Mother (video game)

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Mother
Single-player

Mother,

Famicom. It is the first entry in the Mother series. It is modeled on the gameplay of the Dragon Quest series, but is set in the late 20th-century United States, unlike its fantasy genre contemporaries. Mother follows the young Ninten as he uses his great-grandfather's studies on psychic powers to put an end to the paranormal phenomena that recently spiraled the country into disarray. The game uses random encounters
to enter a menu-based, first-person perspective battle system.

Writer and director

localized into English, but was abandoned as commercially nonviable. A copy of this prototype was later found and circulated on the Internet under the informal title EarthBound Zero. The game was eventually released globally as EarthBound Beginnings for the Wii U Virtual Console in June 2015 and Nintendo Switch Online
in February 2022.

Mother was the sixth best-selling

Mother 1+2 for the Game Boy Advance
in 2003.

Gameplay

Screenshots from battle sequences in Mother (left or top) and Dragon Quest III (right or bottom). The battle system of Mother, including its interface and first-person perspective, drew inspiration from the Dragon Quest series.

Mother is a

toy guns, and psychic abilities. The game's protagonist, Ninten, is about 12 years old.[3]

Like the Dragon Quest series, Mother uses a random encounter combat system. The player explores the overworld from a top-down perspective and occasionally enters a first-person perspective battle sequence where the player chooses attack options from a series of menus.[3] On their turn, the player selects between options to fight, guard, check enemy attributes, run away, use items, or use offensive, defensive, or healing psychic powers. The player can also set the battle on autopilot with the "auto" option.[4] Critical hits register with the series' signature "SMAAAASH" text and sound.[4]

The player can press a button to have Ninten "check" or "talk" with nearby people, animals, and objects. The game shares similarities with its sequel,

game save option through using a phone to call Ninten's father, an option to store items with Ninten's sister at home, and an automated teller machine for banking money (ATM). The members of Ninten's party are all visible on the overworld screen at once, and are analogous to EarthBound's party members in style and function. Mother's world map does not keep locations separate, and instead connects all areas (akin to the Pokémon game series). The game's story begins as Ninten discovers a music box and receives the journal of his great-grandfather, who studied psychic powers nearly a century earlier. Ninten is attacked by household items, and ventures outside to find a crazy world with hostile everyday objects and other odd events.[4]

Plot

"Ninten" redirects here. Not to be confused with Nintendo.

Mother begins with the story of a young, married, American couple who mysteriously vanish from their small, rural town. Two years later, the husband, George, returned as mysteriously as he vanished, and began a strange study in complete seclusion. His wife, Maria, was never heard from again. Years later, in 1988 (changed to an ambiguous point in the 1980s in later releases), a young American boy named Ninten is attacked at home in a

Elementary school
. The two travel to the town of Snowman to deliver a lost hat to Ana, a young girl with psychic powers. Ana tells Ninten she saw him in a vision, and joins the party in hopes of finding her missing mother.

Ninten and party exploring the overworld

After finding multiple parts of Queen Mary's song, Ninten is harassed at a

karaoke bar by Teddy, the leader of a local gang. Teddy surrenders after battling Ninten in a fistfight, and joins Ninten's party with the intent to avenge the deaths of his parents, who were killed at Holy Loly Mountain (Mt. Itoi in later versions). Roido stays behind. In a cottage at the base of Holy Loly Mountain, Ana pulls Ninten aside and asks him to always be by her side. The two dance and profess their mutual love. Soon after, Teddy warns the party of a strange noise, and a giant robot attacks Ninten and his friends. Roido arrives with a tank and destroys the robot, but accidentally hits the party and critically wounds Teddy, so Roido re-joins the party. They take a boat out on Holy Loly Lake and a whirlpool pulls them into an underwater laboratory, where they find a robot who claims to have been built by George to protect Ninten. When the laboratory floods, they leave for the mountain's peak and the robot helps them ascend. Another robot (implied to be an upgraded version of the one fought at the cabin) attacks them at the summit, and George's robot self-destructs to destroy it, leaving behind the seventh part of Queen Mary's song. After learning this melody, the party travels back to Magicant, where Ninten sings the melodies he had learned to Queen Mary. She recalls the rest of the song, thus teaching Ninten the eighth and final melody in the process, and reminisces about an alien named Giygas
that she loved as her own child. Queen Mary reveals that she is George's wife, Maria, and vanishes. Magicant, revealed to be a mirage created by her consciousness, vanishes with her. In later translations of the game, Ninten first visits George's grave at the top of Holy Loly Mountain, where George's spirit teaches Ninten the final melody.

The party is warped back to the top of Holy Loly Mountain. Large rocks block the entrance to a cave inside Holy Loly Mountain, but are cleared by the power of Maria's consciousness. In that cave, they find an area with human prisoners including Ana's mother. They need to defeat the Mother Ship to free the prisoners. The party encounters the ship that the fully-grown Giygas is on. The alien expresses its gratefulness to Ninten's family for raising it, but explains that George stole vital information from its people that could have been used to betray them, and proceeds to accuse Ninten of interfering with their plans. Giygas offers to save Ninten alone if he boards the Mother Ship, only for Ninten to decline, leading Giygas to attack Ninten's party. The party begins to sing Queen Mary's lullaby while Giygas tries to quiet the party through his attacks. However, the party persists and finishes the lullaby, causing Giygas to become overwhelmed with emotion at the thought of Maria's motherly love. Giygas swears that they will meet again and flies off in the mother ship.

In the original Famicom release, the game then ends with Ninten, Ana, and Lloyd facing the player as the

credits roll
behind them. Later releases feature an extended ending with the kids returning home and reuniting with their families. Teddy recovers from his injuries and becomes a singer, Roido is now treated like a hero among his classmates and Ana is shown receiving a letter from Ninten. Ninten goes to bed as the cast of characters appear at the bottom of the screen before the credits. After the credits, the game freezes on an image of a man, presumably Ninten's father, trying to call his son, stating, "I know that boy is home. Come on son and answer the phone. Something new has come up and . . ."

Development

Producer Shigeru Miyamoto approved the Mother project based on his confidence in Itoi.

Mother was developed by

magic powers and they could not simply give the child characters firearms as weapons. Itoi's project proposal suggested how the natural limitations could be circumvented. Miyamoto met with him and praised the idea, though he was not sure whether Itoi "could pull it off".[5] As an advertiser, Itoi was used to concept proposals preceding the staffing process, but Miyamoto explained that video game concepts needed people who signed on to "make" the product.[5] Itoi was overcome with "powerlessness".[5][b]

Miyamoto was also hesitant to work with Itoi at a time when companies were pushing major celebrity product endorsements, as Itoi's involvement would be for such a game. When the two met next, Miyamoto brought the documentation from a text adventure game and told Itoi that he would have to write similar documentation himself. Miyamoto said that he knew from his own experience that the game would only be as good as the effort Itoi invested, and that he knew Itoi could not invest the appropriate time with his full-time job. Itoi restated his interest and reduced his workload, so Miyamoto assembled a development team. Upon assessing for compatibility, they began production in

Famicom[7] (known as the Nintendo Entertainment System outside Japan).[2]

Localization and release

The game was scheduled for a U.S. release as Earth Bound in late 1991, but the project was cancelled.[3][8] According to Phil Sandhop, the director of Mother's localization, in an interview with LostLevels.org, "the Mother project and localizing it really opened up a few eyes at Nintendo. They began working closer with Nintendo of America and the other subsidiaries to produce artwork for games that would be appropriately received anywhere in the world and not need localization".[9] In later years, a completely localized ROM file was found, and was distributed online under the fan-coined title EarthBound Zero.[3]

In June 2015, Mother was officially released via the Wii U's Virtual Console service, and released worldwide for the first time under the official title EarthBound Beginnings. In addition, the protagonist from the third entry, Lucas from Mother 3, was released as downloadable content for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U.[10]

In February 2022, Nintendo released the game as EarthBound Beginnings for Nintendo Switch Online alongside its sequel EarthBound.[11]

Music

Main article:
Music of the EarthBound series § Mother

The game's soundtrack was composed by

Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka. Tanaka was a video game composer working for Nintendo who had previously composed for games such as Super Mario Land and Metroid, while Suzuki was a composer and musician for bands of many different genres.[12] The NES was only able to play three notes at a time, which Suzuki has noted greatly limited what he was able to produce, as he could not create some of the sounds he wanted.[13]

An eleven-track album of songs inspired by the game's soundtrack was recorded in Tokyo, London, and

children's television shows. He found the lyrics "cheesy and trite" but appreciated the "simple statements" in "Eight Melodies" and the "quirky and wonderful" "Magicant". Only the last song on the album is in chiptune. Gann ultimately recommended the 2004 remastered release over this version.[14] The game's soundtrack contains several tracks later used in subsequent series games.[4]

Reception and legacy

Mother was the sixth best-selling

balance issues.[3][4][19][20]

Jeremy Parish of USgamer described the game as a mild-mannered parody ("between satire and pastiche") of the role-playing game genre, specifically the Dragon Quest series.[3] He noted that Mother, like many Japanese role-playing games, emulated the Dragon Quest style: the windowed interface, first-person perspective in combat, and graphics, but differed in its contemporary setting and non-fantasy story. Parish commented that Atlus's 1987 Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei was similarly set in the modern day, though it devolved into science fiction and fantasy in ways Mother did not. He added that the game has "a sense of wonder and magic realism ... in the context of childhood imagination", as Ninten can feel more like someone "pretending" to be a Dragon Quest-style hero than a hero in his own right.[3][c] Parish said this makes the player wonder which game events are real and which are Ninten's imagination. Parish cited Itoi's interest in entering the games industry to make a "satirical" role-playing game as proof of the genre's swift five-year rise to widespread popularity in Japan.[3]

Cassandra Ramos of RPGamer praised the game's graphics and music, and considered it among the console's best, with "rich, ... nicely detailed" visuals, Peanuts-style characters, and "simple but effective" audio.[4] In contrast, she found the battle sequences aesthetically "pretty bland" and, otherwise, the game's "least interesting" aspect.[4] Overall, she found Mother "surprisingly complex ... for its time", and considered its story superior to (but less "wacky" than) its sequel.[4] She especially recommended the game for EarthBound fans.[4]

Parish credited Itoi for the game's vision and compared his ability and literary interests with American author

non-player characters would "contemplate the profound and trivial" instead of reciting the active plot.[3] He added that the game's lack of an official North American release has bolstered the reputation and revere of its immediate sequel.[3]

While Parish said Mother's script was "as sharp as EarthBound's", he felt that the original's game mechanics did not meet the same level of quality. Mother lacked the "rolling

1UP.com that in comparison to EarthBound, Mother is "worse in just about every way", a clone where its sequel was "a satirical deconstruction of RPGs".[19] He wrote that the game's historical significance is not for its actual game but for the interest it generated in video game emulation and the preservation of unreleased games.[19]

Mother was rereleased in Japan as the single-cartridge

ROM hack that updated the game's graphics, script, and gameplay balance.[22]

A film group known as 54&O Productions developed a fan-made documentary entitled Mother to Earth. The documentary focused on the road to Mother's localization in North America, and includes interviews with key people behind the process.[23]

Notes and references

Notes

  1. ^ Japanese: マザー, Hepburn: Mazā
  2. ^ Itoi later described this moment as the "one time [Miyamoto] made [him] cry".[5]
  3. ^ Parish added that later games such as Costume Quest and South Park: The Stick of Truth picked up on this theme.[3]

References

  1. ^ "ソフトニカ". www.softnica.com. Archived from the original on April 18, 2022. Retrieved March 2, 2022.
  2. ^
    Nintendo Life. Archived
    from the original on October 7, 2014. Retrieved October 11, 2014.
  3. ^
    USgamer. Gamer Network. Archived
    from the original on October 20, 2014. Retrieved October 11, 2014.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Ramos, Cassandra. "Mother 1+2 (Mother 1)". RPGamer. Archived from the original on October 19, 2014. Retrieved October 11, 2014.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Itoi, Shigesato (August 22, 2000). "『ＭＯＴＨＥＲ ３』の開発が中止になったことについての" [About the development of "MOTHER 3" has been canceled]. 1101.com. Archived from the original on October 18, 2014. Retrieved August 30, 2014. Translation, translated introduction.
  6. ^ @johntv - "I always assumed 'MOTHER' (Japanese title for the Earthbound series) came from 'Mother Earth', but according to Shigesato Itoi in a 1989 interview with Famitsu, the primary influence was the word 'mothership'". Archived April 25, 2022, at the Wayback Machine - via Twitter
  7. ^ a b "MOTHER". Famitsu (in Japanese). Kadokawa Corporation. Archived from the original on October 16, 2014. Retrieved October 11, 2014.
  8. ^ "Nintendo Has Fun in 1991: Earth Bound". Nintendo Power. Vol. 18. December 1990. p. 89.
  9. ^ Wirth, Jonathan. "Spotlight: EarthBound". lostlevels.org. Archived from the original on September 10, 2013. Retrieved May 5, 2017.
  10. ^ "Antes só do Japão, 'Mother' chega ao Wii U como 'Earthbound Beginnings'". Universo Online (in Brazilian Portuguese). Archived from the original on February 3, 2021. Retrieved January 28, 2021.
  11. ^ "EarthBound will hit the Nintendo Switch on Feb. 9". Polygon. February 9, 2022. Archived from the original on February 10, 2022. Retrieved February 10, 2022.
  12. ^ Suzuki, Keichi. "Keiichi Suzuki – Profile". keiichisuzuki.com. Archived from the original on November 13, 2013. Retrieved October 2, 2009.
  13. Enterbrain, Inc.
    : 12. October 28, 1994.
  14. ^ Gann, Patrick. "Mother". RPGFan. Archived from the original on October 17, 2014. Retrieved October 11, 2014.
  15. ^ "グーム売上ベスト10" [Best 10 Game Sales]. Family Computer Magazine (in Japanese). February 23, 1990. p. 133.
  16. ^ "Mother". Hardcore Gaming 101. January 8, 2011. Archived from the original on March 3, 2021. Retrieved March 15, 2021.
  17. ISBN 978-1-940535-00-5
    .
  18. ISBN 978-0-262-03439-5
    .
  19. ^
    1UP.com. Ziff Davis. Archived from the original
    on October 6, 2012. Retrieved October 11, 2014.
  20. ^ a b Corriea, Alexa Ray (July 1, 2013). "Earthbound Zero localized and housed in this pretty fan-made NES cart". Polygon. Vox Media. Archived from the original on October 16, 2014. Retrieved October 11, 2014.
  21. ^ Latshaw, Tim (July 1, 2014). "Mother 25th Anniversary Fanfest Teleports in this 5th July". NintendoLife. Archived from the original on October 16, 2014. Retrieved October 11, 2014.
  22. Mandelin, Clyde (November 6, 2014). "ROM Hack: MOTHER 25th Anniversary Addition". EarthBound Central. Archived
    from the original on November 9, 2014. Retrieved November 8, 2014.
  23. Nintendo Life. Archived
    from the original on October 20, 2016. Retrieved October 20, 2016.

External links
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