Big thanks to Kakao Games for sponsoring today's video and for providing me with a key for
their hit MMO Black Desert Online.
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The Mother series, or Earthbound as it’s known outside of Japan, has had a checkered
past with localization.
The first game in the series, Mother on the Japanese's Famicom, was originally planned
to be released overseas as Earth Bound, notably with a space splitting the words Earth and
Bound compared to how the series is known today.
In fact, Nintendo of America’s localization team had already finished an extensive localization
of the game, complete with typical changes of the time - such as religious symbols being
removed from churches…
…smoking references being removed…
…and violent imagery being toned down.
This version of the game was complete and ready to be released by September of 1990.
Furthermore, the localization team finalized an 80-page instruction manual which included
a small walkthrough to help players get started, alongside two posters with a map and enemy
chart printed on their flipsides.
There were even talks of an official soundtrack release.
Nevertheless, Nintendo of America put the project on halt, deciding not to release the
game till the following year in hopes of building up a better marketing campaign to accompany
its release.
This ended up spelling the game’s doom however, as by 1991 the Super NES’ North American
release was fast approaching.
Phil Sandhop, a Product Analyst/Specialist at Nintendo of America during the game’s
localization, explained in an interview: “Essentially, the game was already a wrap and was in line
for production when the details of the Super NES launch started to firm up.
…Earth Bound [on the NES] was not cancelled, it was just not produced.
Think of a movie that has been edited and need only to be copied and sent to the theaters,
along with a marketing program.
Sometimes these things sit for years before the studio feels it's right.
Nintendo had that luxury with games, especially NES games.
…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.”
However, all was not lost as a few years later Mother 2 was announced for the Super Famicom
and Nintendo of America worked doubly as hard to bring Earthbound, now just one word, to
western shores with one of the most comprehensive localizations of video game history.
To do this Nintendo of America paired Marcus Lindblom with Japanese writer Masayuki Miura
to rewrite nearly all of the text within the game.
Miura was invaluable for helping Lindblom understand the tone and context of the original
Japanese version’s often bizarre text.
Lindblom would then rework everything to better ring with western audiences.
Some changes were fairly minor, such as Mother 2’s opening screen, which was changed to
avoid any potential confusion - since Mother 1was never released in North America.
Other aspects had to be completely reworked, such as the Japanese kokeshi doll statue found
in Mother 2.
Kokeshi dolls were first made in Northeastern Japan around the late Edo period and sold
as souvenirs to travelers visiting the region’s hot springs.
They were treasured as good luck charms or children’s toys and can still be found today
throughout the country.
Furthermore, in Japanese the word for “erase” is “keshi,” so in a clever bit of word
play players use a “kokeshikeshi” to erase the statue in the game.
While kokeshi dolls would already be very foreign to most western gamers, the pun makes
absolutely no sense in English.
Thus, the localization team replaced the kokeshi statue entirely with a statue of a giant pencil
eraser and task players with using an “eraser eraser” instead.
Lindblom recalled, “So when I was trying to figure out how to handle that, the guy
from Japan was like, ‘I have no idea what you want to do here.
You can make it weird if you want.’
“Then I said, ‘Well, there needs to be something that’s an eraser,” …Okay,
let’s just call it the ‘eraser eraser.’
Which ended up playing off the kokeshikeshi idea.
“It worked out but that was one of those cases where I had to come up with something
odd that didn't really have all that much to do with the original Japanese [version
of the game].”
However, while a number of these changes were made to better suit western audiences, others
were made at the behest of Nintendo of America’s strict censorship policies of the time.
For example, the bar in Fourside was turned into a café.
In fact, every single reference to alcohol in the game was changed to coffee instead.
In Mother 2 a man in the bar says, “I was drunk, so I accidentally knocked on the wall
instead of the bathroom door.”
Whereas the same man in Earthbound’s café says, “I was in the middle of a caffeine
buzz, and I had to get to the bathroom fast!
When I got there, I accidentally knocked on the wall instead of the restroom door…”
Additionally, a health recovery item called a “Grownup Drink” in Mother 2 was sanitized
to be a “Protein Drink” in Earthbound.
Violence was also toned down, for instance, when Ness brings Picky and Pokey back home
to his parents in Mother 2 you can hear their father beating them offscreen…
Meanwhile, in Earthbound the sound effect changed altogether…
Any instance of nudity was removed too, such as when Ness visits Magicant.
He was originally naked in Mother 2, but wears pajamas in Earthbound.
Lindblom lamented this change in particular, stating, “If I had my choice I would’ve
left Ness naked in Magicant, because I thought that was kind of awesome.”
Numerous religious references were edited out of the game too.
A number can found in the Happy Happy Village where many of the NPCs originally referred
to gods, goddesses, and even the Devil in Mother 2, whereas Earthbound’s localization
team were forced to write around this as best as they could.
For example, this hippie says, “We might’ve been listening to messages from the Devil
rather than God…” in the Japanese release, but this was changed to, “We might have
been listening to evil messages rather than good,” in the west.
Speaking of the Happy Happy Village, another localizer explained the change behind the
Cultists of Happy Happyism’s outfits between the Japanese and North American releases claiming,
“Also, while not strictly religious, we did change the Happy-Happyist hats a bit.
Miura-san knew that there was a chance that the appearance of men with hoods over their
heads would be too close to the Ku Klux Klan, and he was right.
So, the first change they suggested was a puff ball at the end of the cap like a Santa
hat.
I was fine with that, but I did also ask that they take the HH off of the cap.
I thought that the blocky, low-res H looked a bit like a K at the small size, and so just
to be on the safe side, I asked them to remove that.”
Nevertheless, Lindblom says the team didn’t remove every single religious reference, saying
in an interview, “[Nintendo of America] wanted as few religious references as possible,
no matter how seemingly innocuous.
Although we did leave the word ‘pray’ in the game just because we thought that was
kind of nice and general enough that it didn't necessarily feel, to me at least, that I had
to take that word out.
Because honestly, I really didn't want to put the word ‘wish’ in or something like
that because that just sounded lame to me.”
A few fans have also pointed to the removal of red crosses from hospitals and the nurses’
outfits in Earthbound as yet another example of religious censorship too.
However, Lindblom claims this wasn’t done for religious reasons as much as it was done
to avoid copyright issues, saying, “…We had to take out the red crosses on the hospitals
because we knew that was sort of questionable even at that time.
They could come and say, you know, because there's the actual organization The Red Cross
who uses that as their symbol.”
This would be far from the only alteration due to copyright concerns either.
In Mother 2, a truck obviously referencing Coca-Cola was changed entirely in Earthbound.
Comparably, Mother 2’s Tonzura Brothers originally wore matching black suits and hats,
clearly referencing The Blues Brothers, one of the series creator's many inspirations
for the game.
This was made less clear in Earthbound, where the band was named The Runaway Five, despite
actually having six members, and given different colored outfits.
Nonetheless, we’ve just scratched the surface of the differences between the games as the
amount of changes Nintendo of America’s localization team made was unusually large.
In fact, professional video game translator Clyde Mandelin has even written an entire
book comparing Mother 2 and Earthbound called, Legends of Localization - Book 2: EarthBound.
However, despite all of the effort Nintendo of America put in, the game was classed as
a commercial failure upon release.
This came as a big blow to Nintendo, who spent around $2 million dollars to advertise the
game in North America.
Shigeru Miyamoto said, “We had high hopes for Earthbound, the Super NES version, in
the US, but it didn’t do well.
We even did a TV commercial, thinking, ‘Hey… this thing could sell three million copies!’
But it didn’t.”
Some have blamed the game’s infamous marketing campaign, known for lines such as, “This
game stinks,” as well as gross out scratch and sniff cards, for its failure, and claiming
that these advertisements completely missed Earthbound’s unique tone and charm, and
ultimately drove away potential fans from giving the game a shot.
Lindblom offered his own theories behind the game’s failure, saying: “The sales were
definitely disappointing.
But I wasn't really surprised for a couple of reasons.
The first thing was the price of the game.
By including the strategy guide in the box, which I felt was a great guide and one I'm
very happy with, the cost of the game needed to be higher.
For a game that hadn't established an audience, it was an expensive proposition for lots of
gamers.
“The second issue, which became apparent when the reviews started to come in, was the
graphics.
In those days of the Super NES and the Sega Genesis, sophisticated graphics were becoming
a key feature, as Sega emphasized the speed of the Sonic the Hedgehog games, and Nintendo
followed with ‘Mode 7’ graphics and the Super FX chip, used in games like Star Fox
to render 3-D visuals.
“To many of the reviewers at the time, EarthBound's graphics looked like enhanced 8-bit graphics,
and felt a bit too much like a throwback that the market wasn't looking for yet.
Ironically, the aesthetics seem to play very well today in this age of retro gaming.
The cuteness, colors and hallucinatory bits are called out as favorites by lots of fans
these days.
But back at the time of release in 1995, this certainly wasn't the case.”
Whatever the reason may have been, Lindblom confessed, “…Nothing could change the
fact that the game was viewed as a ‘miss’ within the company.”
In fact, this “miss” has commonly been rumored to be the reason why Mother 3 has
never been released outside of Japan despite fan outcry.
On the bright side though, things have been looking up for Earthbound fans in more recent
years.
Earthbound was re-released on the Wii U’s Virtual Console in North America and Europe
on July 18th, 2013, marking the first time the game had ever been officially available
in Europe at all!
Earthbound would also later be included on North American and European versions of the
Super NES Classic Edition, despite not being on Japan’s Nintendo Classic Mini: Super
Famicom.
Even more surprisingly, the English version of Mother 1was finally released nearly 25
years after being completed via the Wii U’s Virtual Console on June 14, 2015 in North
America and Europe where it was retitled Earthbound Beginnings.
Again, I'd like to thank Kakao Games and Black Desert Online for sponsoring today's video.
Black Desert Online has been successfully launched in over 150 countries, is available
in 12 languages and has over 9.5 million registered users.
If you want to check it out yourself, including the brand new expansion launching November
14th, please see the link in the description where you will be able to get a 7 day free
trial, and please consider subscribing to the channel to see more videos on how video
games and other media are changed around the world.
Until next time, thank you for watching!