The Mother of Ness gives us holiday treats, the EarthBound way

Earthbound for Super NESDid everyone celebrate the one that brought them into the world today? I hope so and to all those Mother’s reading right now, Happy Mother’s Day to you!

To celebrate Mother’s Day (and tie it into video games of course) I decided to check the status, both official and unofficial, of the only game (to my knowledge) to actually have the title of “Mother”. Yes, that would be the Mother franchise, otherwise known as EarthBound.

And what better way to start off than with new updates to some EarthBound Fan-Comics, thanks to Starmen.net. Click on the name of the comic to go to the contents page and click the other link to see the newest update for that title.

Mother Banner

Mother – (Page #36 is newest addition) – “With a brilliant style and a careful attention to detail, kenisu brings to you the story of Mother. However, this is no ordinary retelling — in it is many of the untold events of the plot left for the player to wonder or theorize about. Join kenisu in his version of the story that started it all — the story of Mother!”

Crying For Mother (This comic is still ongoing but the latest page, page 21, has just been posted) – “As a bone-chilling premonition strikes the heart and mind of a rich, yet sweet young girl from Snowman Town, a vast adventure awaits her in Strawberry Tofu’s retelling of Mother/EB0’s main story. Who knows what may happen when the world delves into chaos from the fateful encounter that started years ago….”

Gaia’s Lament – (This series is also still ongoing. The latest chapter being #21, “Intruder Alert!”) – “Many years after the fateful encounter with an alien being and beyond the chaos the earth saw with the ultimate evil entity, Giygas, comes a new unforeseen threat. Pokey, having escaped the battle with Giygas through time, saw a bleak future, but little did he know at the time how involved he would be in this event. As new foes emerge, what will fate allow to arise as Mother Earth sadly watches by the sidelines?”

Most people will recognize EarthBound for the psychic battler Nessin Super Smash Bros. & Super Smash Bros. Melee, who is from that game. And those lucky ones will remember the original game fondly. EarthBound (which is actually Mother II in Japan, the rest of the world was skipped over for the original Mother 1 for the Japanese Famicon) was released in the US for the Super NES in 1995.

The game starred a boy named Ness and his friends in an extremely quirky RPG. Defying normal RPG conventions, the setting of EarthBound was modern-day, and it set-out to poke fun at Western society. As a result, the game is very witty and funny and you’ll come across everything from arcade parlors to hamburger shops to crazed hippies and a band that resembles the Blues Brothers called The Runaway Five. The battles in the game were turn-based and had you staring at the enemies from a first-person perspective. EarthBound had excellent (and extremely funky) music as well, and while the game didn’t sell super well in the US, in Japan it is a best-selling franchise (along the lines of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest!). Thanks to the quirky nature of the title however, it did manage to snag cult-classic status and grew it’s own die-hard fanbase of all things Mother.

Mother 1+2 for GBA at Amazon JapanEver since the release of the SNES EarthBound, the gaming community outside of Japan has been clamoring for the release of a new EarthBound title outside Japan. They almost got one when EarthBound 64 was announced for the N64 (known as Mother 3), but it never saw the light of day. Then a compilation of both Mother games was announced for the Game Boy Advance. Called “Mother I&II“, it was sadly skipped over once again, and never released outside of Japan. Then Mother 3 was re-announced for Game Boy Advance and subsequently released . . . in Japan.

Incredibly, the huge install-base of EarthBound fans, thousands strong, have been denied again and again by Nintendo. EarthBound fans have even sent many petitions to the upper-brass at Nintendo with thousands of signatures, hoping to help push a western release for one of the Mother titles.

In 2003, Miyamoto himself even commented on a petition by Starmen.net, an uber-popular EarthBound fan-site, in an interview with Nintendo UK by replying to the question “Is there any possibility of the Mother 1&2 GBA collection coming out in English?” with “We had high hopes for Earthbound, the Super NES version, in the US, but it didn’t do well. We even did a TV commercial, thinking, ‘Hey… this thing could sell three million copies!’ But it didn’t. You might not know this, but there was a petition in the US, a ‘Please make Mother 3’ petition and it got about 30,000 signatures! After that, we thought ‘Wow… Earthbound fans are really solid.'”

Mother 3 for GBA at Amazon JapanUnfortunately, even with that Nintendo still did nothing, and a new game was never released outside Japan. The last official word from Nintendo that I could find was from February 16th earlier this year, when Reggie mentioned, in an interview with MTV, that him and Nintendo President Satoru Iwata know about the fan-translation project for Mother 3. And that they are considering updating the series with a remake. The Reggienator also mentioned that he’s never played the original EarthBound . . . FOR SHAME! *lowers Reggie a notch on the cool meter*

You combine the quote above with another quote from Nintendo vice president George Harrison, also from February, where he says that Nintendo is interested in making previously Japan-only games available to U.S. audiences via the Wii’s Virtual Console . . . and it’s not a stretch to imagine that EarthBound, and hopefully it’s Japanese counter-parts, will eventually see a release outside of Japan.

And there are a few rumored ways that this may come about:
1. Nintendo releases all three Mother games in a compilation for the Nintendo DS, with re-worked graphics & music. This would also give them the chance to straighten out the name of the series if they wanted, leaving it “Mother” instead of “EarthBound”.
2. Nintendo releases all three Mother games for the Wii Virtual Console. They include a translated version of Mother 1, the original SNES EarthBound and a translated version of Mother 3.
3. Nintendo releases a remake of the SNES EarthBound for the Wii or DS, and follows that up with a GBA re-release of Mother I&II, which either has the addition of Mother 3 included, or they follow the compilation up with a GBA or DS version of Mother 3.

Anyway, no EarthBound fan really cares how they go about releasing these titles, only that they DO and SOON! EarthBound fans are some of the most dedicated and loyal you will ever find, and they deserve to have what they’ve been waiting for all these long and hard years, a new and OFFICIAL EarthBound release. Personally, I hope Nintendo goes with Virtual Console releases for all three games. Either that or a 3-game DS compilation.

For more on EarthBound, read the Wikipedia entries for the EarthBound series entry, EarthBound (SNES), and Mother, check out the fansite www.starmen.net, as well as the answers.com EarthBound entry for lots of cool details on changes from the Japanese version, read read up on the history of EarthBound Zero as well while you’re at it (which was released onto the Internet in ROM form) and last but not least, check out various EarthBound footage in the videos below!

This is the intro for the original Mother, known in the ROM world as EarthBound Zero.


Here someone plays through the beginning sections of EarthBound Zero.


And lastly here’s a Japanese commercial for the original Mother.


This is the crazy intro for the U.S. version of EarthBound. I remember being amazed when I first saw this.


The opening sections of EarthBound, which includes naming your party and the beginning moments as the meteor crashes into town!


Gameplay footage from EarthBound.


A tribute to Mother 3 for the N64 (never released), includes pictures as well as video, set to music from the game!


Footage from the Japanese Mother 3 for Game Boy Advance.


Mother 3 commercial, with English subtitles.