May 24th, 2013 | EarthBound, Mitch's Comics | 11 Comments

News about the whole EarthBound available for preorder on Amazon UK thing spread across gaming sites like crazy yesterday for some reason, and this prompted good ol’ Mitch to make a new comic!

You can check out some of Mitch’s past EarthBound comics here and check out his other stuff here!

May 23rd, 2013 | EarthBound, Images | 10 Comments

A few years ago there were some gigantic Mr. Saturn things at certain Japanese arcades – if you don’t remember them, see here.

Anyway, until today I never realized I’d never seen how one looks from behind. So here’s a pic!

…I don’t remember seeing THAT on the Mr. Saturn anatomy diagram

May 22nd, 2013 | EarthBound, MOTHER 1+2, Videos | 17 Comments

I sometimes wondered if different versions of MOTHER 2 might play faster or slower than other versions – and then I stumbled upon this Japanese video that compares the walking speed of the GBA MOTHER 2 and the Wii U Virtual Console MOTHER 2.

As you can see, the GBA version has slower walking. I don’t know if that’s because the Wii U’s Super Famicom emulator has slightly messed-up timing or if that’s how fast an actual Super Famicom version would run – it might be a good idea to compare it with an actual Super Famicom MOTHER 2 and Super NES EarthBound too sometime.

I guess this only really matters for speed runners, so if you’re trying to go for a world record you probably don’t want to use the GBA version

May 21st, 2013 | Interviews, Itoi | 23 Comments

In a recent discussion about a famous copywriter by the name of Koichi Tsuchiya, Shigesato Itoi quickly mentioned the MOTHER games and his own experience being the writer for them.

(The discussion so far has been about readers who have strong reactions to various instances of their writing)

Yeah, there’ve been people who’ve responded like that and thought, “I want to be the one saying these things sometime.” and then gone on to be like me.

Kids who play the old MOTHER games I worked on will sometimes send me e-mails that say, “I love this line the most.” They’ll say, “It really touched me.”

I’ve seen a lot of EarthBound fans get inspired by the game and eventually end up turning that passion into a career. The games have definitely had a big effect on my own career path, but how about you? Did the MOTHER games get you where you are now? Or maybe they’ve started you on a path? Share your own experiences in the comments!

May 20th, 2013 | Audio Stuff, EarthBound, Videos | 11 Comments

A couple fans have sent me links to this music video of the Onett theme:

He’s done this with a lot of other game music too, like this! Check them all out here!

May 18th, 2013 | Hacking, MOTHER 1+2 | 21 Comments

A fan by the name of broomweed has started on a hack of MOTHER 1+2 to make MOTHER 1 very Mr. Saturn-like, as inspired by comments years ago on EB Central! Here’s a description of the project:

Hey, you! Do any of the following apply to you:

• Haven’t played Mother 1 because of the lack of Mr. Saturns in it
• Always wondered what the Mr. Saturns would be like in Mother 1
• Love trying to decipher what the Mr. Saturns are trying to say

If you answered “yes” to any of the above, then, um, that’s pretty weird. But your prayers have been answered! SaturnBound Zero is a text/cosmetic hack that adds ONE HUNDRED PERCENT more Mr. Saturns to MOTHER 1+2!

And here are the features:

• A surprisingly handsome recreation of the Mr. Saturns and their font in 16×16 and 8×8, respectively
• Changes human NPCs are into Mr. Saturns, with various features to differentiate them (sometimes)
• Changes dialogue (so far, in only Mother’s Day and some of Magicant) into a Mr. Saturn-sounding style.
• Accounts for weird shifting of the bottom half in some — but not all — NPC sprites, so they don’t look weird and off-kilter
• Accounts for up-and-down motion in player sprites (this is why their feet look so weird, sorry)
• Changes a couple of item names and descriptions
• Changes some of the battle text
• Changes the ATM to look like the Mr. Saturn ATM (kind of)
• Changes PSI into “science” (because, you know, the Mr. Saturns are good at that…)

There’s still a good amount of work that needs to be done, but you can check out the current version and keep up with progress here!

May 16th, 2013 | EarthBound | 34 Comments

For years and years, maybe even as far back as the late 90s, I always wanted to make a Game Genie code that would make enemies drop items 100% of the time. I always pushed it off for another day… until yesterday, when I was like, “You know, I think I’ll come up with that code today.” It took a few hours since I didn’t know what I was doing, but in the end I got it!

So here’s a Game Genie code that will make enemies drop their items 100% of the time in battle:

There are some things to note about this code:

• This code doesn’t seem to work with the insta-wins, it only works when you actually get into battle. I guess the instant win stuff uses its own separate programming for item drops.
• Also, the game programmers designed it so you’ll only win one item at the end of a battle, so if you have a group of enemies you’ll only get one item from them.

As a crazy programmer guy I still secretly hope to find a way to turn the above codes into just one Game Genie code, but I dunno how possible that’ll be.

Anyway, now if you’re ever frustrated from trying to get certain items from enemies, you have this new code to tempt you to the dark side! Mwahaha!

UPDATE! Nitrodon has improved stuff and made it so you only need to input one code:

DB08-5FA8 (100% item drops in normal battles)
DB16-77DB (100% item drops in instant win battles)

May 15th, 2013 | EarthBound, Food | 18 Comments

A fan by the name of Chris sent me an e-mail about a video game-themed restaurant/bar in Canada called “EXP”. It has Triforce Burgers, Super Smash Nachos, and all sorts of other stuff. It even has “Mach Pizza Fries”:

If you’re in Vancouver, check it out and let me know how it is! The website and restaurant info is here.

May 14th, 2013 | EarthBound | 43 Comments

A little while back Chris Saturn sent me this about a podcast episode centered around EarthBound:

So, I’m a long-time lurker in the EB community… been following this site since its inception (thanks to the links in the Mother 3 translation page), and Starmen.net for what feels like my entire adult life and some of my adolescence, but I never really gave anything back… mostly because I don’t really have any talent… <_<

Anyway, this feels dirty, and self-promotional, but a podcast that I'm a member of recently did an episode that was (mostly) all about Earthbound. My co-host told me we were doing it, I prepared some notes (mostly from memory... <_<), and jumped right in, only to find out that he'd never played the game before... I did my best to spend the better part of the next hour convincing him as to WHY he needed to play the series. However, I'm sure I got something wrong somewhere...

Anyway, I feel dirty trying to submit a story about a podcast that I myself contribute to, but I'd love to hear what the Earthbound community at large has to say about my argument, and if they have any better suggestions that I could use in the future in trying to spread the love, and recruit more soldiers in the Earthbound army.

Podcast page

Even if you don’t post this, thanks for taking the time to read it. I don’t think people can thank you enough for your hard work here, and on the Mother 3 translation, but, thanks again anyway.

I feel like trying to convince people to play or do something new is usually a tough task, whether it’s playing EarthBound or trying some weird food or whatever else. The best method in my experience is to simply nudge people to try something or give them an idea to try something then let them try it at their own leisure on their own. So I try to avoid going, “DUUUUUDE YOU GOTTA PLAY THIS GAME CALLED EARTHBOUND!” or “HOLY CRAP YOU GOTTA TRY THIS (insert whatever here)!” I mean, I used to be like that, but it rarely worked

So, what are your experiences with this sort of thing? What’s the best way to convince people to try something without scaring them away or over-hyping it? What about EarthBound, specifically? Is there some way to convince people to try it out without hitting them over the head with a baseball bat? Share your thoughts in the comments!

May 13th, 2013 | EarthBound, Itoi, MOTHER 1 | 11 Comments

Yesterday was Mother’s Day, and to commemorate it Shigesato Itoi tweeted something MOTHER-related:

The first town in MOTHER 2 is “Onet”, but the first town in MOTHER is called, yes, “Mothersday”.

It’s nothing much, but I thought I’d share it anyway. I’m more surprised at his misspellings than anything, but it’s somewhat common for Japanese creators to misspell their own English words now that I think about it.