Hey Mato!
This news was posted on GoNintendo a few hours ago, and I think it would be important to share it with you. The Earthbound Cartridge, Mother 3 and other merchandise are on display at a cabinet in Nintendo World Store in NY. Ironic, huh? Here follows the link: http://www.gonintendo.com/?mode=viewstory&id=172373

The pic in question is here:

(click for full size)

And you can check out the full gallery here.

Before anyone gets up in arms or anything, here’s a comment from that article:

I am truly sorry to those of you who missed the inclusion of games like Mother 3 and the Fire Emblem Series. This display is designed to show fan appreciation for some series that do not get enough public acknowledgment. Most of the members of Nintendo World’s staff are attempting to write their love letter to the fans of these series. Most are just as upset as you that Duster will never feel the lash of Wess’ tongue in English, or that we will never play through the second half of Marth’s story without the help of a printed translation by our side. Take their inclusion as a glimmer of hope, not a slap in the face.

Those little sprite figures of some of the EarthBound/MOTHER 3 characters seem to be handmade. I wonder who made them and where they came from.

At any rate, it’s great to see fans keeping the series alive in little ways like this

Also, while I’m pimping that out, here’s a bunch of other stuff if you’re interested:

• EarthBound Central Twitter – besides links to the posts on EB Central, sometimes I post smaller updates straight to Twitter here
• EarthBound Central RSS feed
• EarthBound Central YouTube page – I don’t update it very often but it’s there
• My personal site – this is where my non-EarthBound stuff goes
• My personal Twitter account – This is where I post mostly non-EarthBound stuff
• My personal Facebook page – I finally got one because those kids wouldn’t get off my lawn dagnabbit

So follow, friend, fart, whatever. If you’re a regular here, let me know and I’ll add you back. Then we can destroy the universe together.

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MOTHER 1 Path:

EarthBound Zero / MOTHER 1+2 Path:

This wasn’t the only map simplification in the game though – the underground cave in Magicant also got made easier, as seen here.

I think these changes are interesting, but I wonder what spurred these specific changes on. Were they complaints from Japanese players, or complaints from play testers of the English version? And I wonder if anything else on the map was changed too…

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Yesterday I got an e-mail from H.S (the awesome guy doing a lot of EarthBound Zero remake hack stuff):

I had a question about something. In this page on Earthbound Central, you had a map of the Magicant caves from the Famicom version of Mother 1. I was wondering if you knew where to get some other maps from Mother 1, that were changed in EarthBoung Zero and the Mother 1+2 port. Specifically, I was curious to see a map of the original version of the base of Holy Loly Mountain. I played through the Famicom version of Mother 1 a few years ago and seem to recall that that area was different. Before I start to work on the map of that area for the EB0 Remake, I wanted to see the Famicom version of that map, to use as a reference while making the new map.

So, I guess my question would be, is there a Japanese site or something that would have these maps?

I would’ve sent a personal reply but every so often I get a question about EarthBound Zero maps, so I’ll post this here.

Back in 2006, when a bunch of us Starmen.Net folks started putting together the EarthBound Zero walkthrough, a cool hacker by the name of Goplat made a map viewer for EarthBound Zero. Not many people know about it, so here it is:

• EarthBound Zero Map Viewer

Why use a map viewer instead of just dumping it all into a giant .png file? The EarthBound Zero map is 16384 x 14384 and even in super-compressed PNG form it comes out to 6.6 MB (you can get it here). That was enough to stop a lot of our computers in their tracks back then, so this program helped save the day.

Anyway, the above program is meant for Windows systems, and you’ll probably need to run it from the command line, ala:

mapview “earthbound zero.nes”

You might be able to drag the ROM icon onto the program to make it work, I dunno. Also, the program comes as-is so use it at your own risk. I personally haven’t had any trouble with it, though.

What’s interesting is that I’m pretty certain this program can be used with the Japanese MOTHER 1 ROM too. Or at least I got it to work somehow, which is how I produced those Magicant comparison images. So using this, you can look through the maps in both versions to see what other map changes might’ve been made between MOTHER 1 and EarthBound Zero!

If anyone finds any other differences besides those Magicant caverns, let me know!

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Indeed, the bit of cardboard that holds the cart inside the box can be yours for only $109!

…I feel an EarthBound rage face would be appropriate here but none exist. Also, I’d love to see someone do a parody TV commercial for this

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I bought this DVD – The Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty – many years ago to finally find out what Shigesato Itoi was talking about in this crazy interview. I tracked it down and imported it and wrote up this looooong article and later made this video from it:

Anyway, now that I don’t need it anymore, I figured another EarthBound fan might get a kick out of having it in their collection. So if you’re interested, check out all the details here!

For reference, here’s what it looks like playing on my TV:

When you watch it, keep in mind that it’s from Japan in the 1950s – it’s actually pretty disturbing when you view it that way. Nowadays we have things like the Saw series, maybe this was sort of the equivalent for the time, as this movie spawned a grisly series of its own – not to mention the Universal Cosmic Destroyer

So if any of that sounds interesting to you, check it out here!

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So this is really old news, but I was kind of waiting for Fangamer to make a video about it.

Anyway, many years ago Fangamer printed a MOTHER 3 Handbook, but it quickly sold out. Printing books costs a lot of money, so there was never a reprint… until now.

But rather than just do a regular reprint, the guys fixed little things here and there, added a lot more all-new artwork, expanded the info tables in the back of the book, and even printed a bunch with hard covers. So if you haven’t picked up a copy of the book yet, check out all the new stuff here!

Of course, you can still see the whole guide for free here – even after all these years I’m amazed at how packed it is with love for the game

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I won’t go into the super specific details or differences between them, for now let’s just take a look at the games:

Shigesato Itoi’s Bass Fishing No. 1

And here’s the commercial for it:

Shigesato Itoi’s Bass Fishing No. 1 Definitive Edition

The Super Famicom game did well and was a big part of the “bass fishing boom” of the late 90s, but Nintendo printed way too many copies of the N64 game, so it wound up in bargain bins quickly. I can’t find any videos of it, so here are some screenshots, which were also very hard to find:

If anyone has the game and can get more screenshots and videos, let me know!

Here’s the commercial for this one, thanks to KingDarian for pointing it out to me:

There was also a fishing rod-like accessory for the N64 game:

So there you go! His two bass fishing games! I see them on eBay every once in a while, so if you’re interested in picking a copy up (they’re usually really cheap) see here!

Would you want to see any of these games fan-translated? Vote here!

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Here’s the deal:

If a Cute Li’l UFO or Beautiful UFO is present in battle and no item would be dropped otherwise, an item is randomly chosen from a list of 7. This item will always drop. If both enemies are present, the Beautiful UFO drops an item. This obviously doesn’t matter, since those two enemies will never appear in the same region.

Cute Li’l UFO:

• Cookie
• Bag of fries
• Hamburger
• Boiled egg
• Fresh Egg
• Picnic lunch
• Pizza

Beautiful UFO:

• Can of fruit juice
• Royal iced tea
• Protein drink
• Kraken soup
• Bottle of water
• Cold remedy
• Vial of serum

Try it out for yourself! Maybe even make a challenge out of it the next time you play – try to get all 14 special drops from these enemies. It should be a lot easier than the 1/128 item challenge at least

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Hey there, Cap from Nerdy Show here,

When I was in 6th grade, back in ’96 I started making hand-made RPG Valentines for my school class, including some Earthbound ones. I never finished enough and so i never gave ‘em away. They’ve got sentimental value for me, but on a lager scope they’re an interesting relic of early EB fanaticism, you can see them all here.

Check out the link above, he has a ton of other Valentines from 90s RPGs in there! I’m also kind of amazed that Nerdy Show people have taken notice of me, I used to listen to their stuff – I highly recommend it if you haven’t yet!

Anyway, I dunno about you guys, but at my house Valentine’s Day is tomorrow – when all the Valentine’s goodies go on sale

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