Ugh, today seems to be a terrible day, it seems my bank may (at least I hope so) have made an error and overcharged my monthly service charge by around double (sadly making it so I might not be able to get the Blackguard DLC). So I decided to try cheer myself up and pop in one of my all time favourite game series Mother (or EarthBound to those who prefer that name).

I am an absolute fanatic when it comes to this series, and it always seems to cheer me up no matter how blue I get. I was lucky enough to get my hands on a copy of Mother 3 for a reasonable price and can't wait for it to arrive in the mail. I have played the game before but I never was lucky enough till now to find a copy for a reasonable price. So my question is this, anyone else here a fan of the series? If so what are some of your favourite parts, and what got you initially into playing them. If not, then why are your reasons for not liking it? Opinions, thoughts, and theories are all welcome.

I'll start off; I remember reading an interesting theory about Buzz-Buzz actually being Ninten in a robotic body so he could travel to Ness' time to warn him about Giygas/Gigue. I thought it was another interesting tie in to Mother if it turned out to be true. Also this year is will see the release (hopefully) of the fan game Mother 4! :D

Mother 4 link for those interested.

Earthbound (SNES) was such an amazing game. The longer you played it the better it got (IMO) And it was a long game. XD

The music and sound effects synced perfectly both with each other and whatever area you were currently roaming. ^_^

For its time it was truly a unique experience.

Sadly the only game I've played in the Mother series was the SNES one, I don't think there was an english release for 1 or 3. T_T

Very cool when Ness showed up in Super Smash Bros. ^_^

Wish they'd re-release this series! XD

There were so many great parts to that game its hard to choose just one favourite, however I'd have to say Moonside was the most memorable for me. ^_^

Thanks for the link to the Mother 4 fan project! It looks interesting. ;)

Sadly, being French none of the 3 games ever made it here during my teenage in the early 90's..

I know the 1st and 3rd never left Japan, and 2nd made it to the US.

I have played through an emulator Earthbound Zero when I was an active "pirate" a few years back, and did not like it much.. Too much grinding, too dated colors, too much black screen, I did not enjoy it.

I would buy and play Earthbound from the Wii shop if it was not only on the U, that I do not plan to buy anytime soon above 150 euros at most and a decent library which is not going to happen anytime soon, and I don't know for the French U shop..

Do you know about fanmade Touhou Mother games? Just seen these freely available lately, but I don't try, too much backlog and I don't know about both series anyway.

First : http://www.vgperson.com/games/touhoumother.htm

Second : http://www.vgperson.com/games/touhoumotherreturn.htm

So true, the longer you played the more engrossing it got. I love the music, heck I usually play the fan tributes to the soundtracks every so often. Yeah, 1 and 3 never made it out of Japan (so it required fan translations or a translation guide) though Mother 1 and 3 do have pretty good translation patches for them. Tomato from Earthbound Central did an awesome job on 3.

Yeah, actually that's one of the reasons why I love Brawl myself, it was nice to see an updated tribute to Mother in the SSB.

Awesome, my favourite part over all has to be the trip through Ness' subconscious. I mean many psychiatrists would have a field day on THAT bit of the game. Though the Happy-happiest cult was hilarious...and disturbing given what that cult is based on.

No problem, it looks like it will be great and I like introducing others to it to give the team even a little boost in a fan base.

Wow. Mother 4 looks amazing. I'm surprised fans are allowed to just make their own sequel.

Yeah, I was very lucky to be in a country that it released to. Sadly I never bought a copy when the place I used to rent from went out of business.

Yeah, it is sad considering how utterly epic 1 and 3 can be. Actually they could have done like Megami Tensei 1 and 2 and released Mother 1 on a Super Famicom/SNES cart with slightly tweaked graphical improvements.

Actually there are some fan made tweaks to Mother 1/Earthbound Zero that removed some of the grindyness (this is not the easy ring patch) but upped exp and turned down random encounters by half or so. There were some other improvements but I can't recall them off hand right now. It would probably improve your enjoyment of the game.

I actually own the original Mother 1 and 2 Famicom and Super Famicom carts, so I am tempted to get a reproduction cart of Earthbound Zero (re-tweaked version) and Earthbound Uncut (uncensored/grammar and spelling fixes mostly). As much as I'd love to play Mother 1 on my NES I don't have a 60-72pin adapter to use (I used to borrow a friends).

Yeah, if I ever get a Wii U (yeah, sadly it's only available for the Wii U store), I would buy a copy of EarthBound from their store so I could enjoy the game again on my TV. Oh well, at least I have my Super Famicom cart to enjoy anyway.

I heard something about fan made Mother games, but other than the one on Earthbound Central and Mother 4 I have not much more knowledge on them. I do recommend checking out Mother 4 when it hits at the end of the year, it looks absolutely beautiful and it's a PC release so no emulation is required to enjoy it. :)

They aren't as much 'allowed', but rather 'permitted as long as no money is made'.

Well, I think because it's a not-for-profit game, they are in the clear to do it. If they were charging money for it, then I could see Nintendo stepping in with a C&D order. Though, I remember reading somewhere that Itoi said he was fine if fans wanted to continue on with the series since he wasn't making another after Mother 3.

edit: ninja'd Yeah, but honestly I would buy it if by some miracle they were allowed to sell it as a DS/3DS/Downloadable game on Nintendo's network. The quality is absolutely outstanding from what they have revealed about it.

You did a better job promoting. I only wish Itoi would convince Nintendo to allow the fan translation of Mother 3 to become the published version. But reflecting upon the current issues that Nintendo face, I really don't think that's on the table. As I just said, Nintendo has a long list of laundry.

Yeah it's sad how right you are there. Mother is such a beautiful series and deserves to be played by anyone with even a vague interest in them. It would be so easy for them to use the translation, and it would make so many fans happy. The fan translations for the games are so much closer to the spirit and heart of their originals than so many professionally done translations of other games, and other productions in general.

Wanna hear an interesting story?

Well I never was a fan of EarthBound, not that I wouldn't enjoy it, I just didn't grow up with it. I play smash bros for the first time though and suddenly NES reminds me of someone.

Then I recall this extremely vague memory of some sort of platformer like game on the n64. I never played it extensively, but I went over to a friend's house or something and I remember some sort of climax part of the game, and to me I remember it as likely being the end of the game. This platformer, in which I remember the player character basically being what I can gather as being NES, navigated through some death traps in this building with a very high ceiling. When you get to the end some shizzle happens with that starman guy thing (which I know very little about since I don't know anything about EB) is like the bad guy and you have to chase him in his ship with your ship and zap him with your lasers last star fighter style. I remember it being pretty intense and the guy being pretty hard to hit and he's like going away from you and then coming right underneath you.

So... does that story sound like bullshit? I swear to god the guy had a baseball bat, and in navigating to the "final boss" around these deathtraps there were also things you were fighting.

Probably a completely different game, but I won't ever be able to shake the feeling that I lived in an alternate universe where they actually DID make that 3D earthbound game for the N64 or something. While I don't know much about the game, it did spark my curiosity to go and look up whether there was a game for the N64, where yuriofwind brought me up to speed.

Well, its not only that; the frustrating part is, the major issue that they're having, a software drought that we haven't seen since the days of the Sega Saturn after it was cancelled could be solved so very easily, if they were to take a single look at their massive back catalog, and direct an entire team to get to work on the Virtual Console with prices that make sense. Urban Champion wasn't worth 5 USD in 1983, and it isn't worth 5 USD now. Things like that keep me from making purchases.

Will I be able to play and understand what's going on if I did not play the rest of the saga?

I bought most of the NES/SNES games I ever wanted on the Wii and it's a shame more really good titles aren't available on it AND the Wii U. If Nintendo was smart, not only would they do what you said and get a team to get more good games from the back catalog to the store, but also make it an account based system where you buy the game on one system and it's available across all systems, similar to PSN. Though minus the 2 portable and 2 console system limit BS that PSN has.

I've only played Earthbound, but I love it to death. Especially Saturn Valley. BOING! Oh oh oh, and harassing that guy in a hotel until he gives you money to go away.

Definitely one of the best RPGs ever made.

Goemon's Great Adventure?