What 'Earthbound Beginnings' Means for Nintendo

E3 has barely started and Nintendo has already brought out a very big announcement, the prequel to their classic RPG Earthbound, originally titled Mother and now titled Earthbound Beginnings to be ported to the Wii U virtual console and is available today. Here's the reveal trailer if you haven't seen it already:

Upon examination it looks like another RPG from the NES, albeit with fewer dragons and more hippies. Why would so many fans of Nintendo, RPGs, and obscure games in general be clamoring for its release? First a bit of context:


Shigesato Itoi is a well known personality in japan that is known for his writing and his voice role as the father in the Japanese release of My Neighbor Totoro, though he is most known for creating the Mother series outside of Japan. These RPGs were known for the quirky writing of Itoi and the creative world that they built, filled with unique enemies and memorable characters, which is primarily known for the character Ness later included in the super smash brother series.

You know, the dead eyed kid!

Before, the one game out of this series that had been released outside of Japan was Earthbound, released for the Super Nintendo in 1994 in Japan to much praise and the rest of the world in 1995 to lukewarm reviews and low sales. The game would end up gaining a cult following outside of Japan and would become hailed as one of the best RPGs of all time, proving to be one of Nintendo's strangest projects in their portfolio, and these are the people that made Captain Rainbow.

What many people don't know is that Nintendo was planning on releasing the first Mother game under the name of Earth Bound for the original NES in the United States, which would be the company's first extensive attempt at localizing for international release, due to the game's large amount of dialogue that required translating and reworking to retain the humorous and quirky writing style of Itoi. The localizing was complete and the game was pushed to a 1991 release, with previews of it popping up in Nintendo Power magazines.

Though before its release, Nintendo decided to cancel the title due to the approaching launch of the Super Nintendo. Phil Sandhop, the localization director and writer for that game stated that

"Once the Super NES squatted in the pipeline and shoved the game aside from its appointed time, I believe that the marketing execs just decided that the game would be too expensive to produce and unsuccessful without marketing, and that's why it fell into oblivion."

The only remnant of the game that were found after that was a beta cartridge of the translated product that was bought by the mother community so it could be distributed through emulators. Re titled Earthbound Zero, the game would become a popular download on any NES emulator sites.

The main reason this is such a big deal amongst fans is that aside from the beta cartridge and Earthbound being ported to the Wii U virtual console, Nintendo has made very little effort into porting any more of the Mother series to America after the initial failure of Earthbound. Which has made fans all the more curious to see if Nintendo is going to make any efforts to port the 3rd installment, Mother 3 on the Gameboy advance.

Mother 3 is infamous for the large 2003 fan campaign to have the game ported to the United States. The campaign was so wide spread on the internet, that amassed thousands of signatures for Nintendo to port the game to the US, even going so far as to sending a 270 page art book to Nintendo (more info and the full book here), and sending letters and phone calls. Though the campaign would prove fruitless to their best efforts, with Nintendo still affirming that they had no plans to release it. with the only copy available outside of Japan being a very well done fan translation brought to you by the same people behind the campaign.

However, with the release of Earthbound Beginnings, many fans have already speculated that this would mean that Nintendo might plan to announce efforts of a Mother 3 port soon, perhaps even at E3 this year. However, I would like to note that since the original game had already been officially translated, therefore there was little work to be done when it came to porting this thing. Which makes me doubtful if Nintendo will be wavering on their position of "we'll get to it when we get to it."

"We'll get on that right after we make a sequel to Devil's World."

Though I will say that this may mark a turning point in Nintendo's policies. One of the strengths and flaws of Nintendo is that it has always treated its business like its still the family company it started out as. While that has always made the company keep a simple and creative image which has helped create some of the best games ever made, it has made it at time feel littered with ignorance to world demand at times.

Why can't I find these guys anywhere?

By releasing a game series that was almost emblematic for the company's lack of fan awareness, it might show a turning point for Nintendo in the increasingly global market. Bottom line: enjoy the game, don't get your hopes up, stay cautiously optimistic, hope you see more fun stuff at E3, and say "fuzzy pickles!",

Earthbound Beginnings is available on Wii U virtual console at the Nintendo Eshop for $7.