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The Mother franchise is my favorite video game franchise ever. This is what you might
hear a lot of people on the internet say, including me of course. I consider Mother
3 to be my favorite video game ever. Many fans consider Mother 2 to be the best in the
franchise. The Mother series wasn�ft well known outside of Japan until the word about
it was spread through the internet. Thanks to the dedication of the fanbase, Mother 2
is finally going to be released on the Wii U virtual console in America and even in Europe!
If we can prove how much we love this series, Mother 3 may be officially released in English!
Please make this happen! In celebration of mother 2 finally being released for the Wii
U virtual console, and for Mother 3 finally getting a chance at an official English release,
I will review the overlooked origin of the Mother series, Mother 1 on the Nintendo Famicom.
Mother is an RPG developed by copywriter Shigesato Itoi, and was released in July 27th 1989.
He was inspired by the Dragon Quest series to make his own RPG. The game was to be set
in modern day America as a tribute to a movie Mr. Itoi liked called �gStand By Me�h.
Ape inc. was a company founded by Mr.Itoi and they made the Mother series. What isn�ft
well known is that after the company disbanded, the employees formed creatures inc. who are
well known for making the Pokemon series. The creator of the Pokemon series, Tajiri
Satoshi even did a review for mother in his magazine titled game freak where he offered
some insight into video games. Mother is also the first turn based RPG which was a first
party Nintendo title. This game was also never officially released for North America. There
are prototypes for this game in English however. These are known as Earth Bound NES or Earthbound
Zero because the only internationally released game in the series is Mother 2 which is known
as Earthbound outside of Japan, and fans needed some way of distinguishing the two games.
Some changes in the prototype from the Famicom version are: an extended ending, censorship
of certain sprites, a screen flickering affect for certain parts of the game, and a run button.
When a prototype was found circulating on the internet on January 15th 1998, the fan
translation group Demiforce bought it with the intention of releasing the ROM onto the
internet. For those of you who don�ft know, releasing the ROM or read only memory onto
the internet allows people to download it and play it on an Emulator which means you
can play games on your computer. This however is illegal. The only changes Demiforce made
to the game was to add a zero to the title and a few extra changes to the games code
in order to bypass antipiracy measures. Some have speculated that the prototype isn�ft
official and was just a translation made by Demiforce. However Phil Sandhop, the producer
of the prototype officially confirmed that this was his work. The game was finished and
ready to be produced but due to the fact that this was 1991, the SNES was already green
lighted as the successor of the NES, and the cartridges were expensive due to the fact
that more cartridges with larger data storage capacity were needed. Do you remember Super
Mario Bros. 3? Well that didn�ft come over seas until long after it was released in Japan
due to cartridge shortages. Mario 3 needed more data than most NES games. But that was
a sequel to the most popular game series of all time. When you take into account the reasons
to which Nintendo wouldn�ft distribute this I don�ft really blame them. The reception
of this game in Japan was positive, selling about 400,000 copies. It was also re-released
on the GBA in 2003 along with the sequel as Mother1+2 which added some features of the
unreleased prototype and even further features such as using the L trigger as a multi-purpose
check button. The gameplay you�fre seeing is from the GBA port.
The game itself is a rather unique specimen. The objective is collect 8 pieces of a song
scattered through the world. When finishing the song a truth is revealed. No crying until
the end and guaranteed classic is the slogan of the game. Both were said in the advert
of the game, it�fs rather interesting to watch, link to it in the description. People
often praise Earthbound, Mother 2�c okay I�fll just call it Mother 2 from now on.
People often praise Mother 2 for things such as taking place in rural America instead of
medieval Europe, instead of using magic you use PSI, and instead of potions you use food.
Mother 2 is also praised for its sense of humor. All of these are also applicable to
Mother 1. Before I move on let me explain something.
The Mother series is my favorite series of all time. I love each one of the games in
the series but I think that Mother 2 is given too much praise by the fans. I�fm not saying
the fans are too loud or anything, no; the fans of the series have done some amazing
stuff purely for their love of the game. Who knows, maybe my opinion of the game will change
once I replay it for my review of the game. I still consider Mother 1 underrated though.
Not enough people like this game. Even a lot of fans of the series don�ft really like
this game. So when I first played this game I went in with low expectations. It definitely
has its problems but a lot of them are acceptable considering that this was an rpg on the NES.
The graphics are very basic. The buildings are basic to the point where they are quadrilaterals
with doors and windows. The NPC sprites are mainly recycled, but this is an NES game so
I really can�ft blame it for recycled sprites. This game needs to contain a lot of data so
I can�ft blame the basic graphics. The cartridges were already expensive enough to produce so
they needed basic graphics. There are a few things which bug me about the graphics which
I can�ft let slide. The sprites for the main characters Ninten, Ana, Loid and Teddy
are odd. Ninten�fs head is way too huge for his body, when Ana and Loid are facing
towards the screen it looks odd due to the fact that they are wearing only one color.
There is no divider between Loid�fs shirt and trousers, and you can�ft tell that Ana
is wearing a dress. Teddy doesn�ft have any problems with his sprite. Despite the
over world sprites not being very good, the in battle sprites are very good for Famicom
standards. Despite the backgrounds just being black I can excuse that as the game was already
pushing the memory limits of the Famicom as is. The enemies are surprisingly detailed.
The graphics are very hard to give a grade to. I would give the overworld graphics a
49/100, and I would give the battle graphics a 70/100. Keep in mind in my grading system
60/100 is considered so-so. As with a lot of RPG�fs the story is important.
I�fm not going to spoil too much of the story so those of you who plan on playing
the game for yourselves, don�ft worry too much.
In 1908 a young couple mysteriously went missing. They were abducted by Aliens. The man�fs
name was George. The Woman�fs name was Maria. Maria took care of one of the aliens offspring,
Giegue or Giygas or Gyig�c I�fm going to stick with Giegue as that is how it is
said in Japanese. So while Maria took care of Giegue as if he were her own, George was
studying the peculiar power of PSI while living with the aliens. Of course he stole the information
from the aliens. Later on back on Earth George mysteriously returned. He never told anyone
what happened and just studied PSI. 80 years later. George and Maria�fs great grandchild,
Ninten is experiencing weird things in his house. Lamps and dolls are attacking people.
After beating up a doll the odd phenomenon stops in his house. He then decides to travel
the world in order to stop this phenomenon which is going on throughout the whole world.
Here is one vague thing with the plot. It doesn�ft define how old George and Maria
were when they were abducted. Young is too vague. They clearly had kids because Ninten
is a direct descendent of them. Depending on what you consider young George and Maria
might�fve had a kid before being abducted. What happened to the kid while its parents
where mysteriously abducted? Was the kid abducted along with its parents? Ninten�fs dad seems
to know that George studied PSI, and since George never told anyone due to not interacting
with people much, the only person who would�fve known would be his kid. When was the kid born?
Since Maria is Ninten�fs great grandmother that means that the kid must�fve been born
either before George and Maria got abducted, or while they were on the spaceship. Maria
wouldn�ft have loved Giegue so much if her kid was on the spaceship so the kid must�fve
been left behind. Having her been separated from her kid would explain why she would show
love for Giegue, to fill the hole left from being separated from her child. Which comes
back to my original question of what did the kid do while his parents were gone? I suppose
the kid must�fve lived with its closest relatives.
I somehow answered my own question! That�fs what�fs great about the plot. You can figure
it out if you think about it enough. I�fm not going to explain any more of the story
because it�fs an rpg so story is important. I don�ft want to spoil too much of the story
so I will cut it short here. I give the story a 100/100. For an 8-bit game, the story is
really good. Play it to find out why I gave it a perfect score.
Now I can dive into the gameplay. Your party members each have their own unique attributes.
Ninten has high stats in general but the PSI attacks he has can�ft harm enemies. His
PSI attacks are all status affecting PSI such as defense up, quick up, and hypnosis. Loid
the nerd has lower stats than Ninten but can use special weapons which are usually the
equivalent of certain PSI attacks such as the flamethrower being equivalent to PK Fire.
Speaking of PSI Ana is the main PSI user in your party. She has low stats with the exception
of PP, but has good PSI attacks. I�fm about to explain the PSI mechanic in the game so
if you know how it works skip to this point of the video�c Good, now I can begin. The
more powerful a PSI is the more PP it drains. Obviously the higher level Ninten or Ana are
then the better the PSI they get. If you have the patience to grind then you can get absolutely
broken PSI with Ana. The main offensive PSI�fs are Pk fire, freeze, thunder, and beam. There
are different levels of PSI. They are alpha, beta, gamma, pi, and omega. Only PSI healing
and lifeup have a pi level. Omega level PSI is supposed to be the most powerful level
but in this game the gamma level can be more useful than the Omega level. PK freeze gamma
brings down an enemy�fs hp to single digits. PK freeze Omega meanwhile gives huge damage
to all enemies. PK fire damages all enemies making PK Freeze Omega useless. PK Fire Omega
instantly kills all enemies on screen. It drains a whole lot of PP though. PK thunder
gamma is just PK thunder beta but to all enemies. These elemental attacks do more damage if
the opponent has a weakness to it, and less damage if the opponent is resistant to it.
Did I already mention that this series was played by the pokemon creator Satoshi Tajiri??
There is also the PK Beam set of attacks which do the same amount of damage regardless of
the opponent�fs type. PK beam omega deals massive damage to all enemies, more than any
non-PK fire Omega attack. But keep in mind that it doesn�ft take into account of what
type the opponent is. But PK beam gamma will instantly kill one enemy. It takes more pp
than PK freeze gamma so make your choices wisely. Welcome back those of you who skipped
my PSI explanation. Late in the game you have a gang member named Teddy. With his incredible
strength almost nothing can stand in your way. He has no PSI by the way. At the beginning
of the game Ninten rescues a girl called Pippi. You can only progress by making her leave
your party. If you decide to grind for a bit then you will find her attack stat to overtake
Ninten�fs, with no equipment as well. An interesting fact is that in the programming
of the game, her constant stat increases are the same as Teddy�fs. Most of the stat increases
are determined by a random value but there are some constant values which can help determine
the stat increases. Starmen.net has a page on the stat increase formula so those of you
curious should check it out. You increase your stats by buying weapons
such as baseball bats, air guns, and boomerangs. There isn�ft much variety in using them
because the boomerang is able to be equipped by anyone and it is one of the most powerful
weapons in the game so you will keep it until each character gets their ultimate weapon.
Baseball bats are exclusive to Ninten, guns to Loid, frying pans to Ana, and swords to
Teddy. By getting the boomerang as quick as possible for all characters, minus Teddy,
you can cut down on a lot of grinding. Grinding is a big issue for most people with
this game. My last playthrough was a low level run. I only had to do a bit of grinding twice,
once when I got Pippi, and once when I got Loid. I didn�ft grind for long though. Max
30 minutes. On my first playthrough I did a lot of Grinding so overall I found the game
easy. Every time I replay the game I keep going for lower and lower levels. Here is
the trick to getting through the game, run away, or at least in the final area of the
game. If you fought every enemy through the rest of the game then that is what you should
do. The running away feature in this game is the best in the series. This is because
every character has the option to run. If whoever has the greatest speed fails to escape
then someone else can try. If one person runs away then the whole party escapes. In future
games you can only have the leader of the party run away making running away a whole
lot more tedious. Ninten even has a PSI which instantly lets you run away. By the end of
my playthrough of the game Ana had just learned PK Freeze gamma so it�fs possible to get
through the game without relying on broken PSI. There is also a money making trick in
the game where you can buy an item for cheap, and sell it for a profit. You need the money
to buy the equipment to increase your offence and defense. If a member of your party faints
you can visit the hospital to revive them for a revival fee. You can buy items at the
stores such as weapons and medicines. You can buy food in food stores but the only thing
worth buying is the bread. You can choose to �guse�h the bread to start dropping
bread crumbs. If you select use on the bread crumbs then you will automatically backtrack
to where you started to drop the bread crumbs. But you have an item to warp to a certain
area which allows you to recover fallen allies for free as well as fully restoring your health
so you can abuse this if you want to save money. So overall grinding is not necessary
at all, if you know how to play it then you don�ft need to grind.
In the Famicom version Ninten and party could only walk. In the unreleased prototype and
the GBA version a run button was added. The things is�c I never knew that a run button
existed in the GBA version until doing some research for this review. It isn�ft that
bad that Ninten and company move slowly. An RPG isn�ft supposed to move quickly. It�fs
supposed to make you pause and think what you�fre supposed to do next. There really
isn�ft much more to say about the gameplay. It works like your traditional rpg. I already
explained the PSI earlier, but if you still don�ft understand, it�fs like magic in
other rpg�fs. But I find the PSI broken. My reason for this is because there are only
3 bosses in the game. The first one is the Starman Jr. which is pretty much a joke if
you got the franklin badge. The franklin badge reflects PK beam gamma, which is an insta
kill move. The second boss is a dragon which can either be really difficult or really easy.
You can only battle the dragon when Ninten is level 25. You can fight the dragon as late
in the game as you want to. If you fight the dragon by the time you have Teddy, or by the
time you can use Pk Freeze gamma than the boss is ridiculously easy. I usually fight
the dragon as soon as Ninten reaches level 25, so I have Loid but not Teddy, I also don�ft
have PK Freeze gamma or PK beam gamma which can both kill the dragon in one round of attacks.
However since I was going for a low level run last time I played I happened to have
Teddy around by the time Ninten reached level 25. I was surprised at just how easy it was
despite all my characters being far weaker than any of my previous playthroughs. The
last boss meanwhile�c without giving away too much it was much more difficult than any
previous playthrough�c obviously. Not an unfair difficulty. It was a fair challenge.
This was the only boss in this game which forced me to slow down and think very carefully
on what to do next. If you are overleveled then this boss is ridiculously easy. The guard
feature is great for those times you need to make a tactical decision. The guard will
halve any damage received from opponents regardless of whether you are faster than your opponent.
I know I am not mentioning something very annoying about the game, Random encounters.
The random encounters in this game seem very, well random. Sometimes you can go for as much
as a whole minute without running into enemies and other times you can tap the d-pad as soon
as you exit and there is another random encounter. I really can�ft say much about random encounters
as it isn�ft anything that has really bothered me as I need to grind anyway. I understand
why some people would get annoyed with the random encounters though. Also some people
get annoyed by the fact that when you attack an enemy with more than one party member,
if the quickest party member defeats the enemy, then the other party members will attack nothing
instead of attacking the next enemy over. I admit that this is a bad thing as it adds
unnecessary difficulty to the game. I give the gameplay a 71/100.
Now as a general rule I don�ft talk about music. But with the Mother series I have to
make an exception. I feel that this game is pushing the Famicoms sound card. These simple
tunes have become iconic, such as the 8 melodies theme which was used in Japanese elementary
schools at about 1992. The overworld theme �gPollyanna�h went on to become the theme
which would represent the Mother series. The saddest point in the game is when you have
Loid join your party, which changes the over world theme from �gPollyanna�h to�hbein�f
friends�h. Updated versions of these themes can be heard on super smash brothers brawl.
I�fm not going to grade the music because as I said in my sonic 1 review, everyone has
different taste in music. I just think that Suzuki Keiichi and Tanaka Hirokazu did a good
job with the music. I understand that this game has its flaws,
particularly with the over world sprites and the enormous amount of grinding needed for
the newer players of the game. I feel like this game is underrated due to people playing
the sequel first due to it being the only game officially released in English. When
people hear of this game called �gEarthbound�h they don�ft think that it�fs a sequel
to a game due to the lack of a 2 in the title. When people find out that Earthbound is called
Mother 2 in Japan, they try to play the prequel expecting Earthbound. People end up disappointed
due to it being so much simpler than Earthbound. My defense to this is that the same is true
with any franchise with games on the NES and SNES. Imagine playing Super Castlevania 4
and then playing any of the first 3 Castlevania games expecting something like Super Castlevania
4, or playing Super Metroid and then go into the original Metroid expecting something like
Super Metroid, or playing Legend of Zelda a Link to the Past and then expecting Zelda
1 or 2, particularly Zelda 2, to be the same as A Link to the Past. There are exceptions
to this such as Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros. 3, or arguably Megaman X and the
classic Megaman games. My point is that Mother 1 was unfairly judged because most people
compare it to Mother 2. It still has a strange charm that no other game, not even its sequels
have. Perhaps it�fs how such a good story was weaved into an 8 bit Famicom game without
interrupting the gameplay too much. I know I didn�ft dive into the story too much but
that�fs because it�fs supposed to be something that you encounter while playing the game.
It�fs very difficult to explain what sort of charm this game holds. Despite not being
an RPG fan I still enjoyed this game. I am however a fan of retro games. I feel like
this game won�ft be appreciated by people who care about the graphics or don�ft have
the patience to learn how to avoid all the grinding. People�fs opinion of the game
changes depending on what sort of experience you have in gaming. My final score to this
game is a 72/100.