The Mother Series
In 1995, HAL and Nintento released a Super Nintendo RPG to the American Public, that game was called "Earthbound, The War Against Giygas" This game was accepted by many, but considered a flop. The reason: Insufficent profit in the states. The reason more likely than not being that at the time in 1995, Super Nintendo graphics were becoming intense on the 16-bit console, and compitetion was fierce between Nintendo and a competitor called Sega, who was producing the Sega Genesis. Earthbound lacked these intense graphics. The creators of the game focused their energy on a deep story line with extreme meaning, EB had some of the graphics, but not enough to entise America to buy them.
This could have been prevented, indeed things could have been different. Back in the earlier 80's, another game for the Famicom Nintendo Entertainment System, this game was only released in Japan, and known as Mother. A few years later, the game was ported to a western charcter set in english as a prototype, a few carts were created, but nothing considered as a "release" to the producers. Mother was almost an early copy of its decendant Mother 2 (or Earthbound), except for the fact that the graphics were classic Famicom graphics, Mother was a game that involved strategy, a lot of strategy. It took me more than a few days to finish this game.
Both of these games were created and realesed by the same person on a similar staff, the way that I would have seen better sales for Mother 2, is if Mother had had a release license for the U.S back in the 80's, not just a few prototype carts. If people had had the chance to fall in love with the series before the issue of graphics that had suffocated Mother 2, this would not have happened, Mother 2 would have gotten a popularity craze like Pokemon or something.
Now in the recent weeks, a petition at a website, Starmen.net, has been finshed. Started on March 30, 2002, the Mother 3 petition is finished, all 30,000 signatures inticing Nintendo that there is enough gain to come from finishing the half-garbled Mother 3, that had been cancelled in early 2000 because of production and graphic design failures. The petition is done, now will there be a release?
Most likely, this is the third petition relating to the series, from 10,000 signatures on the Earthbound 64 Petition to this one, it is likely. But it probably won't happen very soon, Mother 3 isn't exactly finished yet. Mother 3 lacks completed graphics, the story and plot are finished, but to finished the graphics might take a little while, which was the reason for the petition.
Througout all this time, all of the series have been related in some way or another, all of them seem to have the same plot, -with the exception of Mother 3, slightly different than the others- the plot seems to consist with a 3 boys and a girl that go out on a journey to save the world against an evil emptor with a name that started with a "G", the amount of similarities in the first to Mothers is a little too much to describe in one article, so I'm not even gonna start, but...
The last thing I really wanted to say in this article was about the theroy of the trilogy, were all of the games are linked at the end, to say that there is a game that will come after it (I don't know about the end of Mother 3 though). For example in the end of Mother, you see a one picture sprite of his [main character "Ninten"] dad standing at a telephone calling his son, he is insisting that something new has come up, and he sounds a little urgent. This referred that another game would come out involving good ole' Ninten and the gang, but when Mother 2 was released, thats not exactly what happened. Mother 2 involved a boy named Ness (looks shockingly like Ninten, but not the same person) and his friends, in another town and another place, but this wasn't really reacted over as hard, because few people knew of the original Mother in the U.S. But the point I'm trying to make with this, is that Mother 3, will be differnet from Mother 2, a lot more than people know (or at least I am thinking so) despite the fact that, yep, you guessed it, the end of Mother 2 reffered to another adventure with the same crew, but thats not how it happened. Spending time on the forums, I realized that people, while becoming more familier with the vauge given storyline of Mother 3, are hesitant to try it, because of the fact that it doesn't involve Ness. Now, earlier in this article, I mentioned that if people had been given time to fall in love with the series, maybe things might have been different with the sales of Mother 2, this also relates to the fact that if Mother had been released in the states, would things be different with the controversy of the trilogy not being consitant with one charchter (or group of charcters), would people come to expect this from the Mother series? Very likely in my mind. But a famous Allen Parsons song tells us "Theres no future in the past", so trying to release a video game 20 years ago seems kinda impossible.
As a closing statement, I'm going to say, I hope I see Mother 3 released (Under the alias Earthbound 2, or Earthbound Cube), I hope I see people grateful for things like this, even if the colors don't remain true to one set of charcters, I hope to see our Mother 3. Well, thats the end of my article, thats what I wanted to ramble on about, I'm glad I did. I thought it worked best as an article, although, it might have also worked on the EB forum, maybe even Mu, but now everyone has the chance to read it, in a more open area like the articles page.
In 1995, HAL and Nintento released a Super Nintendo RPG to the American Public, that game was called "Earthbound, The War Against Giygas" This game was accepted by many, but considered a flop. The reason: Insufficent profit in the states. The reason more likely than not being that at the time in 1995, Super Nintendo graphics were becoming intense on the 16-bit console, and compitetion was fierce between Nintendo and a competitor called Sega, who was producing the Sega Genesis. Earthbound lacked these intense graphics. The creators of the game focused their energy on a deep story line with extreme meaning, EB had some of the graphics, but not enough to entise America to buy them.
This could have been prevented, indeed things could have been different. Back in the earlier 80's, another game for the Famicom Nintendo Entertainment System, this game was only released in Japan, and known as Mother. A few years later, the game was ported to a western charcter set in english as a prototype, a few carts were created, but nothing considered as a "release" to the producers. Mother was almost an early copy of its decendant Mother 2 (or Earthbound), except for the fact that the graphics were classic Famicom graphics, Mother was a game that involved strategy, a lot of strategy. It took me more than a few days to finish this game.
Both of these games were created and realesed by the same person on a similar staff, the way that I would have seen better sales for Mother 2, is if Mother had had a release license for the U.S back in the 80's, not just a few prototype carts. If people had had the chance to fall in love with the series before the issue of graphics that had suffocated Mother 2, this would not have happened, Mother 2 would have gotten a popularity craze like Pokemon or something.
Now in the recent weeks, a petition at a website, Starmen.net, has been finshed. Started on March 30, 2002, the Mother 3 petition is finished, all 30,000 signatures inticing Nintendo that there is enough gain to come from finishing the half-garbled Mother 3, that had been cancelled in early 2000 because of production and graphic design failures. The petition is done, now will there be a release?
Most likely, this is the third petition relating to the series, from 10,000 signatures on the Earthbound 64 Petition to this one, it is likely. But it probably won't happen very soon, Mother 3 isn't exactly finished yet. Mother 3 lacks completed graphics, the story and plot are finished, but to finished the graphics might take a little while, which was the reason for the petition.
Througout all this time, all of the series have been related in some way or another, all of them seem to have the same plot, -with the exception of Mother 3, slightly different than the others- the plot seems to consist with a 3 boys and a girl that go out on a journey to save the world against an evil emptor with a name that started with a "G", the amount of similarities in the first to Mothers is a little too much to describe in one article, so I'm not even gonna start, but...
The last thing I really wanted to say in this article was about the theroy of the trilogy, were all of the games are linked at the end, to say that there is a game that will come after it (I don't know about the end of Mother 3 though). For example in the end of Mother, you see a one picture sprite of his [main character "Ninten"] dad standing at a telephone calling his son, he is insisting that something new has come up, and he sounds a little urgent. This referred that another game would come out involving good ole' Ninten and the gang, but when Mother 2 was released, thats not exactly what happened. Mother 2 involved a boy named Ness (looks shockingly like Ninten, but not the same person) and his friends, in another town and another place, but this wasn't really reacted over as hard, because few people knew of the original Mother in the U.S. But the point I'm trying to make with this, is that Mother 3, will be differnet from Mother 2, a lot more than people know (or at least I am thinking so) despite the fact that, yep, you guessed it, the end of Mother 2 reffered to another adventure with the same crew, but thats not how it happened. Spending time on the forums, I realized that people, while becoming more familier with the vauge given storyline of Mother 3, are hesitant to try it, because of the fact that it doesn't involve Ness. Now, earlier in this article, I mentioned that if people had been given time to fall in love with the series, maybe things might have been different with the sales of Mother 2, this also relates to the fact that if Mother had been released in the states, would things be different with the controversy of the trilogy not being consitant with one charchter (or group of charcters), would people come to expect this from the Mother series? Very likely in my mind. But a famous Allen Parsons song tells us "Theres no future in the past", so trying to release a video game 20 years ago seems kinda impossible.
As a closing statement, I'm going to say, I hope I see Mother 3 released (Under the alias Earthbound 2, or Earthbound Cube), I hope I see people grateful for things like this, even if the colors don't remain true to one set of charcters, I hope to see our Mother 3. Well, thats the end of my article, thats what I wanted to ramble on about, I'm glad I did. I thought it worked best as an article, although, it might have also worked on the EB forum, maybe even Mu, but now everyone has the chance to read it, in a more open area like the articles page.
