YES I WILL TELL EVERYONE ABOUT MOTHER
okay so there’s a guy
named Shigesato Itoi and he was a super weird Japanese kid who watched a movie called “The Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty” which will be (not very) important later and he was a cool dude who grew up to write ad copy then create an essay-writing website where he wrote philosophical essays about his dog Bullion. He decided at one point that he should make a video game (for…some reason?) and so he did.
He made a game called Mother for the NES, which was an adventure game when adventure games were about collecting gems and hitting orcs with swords. This adventure game was different, and featured a boy called Ninten from Eagleland who goes off on a quest battling creepy hippies and moving trees and sentient objects of all kinds, trying to find a way to stop an intergalactice space alien from destroying the world because it had lost its human foster parents. It did brilliantly well in Japan, and was never localized to America. Sometimes it’s known as Earthbound Zero (???????)
Several years later, the sequel was released. In Japan, this is known as Mother 2. In America, since we never had Mother, it’s known as EarthBound. This was released for the SNES, and the star is Ness (who you remember from SSBB), who wanders around and meets the other chosen 3, Paula, Jeff, and Poo (we don’t talk about that name shhhh). It was marketed TERRIBLY and sold very poorly in America, whereas in Japan it became (once again) an instant classic. Itoi saw a movie when he was little called the Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty and it had a sex scene and he thought it was a violent rape (??? he’s weird) and that’s what he based all the villain’s final creepy moaning dialogue on whoa. Legal copies in America today are almost impossible to find bUT IT’S JUST BEEN LEGALIZED FOR AMERICAN VIRTUAL CONSOLE YAY.
Several years later (no seriously like 11 years later) Itoi released Mother 3, known only as Mother 3, and since Earthbound sold so poorly in America we never ever got it. It was vaguely a sequel to EarthBound, in that there’s like one of the same characters. It was about a young family with a mother, father, and two twin boys aND IT WAS GREAT AND NOTHING BAD EVER HAPPENED TO ANY OF THEM THE END but no seriously just fucking say goodbye to your heart if you play this game
(source: fangamer.net)
subjective impressions:
Mother: Mother is a fucking exercise in patience. Athsma and fucking cars. Geniuses in trash cans. Broken final bosses. Weird weird learning curve. Characters that show up and disappear and where did you go hey. Brilliantly made for the time but whoa. Whoa mindfuck.
Earthbound/Mother 2: Probably the best game ever made. Genuinely funny. Heart and gut wrenching. Stunning examples of the way storytelling can be condensed to give a full character in about two sentences, telling everything you need to know. Brilliant ending like nothing else. Truly horrifying nightmare fuel end boss. Uplifting stunning, brilliant, incomparable. 5/5 stars would recommend to everyone.
Mother 3: ….when it is good it is VERY VERY GOOD. It does some things so well it hurts (like it physically hurts me right now thinking about it years after playing it). Others it…tries very hard? Eh, the humor and themes in Earthbound are better and the story is tighter, but Mother 3 does a great job with character and emotion and i’m not joking it took me over 30 minutes to stop hysterically crying at the end i was nOT OKAY. 4/5 stars, would be 5/5 except Earthbound exists. It’s not as good as Earthbound but it’s better than pretty much any other game.
They’re brilliant and amazing and pssssssssssssssssssst you can get translation patches and emulators and stuff for them everywhere online please do it please please play them and talk to me about them EARTHBOUND HAS JUST BEEN RELEASED FOR VIRTUAL CONSOLE IN AMERICA OKAY PLEASE PLAY IT AND TALK TO ME ABOUT IT OKAY PLEASE
This is Mr. Saturn he says BOING.
High-res scan of a flyer for MOTHER, 1989
I’m really proud of the earthbound fandom right now. You guys struggled long and hard for the mother series to be released over seas for many many years and yet even when Nintendo didn’t give you guys answers or the no you guys never gave up. You all continued to show your love for the game(s) and as time grew on the fans kept growing and growing, even now …So having EB announced for the virtual console in Europe and the US is like a huuuge blessing.
I don’t know if I’m making sense, but I’m glad to be part of this fandom despite jumping in Febuary of this year. ORZ You guys stay awesome and keep loving the Mother/eartbound series like you do~. x3
