The most harrowing moment of my video gaming life happened when I was around 15. While I was fighting a final boss, the game said to me, “Do you want to scream for help, here in the dark?” That quote, full of arrogance, hatred, and fear, was like a knife to my heart. I never forgot a game that could be so calculated and chilling: EarthBound, for the Super Nintendo. I loved that a game could move me like that. I ate it up. I kept searching for more information about the game, hoping for a sequel, for some acknowledgement of the game (such as in the Super Smash Bros. games), anything. I learned that EarthBound was Mother 2, and that we never got to see the original Mother (on the NES). And like everyone else who lurked on Starmen.net, I kept praying for a re-release somewhere.
In retrospect, I really should have been more specific with those prayers. Nintendo did finally re-release Mother 1 and 2 in a combination package for the Game Boy Advance. However, they only did it in Japan. This would have continued to frustrate me, except that I can honestly say that the first Mother was part of my impetus to learn Japanese, and Nintendo is kind enough to not include region locks on their portables. It’s take a good long while to work through the games and put this together, but here’s the review I’ve had in me for at least a decade: a review of Mother 1+2. Or, if you prefer, a review of EarthBound and EarthBound Zero.
Mother 1
Just as a note: as there is no official translation as yet (despite the availability of a ROM), I’m going with my own translation of names in the game.
Mother starts off much different than most games. It begins by talking about the travails of an American couple, George and Maria. In 1900, they mysteriously vanished, with everyone thinking they were dead until a couple years later, when George suddenly returned. He was different though, withdrawing into some strange experiments. People started questioning him, not knowing how much he grieved his missing wife.
The game suddenly jumps forward to 1988, at the home of George’s great-grandson, Ninten (and for the record, I really wish I were making that name up). It seems like an ordinary day – Ninten’s mom downstairs, his younger sisters in their rooms – when his lamp suddenly jumps up to attack. Going through the house, Ninten disposes of another lamp and a killer kewpie doll, and gets a strange call from his dad. It seems that George, those many years ago, was investigating psychic powers, and Ninten is the heir to this legacy. As one of the very few with the potential to control these powers, Ninten has no choice but to travel with his great-grandfather’s diary and confront the mysterious power that is awakening and caused household items to attack.
Mother admittedly starts with one of the classic gaming clichés – the young kid with a hidden power that is the world’s only hope of survival. However, he makes a quite unlikely hero even for the stereotype. He’s not even a teenager, he isn’t all that strong, and he suffers from asthma. His allies are similarly distinctive – Lloyd is a coward who constantly gets bullied. Ana is a young girl coping with her mother’s death. Teddy is a teen who bullies people to cope with the death of both of his parents. More than most other games, Mother tries to be unique in how it presents its characters.
Of course, this uniqueness extends into the game as well. Very few console role-playing games are set in the modern era; Mother is certainly one of the first if not the first. This is reflected from your health items (cookies and burgers), your weapons (bats, yo-yos, and frying pans), and even your enemies (aliens, mutants, and killer cars – hold your Monty Python jokes please). Everything in the game is seen through a prism of modernity, with a dash of science fiction thrown in. This outlook alone serves to make Mother stand apart from its brethren.
Mother is also the first role-playing game that really delves into humor. The game is loaded with jokes of varying types. Some elements of the game are just silly, like naming most of the towns after holidays – you start in Mother’s Day, meet Lloyd in Thanksgiving, and so on. Sometimes the game tells flat out jokes, but my Japanese isn’t good enough to translate them and still be funny (if they were in the first place). And sometimes, the game just runs with puns (I’ll spare you for now). Unless you’re intimately familiar with Japanese culture, though, most of this will be lost on you.
However, Mother’s greatest distinctive feature is that it deals with broad themes more than with character or story. The characters don’t develop too much; Lloyd and Teddy get some by the ending, but Ninten and Ana are static. The story is fairly simple, as you learn that you have to collect eight melodies to somehow unlock the secrets of the alternate world Magicant and use that to defeat the invading alien Giygue. However, the game is thematically quite dark and mature. It’s a game that features kidnapping, child abandonment, orphaning, isolation, and alienation.
Nothing is quite as powerful as when you face off against Giygue, though. Once you start using the secret to defeating him, he starts talking to you. He doesn’t just yell in anguish, though. Even while he’s striking back at you, he begs you to stop. I’ve fought thousands of final bosses, and many more regular bosses. I’ve never seen any of them beg, as if they’re suffering, though. It’s a coda on the game’s ultimate theme, on the loss of innocence. To make sure that mother Earth survives, you have to fight off the mother ship of the aliens, the one that turns out to be the mother of Ninten’s powers. It’s thought provoking in a way that even most role-playing games don’t bother with.
The game’s actual mechanic is very standard – it’s a turn-based role-playing game, and much like most of them with the exception that the otherworldly power is called psychic power in this game. The difference between this game and most others, though, is that the sequence of events is very much not boss-oriented. You only have three boss fights in the entire game that aren’t automatic story battles. And one of those is against Giygue. The game compensates for this distinction by making most of the normal battles in the game incredibly hard. I’m talking about enemies that can wipe out your party with nary a thought. You’ll particularly note late in the game that quite a few enemies use PSI Beam gamma, which is an instant-kill move that has a high frequency of use. Perhaps reflective of your characters’ meek origins, every battle in this game is a significant struggle.
Of course, to be fair, the game does arm you with a bevy of useful powers. In some respects, these resemble the powers you get in most role-playing games (bomb items, paralysis, hypnotism/sleep, and the like). However, in Mother, these abilities are remarkably effective. Instant death moves are a waste in most role-playing games, but Ana also learns PSI Beam gamma and it works on almost every enemy in the game. This is to say nothing of moves like Brainshock (confusion) and Paralyze. It’s almost a strange feeling to note that every ability comes in handy at some point or another in the game; I’ve been corrupted by games which make less than half of the spell list useful. This doesn’t make the game much easier, of course. This just means that you actually benefit from learning new abilities in the game, unlike in most console RPGs.
One nice touch that the game gives you is how you earn money. You do earn money based on what enemies you defeat, but they don’t actually carry around the cash. Ninten’s unseen father (a commentary on the modern Japanese salaryman) deposits appropriate money into a bank account, which Ninten withdraws using an ATM card. The structure is much the same, but your hard-working dad rewarding you for each enemy you bash seems vastly more realistic than a rabbit carrying around a few dozen gold pieces.
If Mother can be said to have any flaw, it’s graphically. The game was trying to present an exaggerated superdeformed art style, even more extreme than that used in games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior. However, the parody was taken too far and many of the characters have bodies that look almost stick-like on the GBA’s small screen. It also doesn’t help that the colors look extremely washed out on the portable screen (judging by screens from the original), and in general the game has a “my kindergartner drew this” quality to it. The enemy art does redeem the package somewhat; most of the regular enemies look quite solid, the Starman, popular mascot for the enemy’s side, is pretty sharp, and Giygue’s graphics are menacing and reminiscent of some of the best 8-bit enemies (including Mother Brain, Dr. Wily in Mega Man 2, and the grue). However, if any game could have benefited from a graphical overhaul, it would be Mother.
Not that I know from experience, though, but the game actually already did get one. As you’ll find at many sources, the GBA version contains several notable changes from the original version of Mother. These changes are supposedly the same as the ones made for the long-rumored prototype of EB0 that Nintendo had made for the North American market. I can’t confirm this, though. If you want to read more about the changes, I recommend you read Starmen’s recap here. If you’d like some proof that this is genuine, read this excellent recap of the game’s history.
One part of the game that will be highly underrated is the musical score. Much of the game’s tunes are melancholy and a bit quirky. Even for sadder songs, they take unexpected bounces, and are almost jauntily somber. The game has two signature tunes – the haunting melody from the title screen, which functions as the game’s main theme (snatches of this play in various forms through the entire game), and the completed Eight Melodies (Queen Mary’s Lullaby). The main theme is subtle, and quite different from the bombast that makes up many video game introductions. Combined with the spinning Earth standing for the O in Mother, it provides a soothing introduction meant to pull you into the game.
Eight Melodies (Queen Mary’s Lullaby) is the song that makes up the game’s main drive; it’s the song that you have to collect to learn about why Giygue is attacking and what happened to George and his wife so many years ago. It is, at its heart, a lullaby, but it’s also like a sad goodbye, as each use of it accompanies one in the game. It is hindered, somewhat, by the limits of 8-bit music (and that it was built for the NES’s lousy sound chip), but it’s still an incredible melody.
The game, fortunately, also makes use of the shoulder buttons, one functioning as a run button, the other to either automatically speak or check out an area. While the controls for a turn-based game usually aren’t important, making these buttons add function to the game makes the play experience much smoother.
Mother 2: Gyiyg Strikes Back
Yes, that is the game’s actual title in English, according to the first title screen. Just for the readers, though, I’ll be using the names Nintendo of America used for EarthBound.
Mother 2 starts out more quietly than its predecessor. It starts sometime in the 1990’s, in the country of Eagleland (I assume the Japanese felt that they should make the allegory slightly subtler than in Mother). Ness is a young boy living in Onett, and he is awakened one night by a meteor crash. When late that night, he gets to explore the meteor crash site, he’s approached by a bee that calls itself Buzz Buzz. It comes from the future, which has been ravaged by Giygas, of the same alien race as Giygue. Buzz Buzz traveled back in the hopes to find a boy to fulfill a prophecy to join with three friends and join his power with the Earth to defeat Giygas. Ness, with his latent psychic powers evident to Buzz Buzz (and Giygas’ henchmen), must travel the world to attune himself with the world and combat Giygas.
Again, the game’s plot is simple and the character development is dry. But again, the game plays off of stereotypes. Ness is meant to be the all-American kid, but he still is uncertain and even gets homesick regularly. Paula is more than just the popular, calming kid at a preschool; she’s a powerful psychic warrior. Jeff is a boarding school kid trying to come to grips with his father’s aloofness, and Poo is an eastern prince who spends as much time being attractive to the ladies as he does meditating upon truth. Just like in Mother, the characters are not meant to be taken seriously, at least not at first.
The game also continues its trend of constant jokes, perhaps even moreso than the original. From numbering the first several towns (Onett, Twoson, Threed, and Fourside) to fighting enemies like Dali’s Clock and the Cute Li’l UFO, the game’s humor is constantly flowing. Even during the darker parts (in both Japanese and English, one person talks about the need for Pretty Girl Paper after you lay out Zombie Paper to catch the undead), the game likes to have humor constantly brought up. The Japanese version is actually more joke-happy than the English is, with several double entendres being unable to be translated.
For example, consider the alien-like Mr. Saturn, now famous for being an effective projectile in Super Smash Bros. Melee. In Japanese, he’s called Dosei-san. That does literally translate to Mr. Saturn, but it’s also a pun: dousei (pronounced almost the same, just holding out the first vowel longer) happens to mean “same name,” which is apparent when every individual in the species is named Mr. Saturn. The original game isn’t ever shy about making any of these jokes, and I’ll admit that a good chunk of them fly right over my head.
One thing that is universal, though, is potty humor. The game is quite willing to make quite a few crude jokes. Seriously, you can’t name a character “Poo” without some scatological humor being bandied about. Walking piles of vomit are enemies at a few points, one recurring enemy is a giant puddle of sick, some enemies attack by farting, and you even find Pokey, Ness’ rival, leaving his ordure out where you can trip over it. It’s almost hilariously shocking, and it makes sure that at least one silly thing will manage to entertain everyone who plays.
Just as with its predecessor, though, Mother 2 prefers to deal with themes rather than the usual focus on plot or characters. While not nearly as dark as Mother (which at one point leaves you believing that Teddy, already an orphan, was killed by the same alien that killed his parents), the sequel is not a ray of sunshine. Kidnapping, avarice, betrayal of friendship, and the seductive/overwhelming nature of power are all themes covered in Mother 2.
Just as with the first game, though, the strongest themes are present in the final battle, no less harrowing in the Japanese than they were when I saw them on the Super Nintendo. For one, I’ve never seen anyone try creepy dialogue like Pokey, combining kibitzing with antagonizing. However, even more creepy is Giygas himself, who first grows a replica of Ness’ face, and then repeatedly calls to Ness for help during the final fight. It presents an odd dichotomy. While Pokey mocks you and tries to cut you off from everyone and everything, Giygas seems to be reaching out, even as he’s absorbed by his own power. If Giygue was begging Ninten to stop, it feels like Giygas is actually begging Ness and his friends to put Giygas out of his misery. Whether it is by ignoring pity to do what’s best for the world or by destroying someone out of pity, it shows a break from childhood and a final loss of innocence.
Mother 2 uses a mechanic much like the first game, although it has two major differences. The first is during exploration on the world map, and you can see every enemy that lies in wait for you. You actually have to touch them to initiate a battle, and you can get a preemptive strike if you manage to approach them from their blind spot. If your group is powerful enough, you can even take out the enemy without going into the battle screen, accumulating all of the rewards without having to sit through the fight. Some games have featured variations on this, but Mother 2 handles it much better than most.
The other mechanic is found in battle, is very distinct to this game, and is invaluable to learn. The hit point meters for each character in your group are actually dials, and they roll down instead of instantly dropping to their new level. This comes in handy mostly surrounding a character’s potential demise (especially late in the game). First, since it takes time for the reels to count down to zero, you can have that character attack until they actually bottom out (if you set the text speed to fast and know your Japanese menu commands, this can be up to four or five rounds by the game’s end). Second, a character that’s still upright can still be healed by items or the (comparatively) inexpensive Lifeup PSI powers. This is a much more cost-effective way to revive a party member. But the final trick is the most important – the dials stop moving once you either successfully run from battle or the “You Win!” graphic appears on screen. Sometimes, your best option is to just somehow end the battle right then and there.
The game follows a much more traditional RPG path than its predecessor does. The wandering enemies are easier to handle than in Mother (being able to maneuver to a sneak attack helps greatly), and it presents boss enemies regularly (most notably at the eight “Your Sanctuary” locations which are the checkpoints Ness needs to find to attune to Earth’s power). However, the game is actually easier, as the various psychic powers are just as effective in Mother 2 as they were in the original. Quite a few bosses are vulnerable to Paralyze, and I actually got an instant kill against the guardian of the fourth Your Sanctuary, Rainy Circle, after one use of PSI Flash beta. To someone who doesn’t like using status ailments as much, this game could in fact be harder than your average Final Fantasy. But if you use the whole range of abilities, it’s really a cakewalk.
One thing to note, for people who remember EarthBound quite well, is that they’ve greatly cleaned up the control scheme. The console version of the game could be stubborn and not recognize button presses at times, but this version always responds well. This might be because my SNES hardware is old, but that wouldn’t explain why my controllers work just fine on every other game. It’s of no consequence; you don’t have to press a button hard, or multiple times, to get a response in this version.
Mother 2 corrects the original’s greatest flaw by greatly overhauling the graphics. While still superdeformed, the characters have bodies that are much better defined, and you can easily tell that Ness is wearing a blue and yellow-striped shirt (in theory, Ninten and Ness wear the same outfit, although it’s difficult to tell by in-game graphics). The game’s colors overall are much more vivid and sharp, and the game improves the battle graphics of the first Mother game. Whereas the original just featured the enemies on a black background, Mother 2 puts the enemies before various shifting backgrounds, mathematical graphs meant to appear psychedelic by their constant color shifts. Visually, the sequel is vastly improved.
However, it is evident, comparing it to the SNES version, that the graphics were noticeably altered for the GBA re-release. The GBA displays at a different ratio than the Super Nintendo did, so the graphics were obviously changed. Unless you look carefully, it’s difficult to tell that some real estate was lost at the top and bottom during world map exploration. It’s more obvious in battle, as the dialogue boxes have been made much shorter (as have the status boxes for your characters at the bottom of the screen). These boxes can still be read quite clearly (although some dialogue was awkwardly placed on the screen), so it’s a perfectly acceptable change. However, strict purists may be bothered by the change.
Mother 2’s soundtrack is simultaneously bold and grounded in its past. Much of the music is much more melodious than the original game’s tunes, from the comfortable tune played in Onett to the sinister notes played during a boss fight. EarthBound was one of the strongest uses of the Super Nintendo’s sound chip, and it clearly shows. It’s topped off by Eight Melodies (Sound Stone), the song Ness learns as he liberates each “Your Sanctuary” location. This tune is certain to be familiar to Super Smash Bros. Melee fans – the battle music for the Onett stage features a soft remix of it, and Ness’ versus victory music is a bold play of the pieces from Magnet Hill, Pink Cloud, Lumine Hall, and Fire Spring.
However, quite a few tunes in Mother 2 are simply remixes of those used in the original Mother, using much better hardware. Many of the in-battle tunes (including the classic music when you fight a New Age Retro Hippie) are stronger versions of tunes from Mother. Many Americans will be surprised to note how many tunes get repeated in Mother 2. Most notable of all is that the first half of Eight Melodies (Queen Mary’s Lullaby) is played in each Your Sanctuary after acquiring each particular piece of Eight Melodies (Sound Stone). It’s one further link between the two games.
The game's sound isn't a perfect port, though. Some tunes - notably, the song from the character naming screen and Eight Melodies (Sound Stone) - aren't rendered properly at all. Sound effects also frequently get garbled, and the limits of what can be done with the hardware's music capabilities are shown here. While still a solid soundtrack overall, it's not nearly what the console version was.
It’s important to grasp that, since Mother 2 is only a very subtle direct sequel to Mother. The obvious points would be to note how many of the alien forces are similar (Starmen and UFOs fill the enemy ranks – and they all developed weapons to cause colds for some odd reason). Despite taking place in Eagleland, it’s obvious that it’s just a stand-in for America (which was actually used in the original). But the most obvious clue is the game’s subtitle – Giygas can only strike back if his people failed once before. And that means that Giygas is coming to finish the job that Giygue started.
To warn American players, though, not every name is translated directly from the Japanese version, so you will have to relearn some of the areas. I don’t just mean the Dosei-san/Mr. Saturn quirk I mentioned before, or seeing Giygas was once Gyiyg. I mean noting that Threed was actually originally called Threek (which makes more sense, if you think about it). The market in Twoson was originally Nusutto park, not Burgin Park. And Poo’s kingdom was originally Ranma – undoubtedly renamed to prevent confusion with the anime series. It’s not too hard to pick up, but pay attention so you don’t miss some details.
Another major warning for American players is Mr. Saturn’s speech. Fans of the American version will recall the bizarre (and sometimes nigh-unreadable) font used for any Mr. Saturn’s speech in EarthBound. They used a similar font in Japanese, which can be nightmarish if you aren’t intimately familiar with your hiragana. It’s certainly possible to read it just fine (I managed to), but you may wish to write down what each Mr. Saturn says to be able to puzzle out what they’ve said.
Mother 1+2
The package itself has a fairly simplistic interface, perhaps too simplistic. You jump into whichever game you pick right off the bat, and you can’t switch games at all or go back to the title screen without resetting. I’d think that they would at least throw you back to the title screen if you chose to quit after saving the game in each case. While I can deal with the hard reset here and there, it shouldn’t be a necessity.
Another major problem is that the game lacks a Quick Save feature. It’s fine to lack that in a console game, but you don’t always have time or battery life on a portable system. You can’t just pause it and get back to it later in many cases. There are quite a few areas (particularly near the end) that are some ways from a place where you can call the main character’s dad (in each game, the one who records your progress). I really don’t think it’s much to ask for in a remake of a console RPG – make a save file that can be made at any time, but is erased once it’s loaded. They’re really necessary (unless you’re playing a game that can be saved at any time), and they make the experience much more enjoyable.
I’ll give Nintendo at least some credit for putting a Sleep Mode into the game. In either half of the package, holding the shoulder buttons and pressing Select turns off the screen but keeps the game paused. It’s useful for when you don’t want to drain too much battery power, but again not at all useful if you’re almost out and not near a save point. While I would have naturally preferred the Quick Save, Sleep Mode is still a useful addition.
Finally, I’d like to address playing through these two games as a native English speaker, which I imagine is the vast majority of my audience here. Now, I did need to know a bit of Japanese to get started on these games – don’t even bother if you’re at all shaky on your hiragana or katakana. With that said, though, this package might be the absolute perfect way for you to practice Japanese through video gaming. Almost all of the text is in kana (some stray kanji appear in Mother 2, but only briefly), and the Japanese used is modern and even tinted with slang. This is much better than, say, any fantasy RPG which features some Japanese that even all of my professors at college were surprised at (especially that anyone would use them in popular culture). If there were any game that I’d recommend for foreign language practice, this would be the one.
Beyond that, though, how much you’ll get out of Mother 1+2 will depend on how well you take the game’s approach. Yes, the plots of both games are basic, and the characters are well built but mostly static. However, the game’s thematic elements are powerful, and these are the focus of the game’s efforts. This focus of theme over action or story is really what makes the Mother games distinct, not their modern/sci-fi setting. Myself, I’m pulled right into them, partly because the themes speak to my own thoughts and experiences. If you want a game that really breaks through and tries to be unique in a tried-and-true framework, then Mother 1+2 is for you. I still hold out hope that this, like Fire Emblem, will ride the coattails of Super Smash Bros. Melee and finally get released here. Like anyone who’s ever visited Starmen.net, it’s what I’ve been hoping for the past decade.
