In EarthBound the hero’s father is a voice on the telephone. Ness, a boy from the small town of Onett, sets out to save the world from an alien called Giygas, and along the way he calls his dad to save the game and his mum when he gets homesick. Nintendo Power put the question to its readers in July 1995: “Whoever heard of a game that requires you to call home?” The game was Mother 2, written by the copywriter and television presenter Shigesato Itoi and released for the Super Famicom in 1994. It replaced the swords, castles and dragons of most role-playing games with baseball bats, hamburgers, hotels and pizza deliveries, and its enemies included a hostile petrol pump.
Fast facts
- Writer: Shigesato Itoi.
- Developers: Ape, with HAL Laboratory.
- Published: by Nintendo; Japan, 1994, as Mother 2; America, June 1995, as EarthBound, a 24-megabit cartridge.
- Music: Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu “Hip” Tanaka.
- Heroes: Ness, joined by a psychic girl, Paula, the inventor Jeff Andonuts and a prince.
- Series: Mother (Famicom, 1989) and Mother 3 (Game Boy Advance, 2006).
Ordinary places
Itoi wanted, as he told Nintendo Power, to use “ordinary places” instead of a fantasy kingdom, and he took his picture of America from the television he grew up with, such as Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver. Nintendo Power’s review described “forty or more hours” of play with a party of up to four young teenagers, travelling from Onett through other towns and cities, a desert, a swamp, “a lost world where dinosaurs still roam, and even inside your own mind”. Along the way they meet “a cult of fanatics, a friendly sea serpent, lots of monkeys, a race of shy folk and a tribe of nosey people”, and fight with “baseball bats, frying pans and an assortment of ray guns”, or with psychic PSI powers.
Everyday life runs the systems. Ness phones his father to save his progress and to hear how much money has been paid into his account, which he draws from cash machines. His sister works part-time at Escargo Express, a delivery service that collects surplus luggage. Mach Pizza delivers food anywhere, though “just like in real life, these chefs take their time”. Pay phones cost a dollar. If Ness goes too long without calling his mother, he becomes homesick and is distracted in fights. Nintendo Power counted forty-five foods, from which players could make better meals by adding condiments.
The fights themselves work much like those of Dragon Quest, sold in America as Dragon Warrior, as Nintendo Power noted, but enemies appear on the map, and the swirl of colour at the start of a battle shows who caught whom: green for the player, red for the enemy. Weak enemies are beaten automatically without a battle at all. Hit points do not drop at once but roll down like a meter, so a player who acts quickly can heal a party member before a fatal blow takes full effect. Paula has a command of her own, Pray, with random results that can help or hurt; Nintendo Power advised saving it for desperate moments. In the final battle against Giygas, her prayers are what win it.
Mother 2 in Japan
The game nearly did not get finished. Ape’s development had stalled when Itoi asked Satoru Iwata, then at HAL, to look at it. Itoi later recalled Iwata’s verdict: “If we use what you’ve got now, it’ll take two years to fix. If we start from scratch, we can get this done in six months.” HAL helped rebuild it, and Mother 2 reached the Super Famicom in August 1994. Edge’s Japanese chart for December 1994 put it at number one, ahead of Capcom’s Breath of Fire and Square’s Final Fantasy VI.
EarthBound in America
Nintendo of America released it in June 1995 with a player’s guide in the box. “EarthBound comes packaged complete with Ident-a-Smell scratch-and-sniff cards and a Nintendo Power Player’s Guide,” the magazine’s review noted. It praised “a great story, fun graphics, good sound effects” and the writing of “one of Japan’s most popular writers”, but complained of “frequent, sometimes tedious battles” and an inventory that limited how much each character could carry. Its ratings ranged from 3.6 to 4.0 out of five. Nintendo Power had previewed the game in March as a spoof tabloid, with headlines such as “BOY, 13, ONLY HOPE”.
There was no European release. Super Play reviewed the American cartridge as an import in September 1995, and German importers advertised it that autumn at 129 to 149 marks. Later accounts put its American sales at about 140,000.
Later history
A 64DD and Nintendo 64 sequel was announced and cancelled; Mother 3 eventually came out on the Game Boy Advance in Japan in 2006, three years after a Mother 1+2 compilation. Neither was released in English, and fans translated Mother 3 themselves (see fan translations). EarthBound itself was re-released on the Wii U’s Virtual Console in 2013 and on Nintendo’s Switch Online service in 2022.
Its influence on later games is usually traced through Toby Fox’s Undertale (2015). Fox had made EarthBound ROM hacks as a teenager, and Undertale has often been described as the earlier game’s spiritual successor. Wireframe, profiling HAL in 2019, called EarthBound “legendarily eccentric” and “more than deserving of its classic status”.
Sources
- Nintendo Power issue 70, March 1995, pp. 39–42: EarthBound preview in tabloid style (Onett, the meteorite, Ness aged 13, pizza delivery, the combat approach).
- Nintendo Power issue 73, June 1995, pp. 10–19 and 111: the EarthBound feature and Shigesato Itoi interview (“ordinary places”; American television), and the review (June 1995, 24 megabits, the scratch-and-sniff cards and Player’s Guide, forty hours, the places and enemies, the Dragon Warrior comparison, the pros and cons, the ratings).
- Nintendo Power issue 74, July 1995, pp. 64–65: strategy (“Phone home!”; Dad, Mom, Escargo Express and Mach Pizza; ATMs; homesickness; forty-five foods; automatic wins; the coloured swirls; Paula’s Pray command).
- Edge issue 15, December 1994: Japanese chart (Mother 2 at number one).
- Super Play issue 35, September 1995: import review of EarthBound.
- Video Games (Germany), October 1995: importers’ advertisements for the American EarthBound.
- Wireframe issue 17, June 2019, pp. 50–53: HAL Laboratory profile (EarthBound co-developed with Ape; HAL stepped in to help with programming).
- Shigesato Itoi, “Shigesato Itoi Visits Arino Kacho’s Challenge Room”, Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun, 17 September 2019 (web): Iwata and Mother 2. https://www.1101.com/gccxmother/en/2019-09-17.html
- Wikipedia, “EarthBound” (web, secondary): the Japanese release date, American sales of about 140,000, the rolling hit-point meter, the final battle, the Wii U and Switch re-releases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EarthBound
- Wikipedia, “Undertale” (web, secondary): Toby Fox’s EarthBound ROM hacks; Undertale described as a spiritual successor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undertale
- For Mother 3, see the Shigesato Itoi and fan translations entries.