The EarthBound Community
What this article is basically my thoughts and opinions on the current and future situations of the online EarthBound community. Basically, these are my predictions on what will happen within the next few years, and how we can make our future a bit brighter.
Starmen.net has been living off of two actual EarthBound games for the past few years, and continues to do so. Sure, both Super Smash Bros. games have helped keep the site afloat, but let’s face the facts: we’re running out of material. There are all sorts of Mother 1 and 2 things out there, but Starmen.net has pretty much covered nearly all of that. And if the sudden surge of updates (which is by no means a bad thing) keeps up, the site will pretty much “completed” in a year or so. On top of that, even if reidman and the rest of the Starmen.net team continues to find enough content to keep the site alive even longer than that, the fans will begin to fade away. As time passes, many people will out-grow EarthBound. Yes, to many, the game is something that will never leave their lives, but a majority of the people will just ditch the site. After all, no matter how great something is, it will eventually get old.
Currently, the only game that could support the site furthermore would be a third Super Smash Bros. And even if this game were to be released, the EarthBound content would be rather small. And let’s not forget how long it’d take for a third SSB to be released. Melee took about 2 to 2 and a half years to be released. And let’s not forget, this game might not be released, period. In short, our best hopes for a new EarthBound related game is a rather unlikely one.
So, what are we going to do about it? Obviously, there’s only one option if we want a new EarthBound game: petition. Nintendo obviously doesn’t care enough about EarthBound to make a new game, but this is indeed the best time to give it a shot. In SSBM, EarthBound received an unexpected amount of attention; two stages, numerous trophies, two items, a few EarthBound sound effects, three songs, and of course, Ness. Nintendo is obviously a lot more open-minded on the EarthBound front than we thought they’d be. This is our best shot at furthermore persuading Nintendo to make a third Mother.
At this point, the fans have become desperate. I myself would be pleased to just an EB or EB0 port, and I’m sure many would agree with me. While a fully original installment on the GameCube is the best scenario, a new game for the GameBoy Advance would be nearly just as great. And once again, a port would be excellent, as well, and I think reid should mention these thoughts clearly in his upcoming petition. And hey, when Nintendo receives a package three times heavier than the one we sent them before, they might actually pay attention to it.
But are 30,000 signatures to make an impact on them, at all? Hopefully, but realistically, probably not. What we need is a slightly larger goal. Yeah, 30,000 is an insanely large amount, but chances are the folks at Nintendo will just take a glance or two at it, then throw it in the dumpster. But if we aim higher, at a goal of, say, 50,000 signatures, we might be able to make a bit of an impression on them. Remember how Shigeru Miyamoto said that if he knew 500,000 people in the US wanted the game to be released, they might just have finished the production. If we manage to get 50,000 signatures, we’d have 1/10 of that number. If reid makes it clear to Nintendo that if the petition received more attention, we’d have many more signatures, Nintendo may be a little persuaded to do something EarthBound related in the future.
So how would we muster up that many signatures? We’d have to do a combination of ideas that were thought up on the Starmen.net forum. We’d, of course, mail letters to every large video game site and every video game magazine. Also, we might even walk around our neighborhoods asking people to sign. That may sound a bit odd, but with such a huge goal, we have to pull off some pretty insane stunts.
Well, that pretty much sums up my predictions on what will happen to the online EarthBound community, and how we can prevent our grim future, and replace it with a much more bright one.
What this article is basically my thoughts and opinions on the current and future situations of the online EarthBound community. Basically, these are my predictions on what will happen within the next few years, and how we can make our future a bit brighter.
Starmen.net has been living off of two actual EarthBound games for the past few years, and continues to do so. Sure, both Super Smash Bros. games have helped keep the site afloat, but let’s face the facts: we’re running out of material. There are all sorts of Mother 1 and 2 things out there, but Starmen.net has pretty much covered nearly all of that. And if the sudden surge of updates (which is by no means a bad thing) keeps up, the site will pretty much “completed” in a year or so. On top of that, even if reidman and the rest of the Starmen.net team continues to find enough content to keep the site alive even longer than that, the fans will begin to fade away. As time passes, many people will out-grow EarthBound. Yes, to many, the game is something that will never leave their lives, but a majority of the people will just ditch the site. After all, no matter how great something is, it will eventually get old.
Currently, the only game that could support the site furthermore would be a third Super Smash Bros. And even if this game were to be released, the EarthBound content would be rather small. And let’s not forget how long it’d take for a third SSB to be released. Melee took about 2 to 2 and a half years to be released. And let’s not forget, this game might not be released, period. In short, our best hopes for a new EarthBound related game is a rather unlikely one.
So, what are we going to do about it? Obviously, there’s only one option if we want a new EarthBound game: petition. Nintendo obviously doesn’t care enough about EarthBound to make a new game, but this is indeed the best time to give it a shot. In SSBM, EarthBound received an unexpected amount of attention; two stages, numerous trophies, two items, a few EarthBound sound effects, three songs, and of course, Ness. Nintendo is obviously a lot more open-minded on the EarthBound front than we thought they’d be. This is our best shot at furthermore persuading Nintendo to make a third Mother.
At this point, the fans have become desperate. I myself would be pleased to just an EB or EB0 port, and I’m sure many would agree with me. While a fully original installment on the GameCube is the best scenario, a new game for the GameBoy Advance would be nearly just as great. And once again, a port would be excellent, as well, and I think reid should mention these thoughts clearly in his upcoming petition. And hey, when Nintendo receives a package three times heavier than the one we sent them before, they might actually pay attention to it.
But are 30,000 signatures to make an impact on them, at all? Hopefully, but realistically, probably not. What we need is a slightly larger goal. Yeah, 30,000 is an insanely large amount, but chances are the folks at Nintendo will just take a glance or two at it, then throw it in the dumpster. But if we aim higher, at a goal of, say, 50,000 signatures, we might be able to make a bit of an impression on them. Remember how Shigeru Miyamoto said that if he knew 500,000 people in the US wanted the game to be released, they might just have finished the production. If we manage to get 50,000 signatures, we’d have 1/10 of that number. If reid makes it clear to Nintendo that if the petition received more attention, we’d have many more signatures, Nintendo may be a little persuaded to do something EarthBound related in the future.
So how would we muster up that many signatures? We’d have to do a combination of ideas that were thought up on the Starmen.net forum. We’d, of course, mail letters to every large video game site and every video game magazine. Also, we might even walk around our neighborhoods asking people to sign. That may sound a bit odd, but with such a huge goal, we have to pull off some pretty insane stunts.
Well, that pretty much sums up my predictions on what will happen to the online EarthBound community, and how we can prevent our grim future, and replace it with a much more bright one.
