Looks like Nintendo threw in a nice homage to EarthBound in Animal Crossing New Leaf! He also mentioned Bobbery of Rogueport from Paper Mario, too, but this one did a better job catching my attention!

Is this new game full of references like that? If so, that’s cool – and I wonder if any other EarthBound references have snuck in there!

EarthBound for Game Boy… Man, that would’ve been wild. I’d love to see how that would’ve looked – I imagine it would be something like this. Here’s a proof of concept that battle backgrounds could’ve been possible too:

Anyone willing to draw some Game Boy EarthBound mockups for fun?

Back in 2003, before MOTHER 1+2 was released, Shigesato Itoi got together with the composers for MOTHER 1 and 2 and asked them to talk about their experiences, as well as suggest a bunch of music albums for fans to listen to after playing through the games.

The resulting Japanese article was a lot of text though, so for 10 years nobody really got around to translating it all… until now, thanks to Iwant and Chewy!

Here’s a sample from the text:

He may not have much of a presence nowadays, but Prince blended musical genres together. In a way, MOTHER did, too. I like his moves, it was like watching a monkey when I saw him on video. His level of concentration and the instantaneous force he held when diving into music-making was incredible. There’s not an explicit feel of funk in the game, but once in a while it’ll show its face through the bass phrases and rhythm. If you feel a little fun-kay! when you’re playing MOTHER, that’s why.

Check out the entire translated article here!

I had missed that tweet, but Jack W. posted on the EarthBound Central Facebook page about it showing up on the Tennis Channel recently, so I did a quick search and found it here!

I guess he doesn’t know it’s called a Mr. Saturn in English – quick, someone get him a copy of EarthBound!

Book #1: Earthbound by Ken Baumann

There is no better title with which to start a video game series than Earthbound, an RPG that flopped when it first arrived to the U.S., only to grow in fans and critical acclaim over the years, eventually becoming the All-Time Favorite Game of thousands, among them Ken Baumann.

Baumann will explore the game’s origins, its marketing failures, its cult rise from the ashes, the ways in which the game is a window into “what the world thinks of American culture and mythology,” how he and his older brother bonded over the game as kids, and what it’s like to try to recreate childhood experiences.

Ken Baumann lives in Los Angeles. He’s worked as an actor for ten years in film, theater, and television. He starred in The Secret Life of the American Teenager, a series on ABC Family, for five seasons. He’s the author of the novels Solip and the forthcoming Say, Cut, Map. His fiction, poetry and essays have been published at VICE, HTMLGiant, The New York Tyrant and elsewhere. Baumann also runs Sator Press, a nonprofit that publishes innovative literature.

It looks like the EarthBound book is tentatively scheduled to be released this December. There’s also a little more info in this Kickstarter video too:

So if you’re interested, check out the full Kickstarter page here!

Average Prices:

• EarthBound cart: $173 (down from $188, lowest: $100.00 / highest: $510.00)
• EarthBound guide: $103 (down from $127, lowest: $55.00) / highest: $200.00)
• EarthBound complete set: $502 (down from $628, lowest: $290.59 / highest: $829.95)

So it looks like prices have started to drop all around! It’s too early to say if it’s going to keep going this way or not – once the game gets re-relesaed on the Wii U it’ll be a little clearer. I suspect that if there ARE any content changes to the game (aside from things like the PSI animation/flashing changes), it could mean that these original cartridges will be seen as collectors’ items all the more.

I think the real highlight of this past month is that someone actually paid $510.00 just for an EarthBound cartridge, yikes! If they’d followed the tips I posted on buyearthbound.com they could’ve saved up to $410

Congratulations to TragicManner and everyone on the translation team, and thanks to Jeffman and sblur for organizing everything and making the patcher program. And double-extra thanks to Jeffman for also doing so much extra hacking work for this translation over so many months. Now even more people can enjoy MOTHER 3 thanks to all of you guys

Earthbound’s greatest strength is its personality, something most modern games seem to lack. But, from a game design perspective, “personality” isn’t something often considered. How does Earthbound use its charm to benefit its gameplay and story? And how did this quirky RPG gain a cult following unlike so many other games that have come out before or since?

On top of the points the video makes, I feel that the MOTHER/EarthBound games aren’t so much about quirkiness as they are about charm and personality – I don’t think Itoi was ever like, “Oh man, I am gonna make THE wackiest games ever!” I think this is why a lot of quirky games/whatever that people say take after EarthBound never quite feel “EarthBound-y”, you know?

Anyway, if you like game analyses, check out a bunch of other Game Theory videos here!

I’ve recorded a couple samples for comparison – it’s hard to see in this video but maybe you can tell:

Only a few of the PSI animations have this animation change, though – most of them remain unchanged. I also noticed it happen when the screen starts rapidly changing and flashing after you’ve gotten all eight melodies, just before you go to Magicant.

Apparently this sort of change is standard for Virtual Console games? I wouldn’t know since I rarely play any VC games

Anyway, assuming this is company policy, we can probably assume this same thing will be done to EarthBound’s bright, flashy animations too.

Basically, from what I can gather, the company is working on a big book project that’s mostly unrelated to MOTHER stuff, but there IS going to be a short little page about “Potential”, which is one of Itoi’s new favorite phrases.

For whatever reason, the guys working on the book decided to take a look at MOTHER 2′s box, and the print designer guy seems to have been impressed by the type of ink the MOTHER 2 box uses. I’m not much of a printing expert so I can’t give much more detailed info than that, but I guess it’s something you can appreciate if you’re an expert in printed materials.

Anyway, MOTHER-related updates on Itoi’s site are pretty rare, so it’s neat to see it still come up in really weird ways