Mother 1 - what could have been
23 years on, and people still play, and find themselves inspired by, Mother. I found myself realizing this earlier today, and decided to share.
Now I know the game isn't to everyone's tastes, and it does come with a host of problems. I know this well. The battles, the difficulty spikes, the poor layout of some dungeons, the lack of boss battles, the lack of direction the game gives you and the lack of characteristic lines... In so many ways this game is pretty poor, even for the time.
Yet I still get goosebumps when I hear the intro.
I still play the game when the mood hits.
And I still draw the mother characters and consider how each different thing in the game affected them, or how their backstories played out, how they interact with one another...
I still look at the game, and see what could have been.
That point is pretty big, in fact. Yes, the dungeons are pretty poorly laid out, and the way the game throws the most powerful items at you early on doesn't help you appreciate the growth you could have gotten otherwise. The second entrance/exit to Magicant is interesting but doesn't add much at all! Surely Magicant should have had two conch entrances, and two exit points, so you could experience more of Magicant. Surely the shops should have stocked the items progressively depending on which point in the game you had reached.Perhaps the factories had old machinery to show what they used to do. Maybe the room loop in the Rosemary Mansion could have had a more interesting emphasis. Maybe telepathy could have had a much wider use.
But I think about these things! And I know a lot of people perhaps agree, at least that it could have been better approached. Even if they don't necessarily consider how these points should be approached. In that way the game's doing at least one thing right; it's got us thinking. It's inspiring creative thought, and creative outlet.
One of the interesting thoughts is how much of the game was probably prepared. How much of the game was laid out before the NES's restrictions gave us what we got. I wonder how many individual lines had been left out, how much bigger the map would have been made, how many ideas were on the table. I would love to see the game released now, with all those extras in there that had been cut before. I want to see how much more amazing it could have been made -- that game from an inspiring mind from the 80s.
I want that more than I want to see EarthBound.
I wonder who agrees with me.
~~SS
23 years on, and people still play, and find themselves inspired by, Mother. I found myself realizing this earlier today, and decided to share.
Now I know the game isn't to everyone's tastes, and it does come with a host of problems. I know this well. The battles, the difficulty spikes, the poor layout of some dungeons, the lack of boss battles, the lack of direction the game gives you and the lack of characteristic lines... In so many ways this game is pretty poor, even for the time.
Yet I still get goosebumps when I hear the intro.
I still play the game when the mood hits.
And I still draw the mother characters and consider how each different thing in the game affected them, or how their backstories played out, how they interact with one another...
I still look at the game, and see what could have been.
That point is pretty big, in fact. Yes, the dungeons are pretty poorly laid out, and the way the game throws the most powerful items at you early on doesn't help you appreciate the growth you could have gotten otherwise. The second entrance/exit to Magicant is interesting but doesn't add much at all! Surely Magicant should have had two conch entrances, and two exit points, so you could experience more of Magicant. Surely the shops should have stocked the items progressively depending on which point in the game you had reached.Perhaps the factories had old machinery to show what they used to do. Maybe the room loop in the Rosemary Mansion could have had a more interesting emphasis. Maybe telepathy could have had a much wider use.
But I think about these things! And I know a lot of people perhaps agree, at least that it could have been better approached. Even if they don't necessarily consider how these points should be approached. In that way the game's doing at least one thing right; it's got us thinking. It's inspiring creative thought, and creative outlet.
One of the interesting thoughts is how much of the game was probably prepared. How much of the game was laid out before the NES's restrictions gave us what we got. I wonder how many individual lines had been left out, how much bigger the map would have been made, how many ideas were on the table. I would love to see the game released now, with all those extras in there that had been cut before. I want to see how much more amazing it could have been made -- that game from an inspiring mind from the 80s.
I want that more than I want to see EarthBound.
I wonder who agrees with me.
~~SS
