Mother (video game series)
is a video game series that consists of three role-playing video games: Mother, known as EarthBound Beginnings outside Japan, for the Family Computer; Mother 2, known as EarthBound outside Japan, for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System; and Mother 3 for the Game Boy Advance.
Written by Shigesato Itoi, published by Nintendo, and featuring game mechanics modeled on the Dragon Quest series, Mother is known for its sense of humor, originality, and parody. The player uses weapons and psychic powers to fight hostile enemies, which include animated everyday objects, aliens and brainwashed people. Signature elements of the series include a lighthearted approach to the plot, battle sequences with psychedelic backgrounds, and the "rolling HP meter": player health ticks down like an odometer rather than instantly being subtracted, allowing the player to take preventative action, such as healing or finishing the battle, before the damage is fully dealt. While the franchise is popular in Japan, in the Anglosphere it is best associated with the cult following behind EarthBound.
While visiting Nintendo for other business, Itoi approached Shigeru Miyamoto about making Mother. When approved for a sequel, Itoi increased his involvement in the design process over the five-year development of EarthBound. When the project began to flounder, producer and later Nintendo president Satoru Iwata rescued the game. EarthBound English localizers were given great liberties when translating the Japanese game's cultural allusions. The American version sold poorly despite a multimillion-dollar marketing budget. Mother 3 was originally slated for release on the Nintendo 64 and its 64DD disk drive accessory, but was cancelled in 2000. Three years later, the project was reannounced for the Game Boy Advance alongside a rerelease of Mother and Mother 2 in the combined cartridge Mother 1 + 2. Mother 3 abandoned the 3D graphics progress for a 2D style, and became a bestseller upon its release. EarthBound was rereleased for the Wii U Virtual Console in 2013, and Mother received its English-language debut for the same platform in 2015, retitled EarthBound Beginnings. In 2022, Nintendo released Mother 1 and 2 to their Nintendo Switch Online service. Mother 3 later came to the service exclusively in Japan in 2024.
EarthBound is widely regarded as a video game classic, and is included in multiple top-ten lists. In absence of continued official support for the series, members of the EarthBound fan community organized online to advocate for further series releases through petitions and fan art. Their projects include a full fan translation of Mother 3, a full-length documentary, and fangame attempts. Ness, the protagonist of EarthBound and Lucas, the protagonist of Mother 3, received exposure from their inclusion in the Super Smash Bros. series. Other Mother series locations and characters have made appearances in the fighting games.
Gameplay
The series is known for its combination of humorous and emotionally evocative tones. Itoi wanted to tell Mother 3 through a technique that swapped the active player-character, which he first attempted in EarthBound. The two games also share similar visual styles, both with psychedelic battle backgrounds and cartoonish art. While Mother 3 music is both similar in tone to its predecessors and completely new, it features similar sound effects. EarthBound characters such as Mr. Saturn recur, and RPGamer wrote that Mother 3 final chapter is "full of blatant links" between the games of the series. Mother also shares similarities with its sequel, such as the game save option through phoning Ninten's father, an option to store items with Ninten's sister at home, and an automated teller machine for banking money. Additionally, the members of the party follow behind the protagonist on the overworld screen in the first two games. Ninten's party members in Mother are analogous to those of EarthBound in style and function.While Mother battles were triggered through random encounters, EarthBound and early Mother 3 shared battle scene triggers, where physical contact with an enemy in the overworld began a turn-based battle scene shown in the first-person. Apart from Mother 3 rhythm and combo battle mechanic, the two game's battle systems are similar. Mother 3 also retains the "rolling HP meter" of EarthBound but removes the feature where experience is automatically awarded before battles against much weaker foes. Recurring through the series is its signature "SMAAAASH" text and sound, which show when the player registers a critical hit.
Some characters are present in multiple entries of the series, such as Giygas, Mr. Saturn, and Pokey/Porky. Giygas is the primary antagonist in both Mother and EarthBound. The alien creature's emotional complexity deviates from genre norms. Giygas shows internal conflict in Mother and has no appearance but as an "indescribable" force in EarthBound final boss battle. In both final battles, Giygas is defeated through love and prayer instead of through a tour de force of weaponry, unlike the endings of other period games. Nadia Oxford wrote for IGN that nearly two decades later, EarthBound final fight against Giygas continues to be "one of the most epic video game standoffs of all time" with noted emotional impact. This battle's dialogue was based on Itoi's recollections of a traumatic scene from the Shintoho film The Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty that he had accidentally seen in his childhood. Oxford wrote for 1UP.com that Itoi intended to show the alien's yearning for love in "a manner... beyond human understanding". Despite EarthBound and Mother 3 dissimilar settings, the Mr. Saturn fictional species appear in similar Saturn Valleys in both games. The Mr. Saturn look like an old man's head with feet, a large nose, and bald except for a single hair with a bow. Though they are a technologically advanced and peaceful species with a pureness of heart, they are under constant attacks from encroaching enemies. Nadia and David Oxford of 1UP.com considered the Mr. Saturn to be aliens despite their human-like and fleshy appearance, as described a piece arguing the central theme of aliens in the Mother series. They compared the Mr. Saturn to Kurt Vonnegut's Tralfamadorian alien species. Finally, Pokey begins as Ness's child neighbor who "cowers" and "refuses to fight" in EarthBound, but grows into a "vicious control freak with no regard for human life", Porky, by the end of the series' Mother 3.
Music
The soundtracks for Mother and EarthBound were composed by Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka. The Mother soundtrack was likened by RPGFan reviewer Patrick Gann to compositions by the Beatles and for 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". The Mother soundtrack contains several tracks later used in subsequent series games. When Suzuki and Tanaka were unavailable to commit to Mother 3 soundtrack, Itoi chose Shogo Sakai for his experience with and understanding of the series. Sakai worked to make the music feel similar to previous entries in the series. Kyle Miller of RPGFan wrote that the game retained the quirkiness of the previous soundtracks in the series despite the change in composers. He felt that the second half of the album, which included reinterpreted "classics" from the series, to be its strongest. RPGamer's Jordan Jackson too found that the music was "just as catchy as previous games" despite being "almost completely new". Luke Plunkett of Kotaku credited Suzuki's background outside of games composition as a rock star and film scorer for making the music of Mother and EarthBound "so distinct and memorable" as "a synthesized tribute to 20th-century pop music".Development
''EarthBound Beginnings''
While visiting Nintendo for other work, celebrity copywriter Shigesato Itoi pitched to the company's lead designer, Shigeru Miyamoto, his idea for a role-playing game set in modern times. The contemporary setting worked against role-playing genre norms, and while Miyamoto liked the idea, he was hesitant until Itoi could show full commitment to the project. Itoi reduced his workload, formed a team, and began development in Ichikawa, Chiba. Nintendo tried to accommodate Itoi's ideal work environment to feel more like an extracurricular club of volunteers. Itoi wrote the game's script. The game, titled Mother, was developed by Ape, published by Nintendo, and released in Japan on July 27, 1989, for the Famicom. The game was slated for an English-language localization as Earth Bound, but was abandoned when Nintendo chose to focus on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System instead. Years later, the complete localization was recovered by the public and distributed on the Internet, where it became known as EarthBound Zero. Mother received its English language debut in June 2015 as EarthBound Beginnings for the Wii U Virtual Console.Mother is a single-player role-playing video game set in a "slightly offbeat", late 20th-century United States. Unlike its Japanese role-playing game contemporaries, Mother is not set in a fantasy genre. The player fights in warehouses and laboratories instead of in dungeons and similar fantasy settings, and battles are fought with baseball bats and psychic abilities instead of swords and magic. Mother follows the young Ninten as he uses psychic powers to fight hostile, formerly inanimate objects and other enemies. The game uses random encounters to enter a menu-based, first-person perspective battle system.