Mother (video game)
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- For other uses of the word Mother, see Mother (disambiguation)
| Mother<tr><td colspan="2" style="font-size: 100%; text-align: center;">Image:EBZERO title.png Image:Mothertitle.png</td></tr> | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | APE, HAL Laboratory
<tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Publisher(s)</th><td>Nintendo</td></tr><tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Designer(s)</th><td>Shigesato Itoi</td></tr> |
| Release date(s) | JPN July 27, 1989 JPN June 20, 2003 (GBA) |
| Genre(s) | RPG |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Platform(s) | Family Computer/Famicom Game Boy Advance (port) <tr><th style="background-color: #ccccff;">Media</th><td>Cartridge</td></tr> |
Mother (マザー Mazā?) (usually referred to as EarthBound Zero or EarthBound NES outside of Japan) was a game released only in Japan for the Famicom (FC). The original plan was to release the game in the USA, but Nintendo of America decided not to officially release it. It was fully translated, but only a few copies were sold on auctions.
Mother tells the story of a 12-year-old boy who journeys around the world to save the planet from an evil race of mind-controlling aliens. Along the way he is joined by several friends. They meet many unusual characters and visit strange settings before ultimately confronting the leader of the aliens.
The game was a smash hit in Japan, and gamers appreciated its unorthodox and refreshing take on the often formulaic role-playing game genre.
Contents |
[edit] Translation of opening text
In the early 1900s, a dark shadow covered a small county town in rural America. At that time, a young married couple vanished. The husband's name was George. The wife's name was Maria. About 2 years later, George returned home, but he never told anyone where he had been or what he had done. He began an odd study all by himself. As for Maria, his wife... she never returned...
The year is 1988, on the outskirts of Mother's Day Town.
[edit] Gameplay
Mother's interface is very similar to that of the Famicom Dragon Quest games. When not in battle, one button opens a menu and selects items from it; another is used to close the menu. However, Mother also uses some design principles, which, at the time of production, were strangely modern. Instead of an overhead view with four directions, Mother uses isometric graphics, and the main character is capable of moving in eight directions. Also, instead of using a world map and several city maps, Mother's world is constructed from a set of relatively large and interconnected maps. This allows the world to have a uniformity of scale.
[edit] United States non-release
Nintendo of America had originally planned to translate and release the first Mother game in the United States under the title Earth Bound [space intended]. The game was ultimately deemed unprofitable for a US release, however, and the planned release was cancelled after the game had already been translated and all packaging and advertising was ready. The game was actually completed in 1990; however, marketing pushed it far into fall of 1991, the time period in which the SNES had been released [1].
It was confirmed by former Nintendo employee Phil Sandhop that Nintendo refused to release Earth Bound in the United States because the SNES had already been released in the United States. Therefore, they thought that no one would notice a new NES game because a large number of gamers had already shelved their NES consoles for their new SNES consoles. Simply put, it was all due to marketing.
In recent years, one of the auctioned beta cartridge of the game was made into a ROM and circulated for download on the Internet. To avoid confusion, the game was dubbed Earth Bound Zero by fan translation group Neo Demiforce, as Nintendo had since released the SNES sequel to Mother (Mother 2: Gyiyg Strikes Back!) in the United States under the title EarthBound.
Fans of the series and other video game enthusiasts still debate today as to the origin of the original development cartridge. Some people claim that the original beta cartridge is just an elaborate hoax in which a translated ROM of the original Mother was burned to a blank EPROM chip and passed off as an authentic cartridge. Other less skeptical fans contest that the original cartridge is a legitimate relic that managed to be saved from destruction. Today, it is generally agreed that the cartridge is legitimate, as Mother 1 + 2 contains most of the changes found in the NES cartridge.
[edit] Trivia
- In the unreleased English version, a child in the Twinkle Elementary School says: "Have you played Super Mario Bros. 7? I'm still playing Super Mario Bros. 3. It's been quite a challenge for me." In the Japanese game, the same child says: "Have you played Dragon Quest 4? I'm still having a hard time with 3." (Dragon Quest is the Japanese name for what was then known as Dragon Warrior in the US.) However, in Mother 1+2, it is changed to "I'm still having a hard time with 'that' game".
- The game even had an increase in ROM memory size from 194.33 KB to 218.62 KB [2] (Please note that exact numbers were made after comparing both the ROMs of Earth Bound Zero and the original Mother).
- The Eight Melodies sung to Giegue in both the soundtrack and commercial have lyrics sung in English [3] with the lyrics being:
- Take a melody
- Simple as can be
- Give it some words and
- Sweet harmony
- Raise your voices
- All day long now
- Love grows strong now
- Sing a melody of love, oh love...
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Starmen.net: Earthbound Zero - Website with information and fan works on Mother
- Mother's Day - A website with a translation guide for Mother.
- EarthBound IPM - Website with information on Mother
- (Japanese) Mother Party (Mother-jp.net): Mother - Japanese Fanpage with information on Mother
- Mother at MobyGames
