Remember that friend, Brian, I mentioned back in my EarthBound review?
The one who returned my copy of same after something like 11 years?
Dude had a subscription to Nintendo Power for... ever, it would seem.
Back issues of Nintendo Power are awesome, because they operate on a plane completely
apart from mainstream gaming journalism.
Some would call it a plane full of corporate shills, but at least they’re corporate shills
with unprecedented access.
Case in point, a back issue from 1991 or so, which featured a look at this new NES RPG
called “Earth Bound.”
Yes, 1991.
Yes, NES.
They weren’t talking about the EarthBound you know, love, and covet; they were talking
about its predecessor, the oddly-titled but very-familiar Mother.
This precursor to one of the great cult classic RPGs would eventually become known as “EarthBound
Zero.”
It was all ready to be released in the states, it was translated, heck, it even found page
space in an obscure corner of Nintendo Power.
But it was never to be.
Then back in 2003, seeking to extract some more money from their userbase and establish
the GameBoy Advance as an RPG powerhouse to succeed the SNES, Nintendo re-released Mothers
1 and 2 on one GBA cart.
That’s right, they DID reprint EarthBound.
It just never made its way to the States.
That said, the GBA is a region-free system, so many a gamer - myself included - imported
the compilation if only for novelty’s sake.
That was nearly a decade ago.
Aside from the fact that it’s portable, there really isn’t much difference between
this and the console versions of same.
Primary differences include a GBA-friendly Sleep Mode, and certain changes to the sound
effects of Mother 2 that represent the translation from SNES to GBA hardware.
Mother, though, sees its fair share of alterations.
Shigesato Itoi himself admitted that the ending of the game was rushed for its original Japanese
release in 1989, and several corrections and extensions were planned for the US release
that never was.
Regardless, these changes found their way back from oblivion, along with some rather
puritan eliminations of sex, booze, smoking, and other stuff that 1991-era Nintendo didn’t
want on their family-friendly consoles.
If you’re an Earthbound veteran, you’ll be right at home with Mother.
(Don’t think on that too hard.)
The setting and gameplay are largely similar - this dude in particular rings a fairly loud
bell - though compared with its successor, EarthBound Zero’s pacing and difficulty
(especially in the early game) feel quite brutal.
You thought Frankystein and the Sharks were a pain in the butt; you’ll reconsider after
accidentally talking to this zombie dude.
Both games are almost entirely in hiragana and katakana (as were most titles of the time),
so you’re not traversing a kanji minefield if you decide to import.
Of course, if you have EarthBound more or less memorized (and there’s a fair chance
you do), you don’t really have to read much of anything, do you?
And here’s the kicker: thanks to a number of reprints, there’s plenty of copies to
be found.
Granted, they’re still imports, and on the expensive side, but nowhere near the blow
to the wallet a used copy of EarthBound is going to run you.
Easier in the long run than import-modding both your NES and SNES... unless you’ve
already done so.
Oh well, nothing wrong with having contingency plans.