Bound for Mother Earth
On occasion, I like to write an essay on an esoteric topic. This is one of those occasions.
Intro
It’s hard to find new things to say about Mother/Earthbound. The series has a rabid cult following that has persisted for over 35 years, producing all sorts of essays, fan projects, and artistic tributes. Still, I feel an urge to articulate my own experience playing the three games over the last few years because of the outsized impact they have had on me. Although I did not play these games growing up and therefore lack a strong nostalgic attachment to them, they have quickly become not only one of my favorite video game series, but also one of my favorite pieces of art, period. When love strikes like a lightning bolt, it’s interesting to probe why.
Although Mother (or Earthbound Beginnings if you want to get all localized about it) is the first game in the series, it was the last one I played. This is actually pretty common amongst fans of the series. Releasing on the Famicom (the Japanese version of the NES) in 1989, Mother’s English localization was shelved until 2015 for various reasons. But even though the game is now available worldwide, many still avoid playing it due to its notorious difficulty and balancing issues. The combat did hamper my first attempt to play the game on my PC, to the point I eventually gave up, but after restarting it later on the Switch - where I had access to the rewind ability alongside save states - I was able to power through and found a lot to enjoy. Some people will bemoan using these kinds of tools because they make the game a lot easier, but those people are dumb. In Mother, the combat was never the main draw (the game designers even added an ‘Auto play’ option for battles), so any tool that helps people experience the game’s true hallmarks - its story, humor, art direction, and music - is worth utilizing.
Setting
“Half the fun of travel’s
Just the journey there
Lighten up and enjoy the show”
Unlike most JRPGs set in a fantasy or sci-fi world, one of Mother’s innovations is that it takes place in a present day pastiche of America, as seen through the eyes of its Japanese developers. This unusual choice might seem like an obstacle to player immersion, but I found the opposite to be true in my playthrough. Immersion in Mother is less about getting lost in an unfamiliar world and more about nostalgically reliving memories from childhood that are now over. Instead of building game systems around fantastical things like magic swords and alchemist shops, Mother offers banal things like staying at hotels to heal and buying supplies at department stores. To save, Ninten has to call his dad on a landline, with public phones usually charging a fee of $1, and to withdraw money Ninten needs to find an ATM and use his ATM card item, the inconvenience of these systems an intentional part of the realism the game conjures. These actions make Ninten feel less like a mystical hero on an important quest and more like an imaginative kid on an adventure around his neighborhood. Although I never had these exact experiences, its tone builds a close impression of what I remember from my own childhood, wandering the suburbs with my brother and friends, sparring with wooden swords (and inevitably getting bloody knuckles). This nostalgia is a powerful part of Mother’s appeal, as I think many can find similar memories triggered by the game.
No dragons here, just snakes and hippies
After putting so much effort into crafting a setting that feels familiar, the game is then able to set up a stronger contrast with the absurd happenings you encounter as you explore, all without relying heavily on exposition. Since lamps don’t usually attack us in the real world, it’s weird when one does at the start of the game. Contrast this to Skyrim, which is a world where dragons exist, but you have to be told through exposition that it’s unusual for them to attack so often. When something is not right in the world of Mother, the player knows it intuitively, unlike other games with more fantastical settings. This benefits immersion by letting the story show instead of getting bogged down in telling.
Music
“I believe the morning sun
Always gonna shine again”
Mother’s balance of the nostalgic and the unusual is best captured in its diverse soundtrack, which blends American/British music into standard JRPG sonic conventions. A collaboration between musician Keiichi Suzuki and video game composer Hirokazu Tanaka, the two overcame the limitations of the NES to craft some of the richest songs on the console, featuring dozens of tracks that range from bubble gum pop to atmospheric dirge to fit the many moods of the game.
When you travel alone, the song Pollyanna plays, its iconic optimism propelling you forward against overwhelming odds. As you add more people to your party, the song is replaced with Bein’ Friends, which augments that optimism with a sincere affirmation of the power of friendship. In combat, instead of hearing the same track every time (a practice common even in modern games, to my chagrin), the music depends on what type of enemy you are fighting (a merciful choice considering how often you get into fights in the game). Some are serious and dour, like Battle with a Dangerous Foe, which is reserved mostly for boss fights, while others are silly and jaunty, like Hippie Battle, which plays when fighting - get this - hippies. Every form of transportation (plane, train, tank, and teleportation) gets its own unique song that captures how they feel (thrilling, cheery, powerful, wonky). Some towns get their own themes that match their je ne sais quoi (Snowman and Youngtown being my favorites), and many major cut scenes are gifted unique songs. And of course there is the central theme, Eight Melodies, a lullaby a mother would sing to her child (more on that later). All of these tracks make the world of Mother feel inhabited, to the point that simply listening to the soundtrack feels like you’re replaying the game.
Easy listening
The success of a video game soundtrack is intrinsically tied with how well it fits the gameplay. Like a movie score, when the melodies mesh with the action onscreen, it elevates the entire project into a multimedia production. In this regard, the Mother soundtrack is a monumental achievement, even if the songs have the familiar crunch of 8-bit music. I think the strength of the compositions was a factor in Nintendo’s unusual decision to also produce and release an eleven-track vocal album in 1989, giving some of the best pieces the lyrics and arrangements they deserve.
Recorded at various studios in England and Japan (including Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studio), the vocal album was only released in Japan, though all performers sing in English. Long before I got around to actually playing this game, I was enamored with its vocal album. There is something about it that is just so positive and endearing, I can’t help but smile when giving it another listen. My only gripe is how hard it has been to find a physical copy of the LP that doesn’t break the bank, but as a consolation prize I did find Suzuki’s 2021 re-recording (Mother Music Revisited) while vacationing in Japan last year.
The 2021 album has the same track listing, but the freshly recorded tracks all feature Suzuki on vocals and in many cases the arrangements are completely different in tone and mood. It’s a more relaxed affair, (I swear it lowers my blood pressure) contrasting the punchy nature of the original so both albums feel distinct. It also has my favorite version of the instrumental Snowman, giving it a slower BPM that best matches the song’s atmosphere of a quiet winter scene. But whether you listen to the original soundtrack, the vocal album, the revisited vocal album, or the myriad of other official and fan remixes, it’s clear that these songs are something special, a testament to the talent of the composers and vision of the game developers.
Combat
The less said about Mother’s combat, the better. At its core, the game is a parody, so its turn-based fight sequences are directly lifted from the Dragon Quest series, swapping magic for psychic PSI/PK moves. There’s nothing particularly wrong with this approach, especially for its time, it just is unremarkable and flat. There are a lot of great enemy sprites and some have uniquely humorous moves, but you fight them so often that a lot of the charm quickly evaporates. The encounter rate in Mother is ludicrously high, based randomly of number of steps since your last encounter. Sometimes you get quite far, other times you hit another enemy after two or three steps (usually it’s the latter). Fleeing battle is not guaranteed, so if you are up against a big group of enemies and fail to run away, they can chip off a lot of health before you can try again. Since dungeons and wilderness sections can be massive, inevitably you will hit a point where you get run down purely by attrition. Plus, there is no real system to avoid weak enemies once you gain enough levels (there is an item to repel them temporarily, but it’s junk). The later games improve on combat in a number of ways, so best I can say about Mother 1 is that at least most fights can be ended quickly or put on auto play while you grab a snack.
Even if the combat isn’t great, the enemy designs are top tier
Story/Gameplay
“I’ll be there someway, somehow
That’s what bein’ friends is about”
Playing Mother, especially after its sequels, I was struck by how carefully it teases out its story and how well this meshes with the remarkable freedom afforded to the player. After an intro spiel about a couple being abducted 80 years ago to raise an alien child, and how the husband George fled back to Earth with the alien race’s secrets of powerful psychic abilities, the game cuts to present day, where tween Ninten - or whatever you wish to name him - is awoken by strange noises in his house. After fighting off a haunted lamp and doll, you are tasked with guiding Ninten on an adventure to try and fix strange situations happening across the world (usually by fighting weird enemies). Eventually you are given a main quest - collect eight melodies hidden around the world - but the connection between this goal and defeating whatever evil force is causing all the chaos is left unanswered until nearly the end of the game, allowing ample time to explore and take on optional side quests.
Getting the melodies is required to beat the game, but how you accomplish this goal is totally up to you. Many RPGs have digressions that lead to loot or other goodies, but Mother stands out to me because it leaves even major things up to the player to decide, like your party and mode of navigation. Ana, one of the permanent party members, can be entirely skipped, as can the later member Teddy. Fast travel via teleportation is an ability you have to seek out and learn (and even when you get it, you have to master building up speed to use it). Entire towns can be ignored if you know where to go next. Most games would force you to see all the stuff they worked so hard on, but Mother just isn’t bothered. Plus, these branching paths make the search for melodies feel organic, and without using a strategy guide you’re likely to hit some dead ends in pursuit of the main goal, even if you want to beat the game as fast as possible. The true risk to taking this speedy approach is that it makes the game much more difficult; fewer party members equals tougher fights, and no fast travel equals a lot of backtracking. This lends Mother a great sense of risk and reward, the push and pull all good games require.
Mother’s world map is large, almost comically so (thank goodness the English release added a ‘run’ button). To get around, the game encourages you to use the Paradise Line, a train system linking many of the towns, but unlocking it requires blowing up boulders on the tracks. You can complete a dungeon to accomplish this, but you can also just walk on the tracks to reach each town. It’s more dangerous and less convenient, but nothing is stopping you from playing ‘the wrong way’. I decided to unlock the train on my playthrough, but if I ever replay the game I’m tempted to try going without it.
Be on the lookout for odd cacti in the Yucca Desert (art by me)
Even in boring areas like the Yucca Desert, the game tempts you with side quests. Here, the only NPC is a guy who will let you borrow his tank if you first buy a bunch of scenic flights in his plane. Of course I wanted to use the tank, so I paid and sat through ten unskippable plane ride cut scenes to get enough ticket stubs, only to find that once you are in the tank you can’t exit it except at the spot you got it from, leaving you to just drive around aimlessly. At first I thought this was stupid and maybe the developers were trolling me, but then as I drove near some desert ruins I encountered an enemy (the tank prevents random encounters so this struck me by surprise). I was engaged in a fight with a giant robot, so I used the tank to blow him up (as one is wont to do). With the tank, this fight is a pushover, but you can also try to beat the robot without it (it’s just really hard). Destroying the robot also breaks the tank, leaving you at the entrance to the ruins. Naturally, I went in, finding a cave with a bunch of monkeys, a raccoon pretending to be a monkey, and one penguin, which is all excellent. There’s also some items and a new path that eventually brings you to the next town you need to visit, making this quest into a nice scenic route. Later, I learned all of this can be skipped, as the game just lets you walk directly from the desert to the town. I don’t know why someone would skip the plane/tank/robot/monkey section of the game, but having the option is part of the fun.
Not every optional path leads to a good outcome, keeping the player on their toes. The game works hard to establish which areas are safe and which are dangerous, so when they subvert it you are even more surprised. Upon arriving in the town of Spookane, for example, you’ll find its center is absent of NPCs and instead overrun with powerful enemies (not ideal if you come into town expecting to heal or buy items). Naturally, you’ll use its hotel, the only building that appears to be working, but instead of the usual NPCs you find a gray-skinned man working the counter. He lets you stay the night for cheap, which heals your party, but in the morning reveals himself to be an evil Starman and attacks. The fight is made easy by healing the party beforehand (nice of the Starman to wait until you’re all well rested), but it helps keep the player on guard as they go up against more challenging segments.
Later games would cut back on this freedom to take greater narrative strides, but I think there is a unique charm to Mother’s openness, giving space to devise your own strategies to overcome each puzzle or scenario. This is a feeling many modern games are conditioned to avoid, for fear the player will get bored and stop playing, which I find to be a shame. Except for titles like Breath of the Wild, where the entire map is a traversal puzzle, many games will pummel you with hints for how to solve their challenges to save you the trouble of thinking. Nothing sucks me out of a game like being presented with a puzzle and, before I can even try to solve it, the characters blurt out the solution (looking at you, Uncharted). The lack of tutorials or hints is common in older games (often designed to incentivize the purchase of the strategy guide), but I think Mother strikes a good balance by dolling out some useful hints amongst NPCs.
Narrative/Dialogue
“I never knew what I had missed
Until the moment that we kissed”
Besides practical rewards, Mother also often pairs optional content with narrative rewards that help build a sense of accomplishment. When Ana and Lloyd are in your party, you can perform karaoke at a club called the Live House. Yes, this scene triggers Teddy joining your party (temporarily replacing Lloyd), but it’s also worth doing to see the kids cut loose and just have fun on stage (plus the song they sing, All That I Needed (Was You), is a top-tier banger). Later, Ana and Ninten share a touching scene in a cabin, confessing their love (or, if you’re a monster, choosing not to) and then dancing to the song Fallin’ Love (also a banger). The dance is interrupted by another giant robot, who attacks the group and leaves Teddy critically injured (allowing Lloyd to rejoin the party). From a practical point, this is the game’s way of swapping party members out, but narratively it is quite complex. Teddy is a brute gang leader and his goal when joining your party is to get revenge on the people that killed his parents. But after his injury sidelines him, he realizes that strength alone won’t be enough to stop them, encouraging Ninten to find another way. To make the point more poignant, the robot is not defeated by your party, but rather Lloyd, who has used the repaired tank to blow it up. Lloyd rejoins in Teddy’s place, weakening your party in some aspects but narratively making it feel stronger. These scenes were some of my favorites in the entire game, with great care put into the choreography of the sprites and music, so it’s amazing to think some players may never see them simply because they took a different route.
If you say ‘no’, you are banned from this website
Although the towns of Mother can blend together due to the technical limitations of the NES, the game goes to great lengths to distinguish them through the people that inhabit them and the conversations Ninten shares with them. Unlike most series where talking to NPCs is so boring I want to die, many Mother NPCs will crack jokes or say remarks that add to the world building. It makes the map feel inhabited by real people, instead of robots who talk like complete idiots. The dialogue, as with many other areas of the game, was viewed as an opportunity to subvert expectations, so not all NPCs are helpful. Cops and politicians are often useless or corrupt, so talking to them is always a gamble (some may even have you arrested). There’s an NPC that sells tickets to the Live House for a high fee, scamming you if you don’t realize the same ticket can be bought for cheap at a nearby store. In some towns, talking to an NPC will cause them to pass their cold onto Ninten, giving them an illness status ailment. In other areas, certain NPCs will turn out to be enemies, dropping you into an avoidable fight. Overall, the NPCs aren’t as memorable as the later games, which hone the craft of writing dialogue to a fine edge, but Mother leaves a solid impression of the greatness to come.
Magicant
“Does a place called paradise
Wait beyond the azure skies
Bright as day?”
Humor is a key aspect of the Mother series. It’s often described as ‘surreal’, but I think it’s far closer to magical realism, in that it builds oddness on top of the familiar instead of constantly evoking a state of dreamlike strangeness and symbolism. In Mother, the only area that feels truly surreal is the dreamlike Magicant, which you visit several times during the course of the game. To access Magicant, you first must find a big pink shell in a cave and telepathically use George’s diary (turns out he’s Ninten’s great grandfather) to answer a riddle (a situation we all can relate to). Unlike the main world, which is brimming with enemies, Magicant immediately feels peaceful. There are no enemies within the town walls, only funny inhabitants who offer free healing services and sell powerful items. Magicant’s main NPC is the amnesiac Queen Mary, who you find in a large castle north of the town. She gives Ninten the main quest of finding the eight melodies so that she can remember her song and restore her memories. While Magicant’s main map features a mesmerizing soundtrack that instantly relaxes you, the castle’s theme (Wisdom of the World) blends a regal melody with an undertone of yearning and absence, perfectly matching her plight.
The landscape of Magicant is a mesh of pinks and blues, with pastel green rivers encircling all around, a stark contrast from the more realistic hues of the main world. Everyone lives in big pink shells, except for the five Flying Men who have a house on the outskirts. Since there is a portion of Magicant’s map where enemies spawn, it’s wise to recruit one of them to fight alongside you. They can’t be controlled or healed by the player, but are capable of hitting enemies pretty hard. If your Flying Man dies, they can’t be revived like your other party members. Instead, you’ll later find their tombstone near their house, featuring a unique epitaph per fighter. You don’t need to use all five on a casual playthrough (if you do, you have a sick mind), but knowing they can die adds some morbidity to the otherwise cheerful Magicant, hinting at a deeper sadness that permeates elsewhere. The Flying Men are also notable for having a song written for them that does not appear in Mother (except on its vocal LP), but is reused in Earthbound (Mother 2) and is referenced in Mother 3. Like the gameplay, the song is optional but should not be missed.
Magical Magicant
This guy needs a hug
The morbidity of the Flying Men and the sadness of Queen Mary’s plight hint at the darkness underneath the surface, but it isn’t until you try to leave Magicant that you get hit with the heavy stuff. In a series of dark crystal caves, Ninten finds the exit is blocked by a forgotten man, who keeps his back to you. The man refuses to move until you admit that you will forget him too, just like everyone else. If you try not to, the dialogue will loop, holding you hostage. If Magicant is a dream, the caves are its subconscious. Putting this walking epitome of depression deep into the caves, as though suppressed by the dreamer, is an unusually subtle choice in a game from 1989. Mother’s story hits marks most games wouldn’t approach for years, if not decades. It takes the medium of the video game seriously, all while being very goofy and funny.
Mothers & Fathers
“Life is but a moment, a single grain of sand.”
Magicant is a turning point in the game, as it sets you on the main quest and recasts the solving of problems in each town as part of Ninten’s melodic search. Some problems are silly, like navigating the erroneously named Sweet’s Little Factory’s massive map to find a bottle rocket for Lloyd, while others are creepy, like exploring a haunted house that is a maze of staircases and pitch black rooms while fending off ghosts and bats. Perhaps the problem that was most impactful to me was Youngtown, where you discover all the adults have disappeared, leaving their children struggling to fend for themselves. The town’s theme is a track that is equal parts oppressive and resilient, fitting the atmosphere perfectly. These children are experiencing a great trauma and have no option but to address it, since otherwise they would die. There is nothing you can do to solve Youngtown’s problem for now, so after talking with the kids you must keep going, in hopes of eventually finding where all their parents were taken. Having played Earthbound first, where this song is reused as Paula’s theme, I can now appreciate how well it fits her character as someone who similarly shows fortitude in the gravest situations. And as a new father, the idea of children being abandoned in such a way truly broke my heart, motivating me to power through the brutal final section and save their parents.
The role of mothers and fathers is central to the Mother series, but in the first game it is more subtle. Ninten’s mother is a constant source of comfort, offering to cook your favorite food whenever you return home. Meanwhile, Ninten’s dad is only spoken to via phones, limited to help by sending money to Ninten’s bank account and offering to save your game. That air of pining to be present while forced to remain absent is a well documented reflection of creator Shigesato Itoi’s own childhood, as his father was often away for work. To grow up and fall into the same pitfalls as ones parents can be seen as a failure, but it also builds empathy, understanding why they may have made difficult choices for the sake of their child. Since Mother’s protagonists are children, all of this is framed through their eyes, lending a brilliant layer of innocence to these heavy topics. It almost makes you think Ninten believes his dad is the phone itself (a joke that is made explicit in Earthbound’s end credits) This kind of complexity is deepened in the subsequent games in the series, so I won’t dwell on it here, but I love how it informs the relationships you see between parents and children throughout the game and how it underlines humorous scenes with serious concerns. Childhood innocence is a joy the game indulges in, but it’s also something that inevitably must end. What breaks that innocence, whether time or trauma, is a key theme throughout the series.
Climbing Mt. Itoi
The final region of the game, Mt. Itoi (named after the series’ creator), is a sharp spike in difficulty, due to the developers running out of time to playtest and rebalance. I was nervous entering this area, but my combination of save states, rewind, and a guide worked together to make this notorious section surprisingly tolerable (cheating helped, go figure). The area is divided into a cave, a plateau with a cabin, a lake, then the ascent to the summit. The caves were the worst for me, as you keep encountering groups of Blue Starmen that can one-shot you (unless you have the Franklin badge equipped, an optional item that one could easily miss). Its layout is such that every extraneous step or backtrack risks complete failure. Once I got through it, I rushed to the cabin, fleeing as often as possible from enemy encounters (especially the dumb Grizzly bears). Since I had Ana and Teddy in my party, I got to see the great dancing scene mentioned earlier (naturally I chose for Ana and Ninten to confess their love, as I am not a monster), which was followed by the giant robot fight that injures Teddy. This blows you back to the area right before the caves, which would require replaying that horrible section unless you take advantage of Mother’s greatest item: Bread.
Generally, items in Mother are improved upon in subsequent games, but Bread is the exception. While the sequels make it into a simple healing item, in Mother you use it to mark a place with breadcrumbs, which you can later follow back like Hansel and Gretel. This allows you to place a warp point anywhere on the main map and return to it from any other point (except Magicant) at any time, making it all but essential to avoid repeating vast swaths of the game that lack save points. I am not sure why they got rid of this useful item in the sequels, but without it Mother would be even more of a combat slog, so I am eternally grateful for my stale bread.
Get used to seeing this screen
That’s rough, buddy
After following the crumbs back to the cabin, I then rushed to the lake, where in an underwater base you find and recruit EVE, a giant robot George built decades ago to protect Ninten (he was a busy guy). This makes Mt. Itoi’s ultra-powerful enemies a joke, as she cathartically smacks them down like flies, making the climb to the summit a breeze. At the peak, you encounter a third giant evil robot, which is stronger than its predecessors. No matter your actions, the robot and EVE will be destroyed in the fight, (her loss made me sadder than I expected). Out of EVE plays the seventh melody, then shortly after you find the eighth at the grave of George. With all the melodies found, you can teleport back to Magicant and finally play Queen Mary her song. She at last remembers her true identity as George’s wife Maria, who raised the alien baby Giegue as her own and sung the song as a lullaby to him. This puts her at peace, causing her and the rest of Magicant to vanish, leaving you in an empty wasteland. The loss of this dream hits hard, as it comes with the realization that all that remains is the final showdown.
Giegue
“Take a melody
Simple as can be
Give it some words
And sweet harmony
Raise your voices
All day long now
Love grows strong now
Sing a melody of love, oh love”
By this point, the narrative has revealed that all the strange happenings are due to an alien invasion led by Giegue, the same alien Maria raised as her own child long ago. Knowing that the creature is Ninten’s distant adopted relative, it makes the entry to the fight all the more unsettling. First, you encounter a room full the abducted people crying for help from inside massive tubes. Then, you enter the boss arena, where a massive mothership (get it?) lifts to reveal the cat-like alien leader in a pod of their own. You feel not only Giegue’s power, but also his capacity for cruelty against humans. Giegue’s likeness and misanthropic disposition is often compared to the Pokemon Mewtwo (makes sense as the same studio developed both series), but Gigue’s appearance and motives are more complex and ambiguous. It’s hard to tell what exactly is happening in his pod (due to sprite limitations but also the image design), and there are a lot of questions surrounding his anger and plan of attack that add to his mystique.
Unlike other encounters in the game, Giegue’s boss theme is virtually absent of sound, save for oddly syncopated twinges and bits of static. Mother is a game of music, so the contrast is immediately felt. In the first phase, Giegue exposits that their invasion is to prevent humanity from using the psychic knowledge George stole against them, but I always found this explanation suspect. Humans have had the knowledge for 80 years and done nothing with it, so why attack now? My guess is that Giegue’s true motives lie more in their resentment of George for abandoning him and Maria. Unlike Ninten’s absentee father, who tries to make amends over the phone, George is unperturbed. Since Maria bears no ill will at her absent husband, it’s possible my theory isn’t true, but the nice thing about Mother’s narrative is that it leaves room for interpretation (especially in the sequels).
I see the resemblance
During the fight, Giegue makes Ninten an offer to spare just him if he gives up and joins the invaders. It’s a common trope for bad guys to give the protagonist a chance to change sides that never works, but here there is possibly a twinge of guilt, as Giegue knows Ninten is one of the few remaining threads to the woman that raised him. After Ninten refuses, the fight enters its final phase, which is unwinable by conventional means. The player can launch all the attacks they want, but Giegue’s health will never deplete. The only way to defeat him is by using a new ability unlocked after the final visit with Queen Mary: singing. It takes eleven attempts for the party to sign the complete melody to Giegue, during which the villain will try to silence them and lob incredibly powerful attacks that hit the entire party. Eleven never felt like such a big number as here, with it taking me several tries to get to the end of the song, even with my cheating tools. Once it was finally over, Giegue is reminded of the motherly love (get it??) they received from Maria so many years ago, a chink in their armor deep enough to cause them to call off their invasion, for now.
The End?
The alien departs and the game plays a cute epilogue where everyone abducted is freed and the party returns home as heroes. Taking the game from a light-hearted tone into one that is so poignant and sincere is a bold strategem, but Mother lands it with gusto, setting Giegue up for his inevitable return in Earthbound (renamed and transformed as Giygas). The epilogue was not in the original Famicom release, added as part of the English localization that was shelved for so long. I like how it wraps up loose ends and how the content of it varies slightly depending on the player’s choices. My only complaint is the hastily drawn art of Ninten’s father at the end, which feels tacked on and at odds with the rest of the game’s aesthetic.
Mother is a game that means a lot to a lot of people. There was no need to say more about its importance, brilliance, and well-worn weak points, and yet, I couldn’t help myself. The game and its sequels have deeply entrenched themselves in my life, charming me in their own unique ways. In the case of Mother, a lot of my enjoyment came from areas I did not expect, so I am glad I took the time to play the game firsthand. All of the nostalgia it conjured struck me at my core, welling up inside in an unforgettable experience. But as the game’s motto demands, and I obliged, no crying until the end!
After defeating Giegue, a well earned rest