project's website.
↑ Changed to an ambiguous point in the 1980s in later releases.
↑ Ninten originally went unnamed, being referenced to with standard pronouns such as "Boku" (ぼく), the Japanese form of "Me", but was officially designated as Ninten later on.[8][9]
↑ In later translations, Ninten first visits a grave at the top of Holy Loly Mountain, where George's spirit conjures a black crystal and speaks to Ninten through it, teaching him the final melody.
↑ Later releases feature an extended ending, where human prisoners found earlier on Holy Loly Mountain are set free, including Ana's mother; Teddy recovers from his injuries and becomes a singer; Lloyd is treated like a hero among his classmates; and Ana is shown receiving a letter from Ninten. Ninten goes to bed as the cast of characters appear at the bottom of the screen before the credits. Afterward, Ninten's father tries to call his son to tell him of a new crisis occurring.
↑ Itoi later described this moment as the "one time [Miyamoto] made [him] cry".[10]
↑ As stipulated by a Californian law regarding content policies in video games at the time.[28]
EarthBound, released in Japan as Mother 2: Gīgu no Gyakushū, is a 1994 role-playing video game developed by Ape Inc. and HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System as the second entry in the Mother series. The game focuses on Ness and his party of Paula, Jeff and Poo, as they travel the world to collect melodies from eight Sanctuaries in order to defeat the universal cosmic destroyer Giygas.
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Shigesato Itoi is a Japanese copywriter, essayist, lyricist, game designer, and actor. Itoi is the editor-in-chief of his website and company Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun. He is best known outside Japan for his work on Nintendo's Mother/EarthBound series of games, as well as his self-titled bass fishing video game.
Nintendo Space World, formerly named Shoshinkai and Famicom Space World, was an annual video game trade show hosted by Nintendo from 1989 to 2001. Its three days of high-energy party atmosphere was the primary venue for Nintendo and its licensees to announce and demonstrate new consoles, accessories, and games. Anticipated and dissected each year with hype and exclusivity, it was a destination for the international video game press, with detailed developer interviews and technology demos.
Giygas, also known as Giegue, and Gyiyg in Japan, is a character in the Mother video game series by Nintendo, created by Shigesato Itoi. The character serves as the main antagonist and final boss of Mother and its sequel, Mother 2/EarthBound. In the series, he invades Earth in an attempt to wipe out humanity in Mother, and returns in EarthBound where he conquers the world and sends his forces into the past to prevent protagonist Ness from defeating him. The battle against Giygas, which depicts him in turmoil, drew inspiration from a Japanese film which traumatized Itoi as a child. He has received positive reception with critics referring to his battle as one of the creepiest in video games, and considered one of the greatest and most iconic video game antagonists of all time.
Keiichi Suzuki is a Japanese musician, singer, and record producer who co-founded the Moonriders, a group that became one of Japan's most innovative rock bands. He is known to audiences outside Japan for his musical contributions to the video games EarthBound Beginnings/Mother (1989) and EarthBound/Mother 2 (1994), both of which have been released on several soundtracks. More recently, he has composed film scores including The Blind Swordsman: Zatōichi (2003), Tokyo Godfathers (2003), Uzumaki (2000), Chicken Heart (2009), as well as Takeshi Kitano's Outrage trilogy.
Mother 3 is a 2006 role-playing video game developed by Brownie Brown and HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy Advance. It is the third and final entry in the Mother series. The game follows Lucas, a young boy with psychic abilities, and a party of characters as they attempt to prevent a mysterious invading army from corrupting and destroying the world.
Creatures Inc. is a Japanese video game company affiliated with Game Freak and Nintendo, and is one of the owners of the Pokémon franchise. It was founded by Tsunekazu Ishihara in November 1995, with the assistance of then-president of HAL Laboratory, Satoru Iwata, as a successor to Shigesato Itoi's company Ape Inc.
Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun, also known as Hobonichi (ほぼ日), is a Japanese company run by Hobonichi Co., Ltd. that designs and produces various daily life products such as T-shirts and notebooks. The company was founded by copywriter Shigesato Itoi on June 6, 1998, and it was originally his idea to call the site "Almost Daily" to give it more leeway, as he thought that daily updates would be too much mental pressure and content-wise, but since the site's launch at midnight, some content has been updated every day. Originally started as Itoi's personal website, it has grown into one of the most profitable websites in Japan by focusing on sales of goods. In 2012, the website won the Porter Prize.
Itoi Shigesato no Bass Tsuri No. 1 is a fishing video game developed and released only in Japan for the Super Famicom on February 21, 1997 and updated for broadcast as eight different episodes on the Satellaview subsystem between April and November 1997. On March 31, 2000, the latest version of the game was released for the Nintendo 64 as the Definitive Edition. The game allows the player to play as the creator of the game, Shigesato Itoi, and includes a host of animal characters who occasionally appear in the game. The SA-1 was used in the Super Famicom version.
Porky Minch, known in the localization as Pokey Minch, is a character in the Mother series, also called EarthBound. He is one of the main antagonists of EarthBound, and the main antagonist of its sequel, Mother 3. He is the neighbor of the protagonist, Ness, but eventually finds himself under the influence of the main antagonist, Giygas, whom he aides in the final battle. He eventually flees after Giygas' defeat. In Mother 3, he is responsible for much death and destruction, having traveled through time and manipulating an island of people to suit his whims.
The Mother series is a role-playing video game series created by Shigesato Itoi for Nintendo. The series started in 1989 with the Japan-only release of Mother, which was followed up by Mother 2, released as EarthBound outside Japan, for the Super NES in 1994. A second sequel was released in Japan only, Mother 3, for the Game Boy Advance in 2006. The music of the Mother series includes the soundtracks to all three games; the first game was composed for by Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka, who were joined by Hiroshi Kanazu for the second game, while Mother 3's score was written by Shogo Sakai.
Marcus Lindblom is an American video game developer known for his English localization of the 1994 video game EarthBound. Lindblom spent his youth in the United States, and dropped out of college to move to Japan with his wife. After four years, he returned to college in the United States and began to work at Nintendo of America's call center. He eventually worked on Japanese-to-English game localization projects such as Wario's Woods and, most notably, EarthBound. Lindblom worked with a translator and a writer to accurately translate the game for a Western audience. He sought to stay true to Shigesato Itoi's script, but was given latitude to make the script as weird as he wanted, and so added in American cultural allusions. Lindblom considers the localization his highest achievement.
The development of Mother 3, a role-playing video game from Nintendo, spanned a total of twelve years between 1994 and 2006 with a three year gap in between, and spanned four consoles and multiple delays. Following the commercial success of its predecessor, Mother 2, Mother series creator Shigesato Itoi was given the previous game's development team.
The 1994 video game EarthBound is known for its cult following and fan community. Multiple video game journalists have written about the dedication of the game's fans in producing fan art and lobbying Nintendo for further releases in the series. The company has been largely unresponsive to their efforts. Prominent fansites include Starmen.net and EarthBound Central. The former was started in 1999 and became the definitive community website. Their members organized petitions and campaigns to bring English-localized games from the Mother series to North America. One such effort included a full-color, 270-page EarthBound Anthology as a demonstration of consumer demand for further releases. After nearly a decade, EarthBound was rereleased for the Wii U Virtual Console in 2013, whereupon it became a bestseller.
Cabbage was a canceled breeding simulator video game that was planned for release in the late 1990s on the 64DD, an expansion peripheral for the Nintendo 64 console. The prototype was developed by a team of Nintendo's "biggest talents", led by Shigesato Itoi, Tsunekazu Ishihara, Shigeru Miyamoto, and eventually Satoru Iwata. Miyamoto spoke eagerly about the innovative development of Cabbage across the years until early 2000. Years later, he reflected that it had drifted silently into cancellation but that it deeply influenced other Nintendo games such as Animal Crossing and Nintendogs.
Ness is a fictional character in the Mother role-playing video games published by Nintendo, created by Japanese video game designer Shigesato Itoi. His first appearance was in the 1994 Super NES game EarthBound, the second entry from the series, in which he serves as the game's main protagonist and playable character. He also appears as a playable fighter in the Super Smash Bros. series of fighting games where he is voiced by Makiko Ohmoto. Ness is depicted as a thirteen-year-old boy residing in the fictional town of Onett in Eagleland who has psychic abilities referred to as PSI. In EarthBound, Ness teams up with several other characters to battle Giygas, the main antagonist of the game and a recurring character in the series. He has received generally positive reception, and his appearance in the Super Smash Bros. series has contributed to a rise in popularity in both him and EarthBound. His relationship with his parents has been the subject of commentary, as well as how he compares to other role-playing game protagonists.
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