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MOTHER 1 - 2 - 3: The Review & History Lesson
A reviewhistory lesson for all those interested.
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MOTHER 1 - 2 - 3: The Review & History Lesson

 

03-13-09 01:55 PM
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What happens when you take a Japanese television personality, and ask him to create a video game? You get in my opinion, the most endearing RPG franchise of all time, a hit in Japan and a cult hit here in North America and Europe; a real classic. Oh, and just in case you know a bit about Shigesato Itoi... he did indeed also release a pretty kickass bass fishing game.

What many people who aren't familiar with the history of franchise fail to understand, is that Earthbound wasn't thought up by someone who was a part of the video game industry, of the day. In fact, Itoi has been quoted as stating that he and video games.. didn't exactly get along in the first place. Shigesato Itoi was known primarily as a writer in his native Japan, not just someone who writes mind you, but a published novelist to boot. In 1989, Itoi decided for whatever reason, to approach Nintendo and request the chance to be at the helm of a game design team, specifically one of those new fangled RPGs that were starting to pick up steam. Keep in mind, this was around the time that Dragon Warrior was really taking off.. most believe that Itoi simply wanted a challenge, something else for him to try his hand at and in an industry that was really booming, he wanted to try something different and see if it would work. Shigeru Miyamoto, key and head Nintendo game designer was skeptical about the idea at first. He didn't like the RPG formula, hence Zelda was the closest thing to an RPG that Miyamoto had supported thusfar.

There was also fear that Itoi would come in, have the developers make the game for him, slapping his name on it to promote his name and taking royalties for it. This wasn't just paranoid positioning by Nintendo mind you, during the FamiconNES boom in Japan this kind of thing happened all the time most notably with the Takeshi's Castle, only released in Japan. Itoi went back to Miyamoto and committed himself to the project; the straw that broke the camels back was a simple revelation about RPG games that hadn't come up before in the mind of Miyamoto.

It basically worked like this; if you were bad at a Mario game.. you wouldn't be able to beat Mario. However in an RPG if you couldn't get past an obstacle.. you had the chance to grind, and grind, and grind.. eventually getting yourself to the level where you WOULD win. Mother was greenlighted, and a series was born.

From the very start, the Mother series was rooted in a Japanese post-war view of American culture, still retaining many classical faucets of the new Japanese culture at the same time. For example, it is easy to tell that Mother 1 and Mother 2 take place in Americanized towns with a 50s vibe to them, but Ness's dad is a Japanese archetype... he is the father who is never there, only by telephone. It isn't that he is a bad father, it just so happens that he is working all the time. I'll be getting into these cultural influences as I delve deeper into each game, in its own specific review.

[Note: The first review, of MOTHER will be up some time tonight, and I will continue to talk about the design process for each game, and its specific quirks... there are many.]
What happens when you take a Japanese television personality, and ask him to create a video game? You get in my opinion, the most endearing RPG franchise of all time, a hit in Japan and a cult hit here in North America and Europe; a real classic. Oh, and just in case you know a bit about Shigesato Itoi... he did indeed also release a pretty kickass bass fishing game.

What many people who aren't familiar with the history of franchise fail to understand, is that Earthbound wasn't thought up by someone who was a part of the video game industry, of the day. In fact, Itoi has been quoted as stating that he and video games.. didn't exactly get along in the first place. Shigesato Itoi was known primarily as a writer in his native Japan, not just someone who writes mind you, but a published novelist to boot. In 1989, Itoi decided for whatever reason, to approach Nintendo and request the chance to be at the helm of a game design team, specifically one of those new fangled RPGs that were starting to pick up steam. Keep in mind, this was around the time that Dragon Warrior was really taking off.. most believe that Itoi simply wanted a challenge, something else for him to try his hand at and in an industry that was really booming, he wanted to try something different and see if it would work. Shigeru Miyamoto, key and head Nintendo game designer was skeptical about the idea at first. He didn't like the RPG formula, hence Zelda was the closest thing to an RPG that Miyamoto had supported thusfar.

There was also fear that Itoi would come in, have the developers make the game for him, slapping his name on it to promote his name and taking royalties for it. This wasn't just paranoid positioning by Nintendo mind you, during the FamiconNES boom in Japan this kind of thing happened all the time most notably with the Takeshi's Castle, only released in Japan. Itoi went back to Miyamoto and committed himself to the project; the straw that broke the camels back was a simple revelation about RPG games that hadn't come up before in the mind of Miyamoto.

It basically worked like this; if you were bad at a Mario game.. you wouldn't be able to beat Mario. However in an RPG if you couldn't get past an obstacle.. you had the chance to grind, and grind, and grind.. eventually getting yourself to the level where you WOULD win. Mother was greenlighted, and a series was born.

From the very start, the Mother series was rooted in a Japanese post-war view of American culture, still retaining many classical faucets of the new Japanese culture at the same time. For example, it is easy to tell that Mother 1 and Mother 2 take place in Americanized towns with a 50s vibe to them, but Ness's dad is a Japanese archetype... he is the father who is never there, only by telephone. It isn't that he is a bad father, it just so happens that he is working all the time. I'll be getting into these cultural influences as I delve deeper into each game, in its own specific review.

[Note: The first review, of MOTHER will be up some time tonight, and I will continue to talk about the design process for each game, and its specific quirks... there are many.]
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Wow that was an awesome review Although RPG's are not my interest this is still awesome lol. What is MOTHER for? PC or XBox or PS3? Also I believe you get Viz for reviews... I'll have to check on it and send ya some

Maybe you can point me to some links or something to see what it looks like cause it sounds very interesting
Wow that was an awesome review Although RPG's are not my interest this is still awesome lol. What is MOTHER for? PC or XBox or PS3? Also I believe you get Viz for reviews... I'll have to check on it and send ya some

Maybe you can point me to some links or something to see what it looks like cause it sounds very interesting
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Mother

You likely haven't played Mother. That's just a fact really, it was never released outside of Japan and we only have it today because of a series of fortunate events. Let me explain;

If you read my introduction post above, you will know how the first Mother game came about... but you never played it when you were growing up (that is, if you grew up as an NES playing child in 1989, or even afterwards) if you lived outside of Japan. Of course, Nintendo planned to release the game in America under the name Earth Bound with localization being completed in 1990. The head of North American localization would later state that the production of the Super Nintendo was what pushed the original Mother to the sidelines for those of us outside of Japan, however there are other theories put forward by industry insiders and fans as well. The most prominent refers to the way that the game was actually played... you may or may not have played an NES RPG before and let me clarify here, not a remake like Final Fantasy I & II on GBA, I'm talking about the originals here. They were tedious and the genre was still building itself really, conventions and tropes were not set in stone yet; in other words, what makes a great RPG is known to everyone today.. back then the line wasn't so clear. Some claim that it was felt that AmericanEuropean players wouldn't be willing to deal with the grind; sales of games that went slower than MarioZelda titles were the basis for this.

Luckily, in 1998 the fan translation group known as Demiforce found a BETA cartridge of the game on a Usenet server. Pooling together money, they purchased the cartridge which is said to have come from the head offices of Nintendo of Canada. Soon after acquiring the cartridge it was dumped into a ROM and easily circulated around the internet. The emulators at the time couldn't handle the copy protected ROM (quite the thought today, not being able to handle a NES ROM, eh?) and so Demiforce modified the original ROM to work around this, changing the name to its intended EarthBound and adding a Zero at the end to discern it from the SNES Earthbound which as we all know, came out in AmericaEurope. For years many questions were raised as to whether or not this was a fan translation or a Nintendo certified BETA of the finished product. Years later, the authenticity of the cartridge would be verified both by Phil Sandhop (the aforementioned localization head) and the Mother 1+2 GBA compilation released once again only in Japan, that just so happened to contain the same changes as were found in the BETA.

But turning away from this mini-history lesson; let me present to you the actual review. Just so everyone knows, I detest starsnumbersgrades as a rating system, it cheapens the entire reason to do a review and is so objective that I don't see it as fair at all. Also for the sake of comprehension, I will be hearkening forward to Mother 2 a lot, as it is the game that most people would be familiar with.

How "Earthbound" is Mother 1?

As a lot of people have only have access to the SNES game, many people have wondered where exactly the game fits into canon and if it feels like the game that we came to known as Earthbound. All that I can say is that when you play Mother for the first time; you know that you're playing a game in the canon that you have come to know and love. You'll start out pretty much the same way; as a young boy sleeping in his bed when something happens to wake him up, you'll find yourself wandering downstairs in your pajamas to figure out exactly what is going on. From there on out you'll encounter familiar aspects; your father is only available by telephone, your sister holds items for you, your mother cooks you your favorite food (that you get to choose) to heal you. You'll also be running into some familiar enemies (crazy hippies? check.) and general stereotypes when it comes to characters. It should be noted as well, that the music instantly is a hint at the playful and humorous series this would become.

All in all, you are getting what amounts to a Japanese take on American culture heavily inspired by the 1950s, a time when America had great, great influence on Japan. The culture of both shines through however, creating a unique world that is similar enough to know that yes... we are in what amounts to America, but there is something whimsical about it.

What is gameplay like?

As alluded to above; when you play MotherEarthbound Zero for the first time it's going to hit you hard. This was of course during the time when there were exactly four buttons apart from directional pad on a controller.. so whenever you want to talk to someone, open a present or check out something suspicious, be prepared to open up a menu and choose the proper option. While this can be a bit off-putting at first (for instance, the SNES game allowed you to simply hit one of the trigger buttons... the game knew when you were standing in front of someone you didn't want to "check" them but "talk" to them. Back then you had to tell the game in the most forward way) it ultimately is something that will come to you as second nature.

A very important part of ANY RPG game is of course, the battle system. Mother misses out on two features that would make later games highly touted, but in line for the day battles were randomly placed, this means that encounters were not visible on the screenavoidable. As well, the highly touted 'speedometer' feature was not in place. For those who aren't sure what I mean by that, take a look at Mother 2 or Mother 3 and note the battle screen. In Mother it is just about the same (take away the funky backdrops though) except the HP is static. If you are hit for 13 damage, then that 13 damage is taken away right away. Future games would have that health go down much like the numbers on a gas gauge, working in reverse. This meant that even with a mortal hit... it didn't mean the end of you. The amount of HP that the fight was finished with, would be how much you had when returning to the main map. The speed at which your health meter went down tied into your Guts stat.

As far as the game goes, you're looking at the most basic of basic RPGs. Move from place to place, solving problems and figuring out why everything in your house decided to go crazy... all while revealing the big bad. And that leads me to...

What is the story like? (Note: This will contain partial spoilers; I'll do my best to not go too deep)

Since many people have only played Mother 2Earthbound, few people understand how three totally separate stories can run together... but they do.

The story starts out by telling the story of a young married couple, living in rural America. One day they mysteriously vanished when a dark shadow covered their small country town. Later, the husband.. given the name George.. returned without his wife, Maria... who was never heard from again. After this (with default naming) a 12-year old boy named Ninten awakens as the sounds of a supernatural attack disturb his sleep. After saving his two sisters and mother, Ninten's father calls and asks him to investigate odd occurrences happening all over the place. It seems that Ninten's grandfather studied the mysterious PSI (mana, magic in the Mother world) so therefore by RPG standards... he may just be the one who can set everything straight again.

That's about as in-depth as I will go here; however if you played Earthbound you would be pretty much at home with the idea of the story. You'll journey from town to town solving problems that seem small (such as finding out what is making the animals go crazy at the zoo) and recruit other children to your party, all the while unraveling the bigger problem alluded to by your father. It should be noted that in the Mother 1+2 collection mentioned above, the epilogue does go on to state what happens to every character once the game ends and alludes to connections between themselves and Mother 2 characters. As of now, it still remains vague... but one link DOES still stand and that is the main villain, Giygas.

What would you say bad about the game?

I love the Mother series, I really do.. but I'm not some kind of fanboy so I CAN say that there are problems.

The way that the game works is flawed, perhaps due to the early nature of it... but grinding until you get the next weapon is really all this game has. To add on top of that, there aren't many weapons in the first place so this just compounds to make and even more frustrating situation. Once you get a new bat for Ninten it is GREATLY overpowered to what you had before, so if you hit a snag there really isn't anything to do other than level grind. This would be fixed in later versions of the game.. but what I find with this mechanic is a decrease in want to play. The good news is, this can easily be overtaken by the turbo feature found on pretty much every NES emulator these days. It makes the grind go much quicker so you can get on with the story (the clever and meaty part of the game) but all the same, without this.. I feel that it would reach a point where I would feel that I had experienced enough of the game.. it's charming, it's Mother but.. yeah.

Otherwise, Mother was successful for a reason. It may not stand up today, due to the other releases which took this initial formula and gave it a fine sheen.. but it was certainly nothing to be overlooked, and at the time it certainly was not.

BONUS: http://www.angelfire.com/pa3/goku141/earthboundzero.nes

A version of the ROM to play on your favorite NES emulator, enjoy.
Mother

You likely haven't played Mother. That's just a fact really, it was never released outside of Japan and we only have it today because of a series of fortunate events. Let me explain;

If you read my introduction post above, you will know how the first Mother game came about... but you never played it when you were growing up (that is, if you grew up as an NES playing child in 1989, or even afterwards) if you lived outside of Japan. Of course, Nintendo planned to release the game in America under the name Earth Bound with localization being completed in 1990. The head of North American localization would later state that the production of the Super Nintendo was what pushed the original Mother to the sidelines for those of us outside of Japan, however there are other theories put forward by industry insiders and fans as well. The most prominent refers to the way that the game was actually played... you may or may not have played an NES RPG before and let me clarify here, not a remake like Final Fantasy I & II on GBA, I'm talking about the originals here. They were tedious and the genre was still building itself really, conventions and tropes were not set in stone yet; in other words, what makes a great RPG is known to everyone today.. back then the line wasn't so clear. Some claim that it was felt that AmericanEuropean players wouldn't be willing to deal with the grind; sales of games that went slower than MarioZelda titles were the basis for this.

Luckily, in 1998 the fan translation group known as Demiforce found a BETA cartridge of the game on a Usenet server. Pooling together money, they purchased the cartridge which is said to have come from the head offices of Nintendo of Canada. Soon after acquiring the cartridge it was dumped into a ROM and easily circulated around the internet. The emulators at the time couldn't handle the copy protected ROM (quite the thought today, not being able to handle a NES ROM, eh?) and so Demiforce modified the original ROM to work around this, changing the name to its intended EarthBound and adding a Zero at the end to discern it from the SNES Earthbound which as we all know, came out in AmericaEurope. For years many questions were raised as to whether or not this was a fan translation or a Nintendo certified BETA of the finished product. Years later, the authenticity of the cartridge would be verified both by Phil Sandhop (the aforementioned localization head) and the Mother 1+2 GBA compilation released once again only in Japan, that just so happened to contain the same changes as were found in the BETA.

But turning away from this mini-history lesson; let me present to you the actual review. Just so everyone knows, I detest starsnumbersgrades as a rating system, it cheapens the entire reason to do a review and is so objective that I don't see it as fair at all. Also for the sake of comprehension, I will be hearkening forward to Mother 2 a lot, as it is the game that most people would be familiar with.

How "Earthbound" is Mother 1?

As a lot of people have only have access to the SNES game, many people have wondered where exactly the game fits into canon and if it feels like the game that we came to known as Earthbound. All that I can say is that when you play Mother for the first time; you know that you're playing a game in the canon that you have come to know and love. You'll start out pretty much the same way; as a young boy sleeping in his bed when something happens to wake him up, you'll find yourself wandering downstairs in your pajamas to figure out exactly what is going on. From there on out you'll encounter familiar aspects; your father is only available by telephone, your sister holds items for you, your mother cooks you your favorite food (that you get to choose) to heal you. You'll also be running into some familiar enemies (crazy hippies? check.) and general stereotypes when it comes to characters. It should be noted as well, that the music instantly is a hint at the playful and humorous series this would become.

All in all, you are getting what amounts to a Japanese take on American culture heavily inspired by the 1950s, a time when America had great, great influence on Japan. The culture of both shines through however, creating a unique world that is similar enough to know that yes... we are in what amounts to America, but there is something whimsical about it.

What is gameplay like?

As alluded to above; when you play MotherEarthbound Zero for the first time it's going to hit you hard. This was of course during the time when there were exactly four buttons apart from directional pad on a controller.. so whenever you want to talk to someone, open a present or check out something suspicious, be prepared to open up a menu and choose the proper option. While this can be a bit off-putting at first (for instance, the SNES game allowed you to simply hit one of the trigger buttons... the game knew when you were standing in front of someone you didn't want to "check" them but "talk" to them. Back then you had to tell the game in the most forward way) it ultimately is something that will come to you as second nature.

A very important part of ANY RPG game is of course, the battle system. Mother misses out on two features that would make later games highly touted, but in line for the day battles were randomly placed, this means that encounters were not visible on the screenavoidable. As well, the highly touted 'speedometer' feature was not in place. For those who aren't sure what I mean by that, take a look at Mother 2 or Mother 3 and note the battle screen. In Mother it is just about the same (take away the funky backdrops though) except the HP is static. If you are hit for 13 damage, then that 13 damage is taken away right away. Future games would have that health go down much like the numbers on a gas gauge, working in reverse. This meant that even with a mortal hit... it didn't mean the end of you. The amount of HP that the fight was finished with, would be how much you had when returning to the main map. The speed at which your health meter went down tied into your Guts stat.

As far as the game goes, you're looking at the most basic of basic RPGs. Move from place to place, solving problems and figuring out why everything in your house decided to go crazy... all while revealing the big bad. And that leads me to...

What is the story like? (Note: This will contain partial spoilers; I'll do my best to not go too deep)

Since many people have only played Mother 2Earthbound, few people understand how three totally separate stories can run together... but they do.

The story starts out by telling the story of a young married couple, living in rural America. One day they mysteriously vanished when a dark shadow covered their small country town. Later, the husband.. given the name George.. returned without his wife, Maria... who was never heard from again. After this (with default naming) a 12-year old boy named Ninten awakens as the sounds of a supernatural attack disturb his sleep. After saving his two sisters and mother, Ninten's father calls and asks him to investigate odd occurrences happening all over the place. It seems that Ninten's grandfather studied the mysterious PSI (mana, magic in the Mother world) so therefore by RPG standards... he may just be the one who can set everything straight again.

That's about as in-depth as I will go here; however if you played Earthbound you would be pretty much at home with the idea of the story. You'll journey from town to town solving problems that seem small (such as finding out what is making the animals go crazy at the zoo) and recruit other children to your party, all the while unraveling the bigger problem alluded to by your father. It should be noted that in the Mother 1+2 collection mentioned above, the epilogue does go on to state what happens to every character once the game ends and alludes to connections between themselves and Mother 2 characters. As of now, it still remains vague... but one link DOES still stand and that is the main villain, Giygas.

What would you say bad about the game?

I love the Mother series, I really do.. but I'm not some kind of fanboy so I CAN say that there are problems.

The way that the game works is flawed, perhaps due to the early nature of it... but grinding until you get the next weapon is really all this game has. To add on top of that, there aren't many weapons in the first place so this just compounds to make and even more frustrating situation. Once you get a new bat for Ninten it is GREATLY overpowered to what you had before, so if you hit a snag there really isn't anything to do other than level grind. This would be fixed in later versions of the game.. but what I find with this mechanic is a decrease in want to play. The good news is, this can easily be overtaken by the turbo feature found on pretty much every NES emulator these days. It makes the grind go much quicker so you can get on with the story (the clever and meaty part of the game) but all the same, without this.. I feel that it would reach a point where I would feel that I had experienced enough of the game.. it's charming, it's Mother but.. yeah.

Otherwise, Mother was successful for a reason. It may not stand up today, due to the other releases which took this initial formula and gave it a fine sheen.. but it was certainly nothing to be overlooked, and at the time it certainly was not.

BONUS: http://www.angelfire.com/pa3/goku141/earthboundzero.nes

A version of the ROM to play on your favorite NES emulator, enjoy.
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Wow, lol, very detailed. Not familiar with the games but you sure make them sound tempting to play.

I usually don't do this but since this is like 3 reviews in one, 1,000 Viz.
Wow, lol, very detailed. Not familiar with the games but you sure make them sound tempting to play.

I usually don't do this but since this is like 3 reviews in one, 1,000 Viz.
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