Earthbound

Retr0gamer

A nice short article on why Earthbound is so good. For me it's probably the my favourite game ever:

http://www.1up.com/features/essential-75-earthbound

Alactric

Easily my biggest JRPG shame, never played them. It's not like I didn't try though. I "vaguely" understand all the bull behind not wanting to translate mother 1 and 3 and all that, but not putting 2 on Virtual Console? Inexcusable. I just want to give my money to Nintendo, why don't they want my money? It would be a good excuse to fire up zSnes again I suppose :rolleyes:

The only thing I find more fascinating than Mother is it's creator:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shigesato_Itoi

He's a really intriguing guy, he's not even a game designer by trade. He just sorta got famous and knew he had a game in him, so he just went and did it. Could you imagine someone doing that now?

edit: I'm assuming you emulated it Retro?

Retr0gamer

Yeah I emulated it and it's going to be the only way to obtain it outside of spending the guts of 150 dollars for a copy on ebay. Nintendo won't bring it to the West because the soundtrack uses a lot of samples from other musicians such as the Beatles (and them being assholes about copyright they are more than likely the biggest reason it won't get released). Nintendo don't think it's worth risking a release of the game and risking a law suit.

At a recent interview with one of the composers on 1up when he was asked about sampling being used in the game he was very reluctant to talk about it saying it's a big issue with the western release of the game.

Mr.Saturn

I think it's one of my bigger regrets as gamer, not having played this when I was younger. I whizz through the whole series ages ago, and found it mind-blowingly brilliant, but I can barely imagine what it would've done to me as a kid.

I think where Mother's charm lays, for all the arsey-wrenching of it being the example of, and I employ the term almost apologetically, "game-as-art", is it's never heavyhanded with its, well, heavier bits, and it's still, first and foremost, a genuinely, all-out fun piece of gaming. I struggle to even to justify a modicum of its brilliance, but I'll give it a misguided go:

It'd be like playing Super Mario Bros. just to find it has John Irving steering the narrative.

I mean, who'd a thunk it? In age where a game's story is resigned to a disproportionate number of cut-scenes, voice-over, face-reading technology and the like, all it took is a bag of sprites, some well-placed tunes and curious author to get it right.

And yes, yes I do feel morally obliged to arseily weigh in on just about every reference to the Mother series, however loose or heavy.