EarthBound/Mother video game series

[Vodka's Vengeance offline]

Alright, so am I the only fan of this series on here? I hope not. Remember Ness and Lucas on Super Smash Bros.? Well, this is where they came from. EarthBound (known as Mother in Japan) is an RPG series, and only one game has been released so far in the U.S., EarthBound for the Super Nintendo, in 1995. Originally, Mother 1 (also known as EarthBound Zero) was going to be put out for the NES in 1990, which was released a year before in Japan. But they decided not to, as the NES was about to become an obsolete system since the SNES was on its way. Mother 2 (EarthBound) was put out for the SNES in 1995, but it was a commercial failure, even though Nintendo gave it a pretty heavy duty marketing campaign. Probably because of the way it was marketed, and it cost about 70 bucks because it also included a strategy guide, which by the way, was awesome. There was gonna be an N64 version, EarthBound 64, but that was cancelled. Mother 1+2, the first two games on one cartridge, was put out for the Game Boy Advance in 2003, but only in Japan. And then Mother 3 was released in 2006, again only in Japan. Nintendo also hasn't put out EarthBound for the Virtual Console, at least not yet. Their reason is it contained music samples that could bring up possible legal issues (some music sampled was from the Beatles and Chuck Berry, for example) and had a lot of cultural references that might slap them with a lawsuit.

Alright, history lesson over. This is one of my favorite games ever, and it helped break the whole RPG stereotype of dragons and mythical warriors. Basically, you're just an average kid (Ness) from the suburbs in a world that's a parody of America, who has to save the world from an evil alien called Giygas. You meet three other kids on the way, and you fight enemies with psychic powers, a baseball bat, frying pans, bazookas, and bottle rockets. Just awesome. It has a good sense of humor, and a refreshing sense of quirkiness compared to other, also awesome RPGs like Final Fantasy or Chrono Trigger. And the main bad guy Giygas gives you one of the freakiest, most disturbing final bosses ever. The main designer, Shigesato Itoi, was inspired to create the boss based on what he thought was a rape scene (it was actually a murder scene) from a movie he accidentally watched as a kid, which scared him so bad it made his parents worry about his well-being.

The thing about this series is that it's one of the best ever, yet horribly underrated, and Nintendo of America hardly even seems to care about it. I don't get why Mother 1 or Mother 3 hasn't been released here in the States yet, although ROMs are pretty easy to find. Us American Mother fans are screwed over more than almost any other fanbase ever. Original SNES cartridges of EarthBound cost over a hundred bucks on eBay and Amazon. That wouldn't be such a problem if NOA would just put it on the Virtual Console. But, anyway, anyone else on LF a fan of these games?

[KayLenny#7 offline]

Hate to say it, but I've never really heard of said games. I grew up on Mario, and that's about it.

[Vodka's Vengeance offline]

Hate to say it, but I've never really heard of said games. I grew up on Mario, and that's about it.

Hey, it's not like you're the only one. One of points of this thread is to help give it a bit of exposure. I love this series, hopefully others will too if they check it out.

[ccbtimewiz offline]

There is already a thread for Mother... somewhere