User:NintenBOUND/EarthBound fan community

For Wikipedia's article about the subject, see EarthBound Fandom.

The main page for EarthBound.Net/Starmen.Net, which lasted from 1997-2005 before the site was moved.

The EarthBound fan community consists of the fanbase surrounding the EarthBound/Mother franchise created by Shigesato Itoi and produced by Nintendo, Ape Inc., HAL Laboratory, and Brownie Brown, specifically its main three titles; EarthBound Beginnings/Mother, EarthBound/Mother 2, and the Japanese-exclusive Mother 3. The franchises's fanbase began in the late 90s, as multiple fan websites started appearing soon after the release of EarthBound in North America in 1995, the most prominent one being Starmen.Net (originally EarthBound.Net) in 1997. The fanbase only grew stronger upon Ness, the protagonist of EarthBound, receiving representation by being a fighter in the popular Nintendo 64 fighting title Super Smash Bros. in 1999 (with the main protagonist of Mother 3, Lucas, becoming a fighter in Super Smash Bros. Brawl in 2008), with multiple petitions and campaigns being organized by Starmen.Net and other fan sites for the release of the first game on the Game Boy Color in 1998 , the release of EarthBound 64 in the U.S. before the game's August 2000 cancellation , among other forms of representation and awareness by Nintendo since the fanbase's germination. Despite Nintendo showing a seemingly cavalier and nonchalant attitude towards the franchise and its fanbase, the EarthBound fan community has still advocated the series' growing awareness and attention, in particular the official english localization of Mother 3 which has persisted to this day; now-defunct gaming website 1UP.com wrote that "no other game in the history of time garnered such a rabid demand for translation". In response to Nintendo's unwillingness to create the desired localization, despite EarthBound fans launching a massive campaign named EB Siege championing the creation of the localization (including a 270-page tome, the EarthBound Anthology), a Starmen.Net team headed by Clyde "Tomato" Mandelin localized the game in english themselves over a two-year period, releasing the fan translation in August of 2008-which garnered over 100,000 downloads within its first week. While the fan community's efforts have done little to raise interest of the series within Nintendo, the fanbase's passion and innumerable petitions and campaigns to raise the awareness and overall interest in the EarthBound franchise have been noted by Nintendo, with Mario and Zelda series creator Shigeru Miyamoto describing EarthBound's fanbase as being "really solid" after the "Mother 3 petition" (a campaign for Nintendo to create Mother 3) received 30,000 American signatures alone in 2003.

Although Nintendo has not responded to the EarthBound fanbase in a tone other than a formal one, it has shown awareness towards the fanbases' dedication and passion towards the EarthBound franchise, with the official trailer for the 2022 release of EarthBound Beginnings and EarthBound on the Nintendo Switch Online service retaining the same unique and wacky spirit that EarthBound shares, and Nintendo deciding to release EarthBound on the Wii U's Virtual Console service in 2013 based on the fan community's massive outcry on sites like Nintendo's Miiverse service. The EarthBound fan community has been called one of the most "passionate" and "active" fanbases in the gaming industry by gaming website Polygon , with 1UP.com commenting that no game was as poised to have a cult following as EarthBound. While technology news website The Verge cited the two-year fan translation of Mother 3 as proof of the fanbase's dedication, gaming website IGN's Lucas M. Thomas wrote in 2006 that EarthBound's "persistent", "ambitious", and "religiously dedicated collective of hardcore fans" would be among the first groups to influence Nintendo's decision-making through their purchasing power on the Virtual Console service. Because of the series being strongly advocated by the fan community for further series releases and representation in other Nintendo media (especially the official English localization of the third title in the series), the EarthBound series has grown from being a niche cult franchise to a well-known and broadly-recognized series in the Nintendo stable of franchises by the public, with even celebrities and Nintendo themselves acknowledging the franchise and the demand for the english release of Mother 3. Although Nintendo has not done so due to the financial effort and time required to do so, the fanbase has still clamored for it to this day, making the EarthBound/Mother franchise the prime example of a cult classic series in the video game world. While many were impressed with the amount of passion-directed EarthBound "fan art, videos, and tributes on fan sites like EarthBound Central or Starmen.net", with gaming website Wired describing it as "mountainous", others were more impressed with the dedication and passion of the EarthBound fan community itself, with British game journalism website Eurogamer considering EarthBound a "sacred cow among gaming's cognoscenti" in their 2014 Mother 3 review.

Websites

Mother Forever

The logo for Mother Forever.

Games

This article or section contains non-canon information.

For more information about EarthBound Fan Games, see here.

Mother: Cognitive Dissonance

The title screen for Cognitive Dissonance.

Mother: Cognitive Dissonance (also shortened as Mother: CogDis, M:CD, CogDis, or by its original name, Cognitive Dissonance: Between Two Times) is a fan-made interquel role-playing video game that is set between the events of EarthBound Beginnings and EarthBound. The story, which has a similar chapter-based format that Mother 3 possesses, focuses on a ragtag group of aliens named the Applechasers as they aim to protect the Apple of Enlightenment from the evil Giygas' intentions for it. The group consists of a blue Mook outcast named Alinivar, who is their leader; a gun-slinging Mr. Saturn named Colonel Saturn; a renegade Starman named Larice; their "mentor", Niiue, who is the same species as Giygas; A UFO-piloting insect named Zarbol; and the group's female mentor, Cerue, who belongs to the same species as Niiue and Giygas, the Geeg. The game has five different endings (with the first version of the game only having two endings in total), with the good ending resulting in Giygas reverting to a calmer and merciful state upon defeating him, who then reverses all the damage he has caused to the universe; another ending has the Applechasers fail in their mission, setting the events of EarthBound into motion. The game was primarily developed by "Handish2000" (otherwise known as "otherhand"), who drew inspiration from the style, feel, and themes of the first two Mother titles; the game's humor was also partly influenced by Starmen.Net's Radio PSI, which otherhand often listened to during CogDis's development. otherhand also drew from Mother 3 during CogDis's development, as the two games were incidentally in simultaneous development. While CogDis's development was troubled (with otherhand sometimes having to create the game by himself due to a prone-to-evaporating team), otherhand managed to eventually complete the game, with the second version of the game having a much more enthusiastic, contributing, and encouraging development team than the first team (which helped alleviate a moment mid-way through the second version's development where otherhand was feeling discouraged about the project as a whole). The first version (1.0) was released in 2009, with the graphics being comparatively under-polished and shorter than the later version of the game: an update (1.3) was released later on, with a second version (2.0) releasing in 2014, which polished up the sprite-work and broadened the overall scope of the story. A third version (3.0) is currently in development, with updates being posted to the team's Discord account (CogDiscord). Since its initial release, the game has become one of the most beloved and largest-in-scope fan games in the EarthBound fan community, with many accepting the game into the official Mother/EarthBound timeline as a legitimate title in the series despite its fan-made nature.

Mother 4/Oddity

The reveal artwork for the rebrand of Mother 4 to Oddity, featuring the main characters.

Mother 4/Oddity is a cancelled fan-made role-playing video game that was set to be the spiritual and canonical prequel to the Mother franchise, taking place before the first game in the series. The game is set in the 1970s and follows a boy named Travis as he investigates the strange happenings surrounding him and his hometown along with

EarthBound 64 Experience

EarthBound 64 Experience (formerly EarthBound 64 Recreation) is a fan-made role-playing game made by Team Pollysoft that aims to recreate EarthBound 64 as it would have been like if it had been released like originally planned. The project's contents are based off of early screenshots, videos, images, Space World videos and photos, interviews with the crew behind EarthBound 64, speculation, and unused sprites from the code of the Game Boy Advance version of Mother 3. While the game has been in development since 2021, it has been progressing at a steady rate since then, with multiple trailers, screenshots, and messages about the project being released on sites like YouTube, Twitter, Discord, and the the project's YouTube channel, with a playable demo of the project even releasing in 2022; it contained a recreation of the Nintendo 64 version of Tazmily Village, as well as a depiction of an early Sunshine Forest and the Tazmily Crossroads. Multiple areas and scenes have been made since then, including Death Desert, a Space World-exclusive Snake Dungeon, and Boney dragging Duster to a clifftop during a rainy night. Recreations of every soundtrack within the Game Boy Advance version of Mother 3 with the Nintendo 64 sound-font have also been released on the project's separate YouTube channel, EB64 music, while continuous updates about the project have been posted to the project's Twitter, Discord, and YouTube accounts, with the game even being featured on gaming channels like Hard4Games.

ROM Hacks

For more information about EarthBound ROM Hacks, see here.

EarthBound Easy Patch

The EarthBound Easy Patch is a separately-downloadable patch for EarthBound Beginnings created by Clyde "Tomato" Mandelin, which increases the amount of money and EXP points gained after every battle by a factor of two, removing long periods of grinding from the gameplay experience. The Earth Bound title screen is also graphically altered to display the word "Easy" underneath the logo as part of the patch. Tomato has stated that the patch has not seen any bug reports since its release, and that the patch has made the game "pretty much a breeze". Despite some players reporting to Mandelin that the patch actually made the game "too easy", it is one of the most popular and well-known patches within the EarthBound fan community.

Mother: 25th Anniversary Edition

A comparison of the South Cemetery between the original Famicom/NES Mother and the Mother: 25th Anniversary Edition ROM Hack.

Mother: 25th Anniversary Edition is a fan-made ROM Hack which aims to rebuild the sprites, gameplay mechanics, difficulty, and overall look of the game from the ground up to appeal to newer fans of the EarthBound franchise and experienced players alike who are opposed to playing the Famicom/NES original. Several modifications were made to the gameplay: the enemy-encounter rate was modified to happen at a more inconsistent rate than the original; the difficulty has been toned down in places where it was criticized in the original, such as Mt. Itoi; the amount of money and EXP gained from each battle has been increased to reduce unnecessary amounts of grinding and repeated battles; and the rate at which new party members level up, as well as their respective levels at which you first encounter them, have been significantly increased to reduce large amounts of level-building grinding and low-level fainting during battles. The sprite-work has been modified, also; areas have been tweaked to reduce any chances of the player getting lost; areas in the over-world have been artistically spruced up to minimize repetitiveness and bleakness; large, difficult areas were made smaller, and confusing areas such as Duncan's Factory were greatly simplified to avoid confusion and frustration; previously inaccessible areas were opened to reduce the amount of backtracking necessary to progress through the game; smaller, less difficult areas were extended to increase their level of challenge; taking from Tomato's Mother 1+2 translation, which was adapted for the NES, dialogue was altered to reference the other games in the Mother series, improve clarity, and time shortened overall; and every sprite was completely reworked to look cleaner, less rough, more colorful (with a stylistic touch), and to bear resemblance to the Japanese Mother paper clay models produced for the game's release. In particular, the enemy sprites were altered: "goofy" enemies were altered to look "goofier", while "creepy" enemies were made even "creepier". Battle dialogue was also adjusted, causing battles to progress twice as fast as the original game.

EarthBound: The Halloween Hack

EarthBound: The Halloween Hack is a fan-made ROM Hack of EarthBound that was made by Toby Fox, who would go on to create and produce the critically praised and acclaimed role-playing Undertale game series. The story

Merchandise

For information regarding series creator Shigesato Itoi’s company Hobonichi, which often sells Mother-related merchandise, see here.

Books

EarthBound Anthology

The EarthBound Anthology is a fan-made 268-page, fully illustrated book detailing the history of the EarthBound franchise as well as the series' fanbase's dedication, passion, and love towards the EarthBound series, as well as 200+ pages of fan-art. Made as part of the 2007 EB Siege campaign, the book, along with four DVDs and CDs containing fan music, media, videos, art, and performances, was sent to Nintendo's offices in order to convince them to release a fully-translated, localized english version of Mother 3 in North America and other regions. It was also meant to spread awareness of the franchise to Nintendo and to the world in general, with Destructoid's article describing the goal of the EB Siege campaign as "to extend the reach of the community out towards would-be allies to the cause, media, developers, and Nintendo itself and communicate their message: that this is a series, beyond all others in Nintendo’s catalog, that should not be swept aside."

EarthBound Confidential

A promotional card produced by Lindblom's company, Carried Away Games, which advertises the "upcoming" Kickstarter campaign for EarthBound Confidential.

EarthBound Confidential is a cancelled book detailing the localization process of EarthBound that was set to be written in 2013 by the game's former localization head, Marcus Lindblom. After being welcomed into the EarthBound fan community in 2013, and upon seeing the dedication and perseverance of the EarthBound fan community years after the game's english release in 1995, and the fanbase's interest upon Lindblom writing a book on his time localizing EarthBound, Lindblom decided to write the book as something to give to the fans, as he felt that he "owed them something" and that they "deserved to hear the full story" behind the localization. Planned to be funded by the crowdfunding website Kickstarter and by Lindblom himself, Marcus reached out to Nintendo before beginning the writing process to request permission to write the book. While he was not expressly told otherwise, he was "gently reminded" that he had signed a non-disclosure agreement when joining the company, so as a result, Lindblom indefinitely shelved plans for the book with no plans for a future release. While the EarthBound fan community expressed disappointment at the book's cancellation, the general consensus and overall speculation of Nintendo's line of reasoning was that as a Japanese company, Nintendo did not want the internal processes of their companies to be revealed to the general public and possibly their rivals/competitors; Polygon's article described the matter as the case possibly being just simply "Nintendo being Nintendo", which means no one "gets to see how the sausages are made." Despite the book's cancellation, Lindblom has continued to discuss parts of the localization process with the fans, as he feels that the EarthBound fan community is "owed some tidbits of information" and that he "will continue to do that and talk about it."

Documentaries

Mother to Earth: The Untold Story of Earth Bound

Mother to Earth: The Untold Story of Earth Bound is a 2019 non-fiction American documentary produced by 54&0 Productions that covers the history of the cancelled english localization of the first Mother title, from the localization transformation of the game from "Mother" to "Earth Bound" in 1990, to the unreleased cartridges being circulated around the internet and one cartridge in particular being dumped online in 1998 by Neo Demiforce, to the game's eventual 2015 release on the Wii U Virtual Console as "EarthBound Beginnings". The story of the documentary is an interview-based one, where documentary producers Evan Butler and Josh Bone-Christian and their crew journey across the U.S. (and even to Japan) to interview key participants in the documentary's story, including: Phil Sandhop, the head of the Earth Bound localization team in 1990; Matt Alderman, one of the game play counselors at Nintendo who played the translation in 1990; Greg Marioti, a game collector who held a copy of the Earth Bound translation before a mysterious seller named "Kenny Brooks" purchased it from him; Steve Demeter, the former head of Neo Demiforce, which temporarily loaned the copy from "Kenny Brooks" and dumped it in 1998 before returning it to him; the current owner of that cart, Andrew DeRouin; Joey ("Roo") DeSena, a game collector who owns a separate Earth Bound cartridge; Koala, a Mother collector centered in Japan, who owns another separate Earth Bound cartridge; and even Keiichi Suzuki, the main composer for the original Mother title. The documentary's Twitter account details updates regarding Mother fan conventions, fan-art, Mother to Earth showing events, and details regarding the producers/crew's time in the EarthBound fan community. The documentary's official website also sells the film on DVD and Blu-Ray, along with exclusive fan-made merchandise centered around the documentary, which can be found here. The documentary is also available online at Vimeo.

EarthBound, USA

The EarthBound USA documentary's official logo, which can be found on the project's official Twitter account.

EarthBound USA is an upcoming non-fiction documentary that covers the history and documentation of the EarthBound/Mother franchise and its fanbase since the first game's release in 1989. Planned to be released on November 27th, 2023, the documentary has been a decade in the making, with terabytes of footage being filmed over the course of ten years and with editing taking a abnormal amount of time in comparison to a standard documentary film. The overall story covers two American teenagers as they bond over EarthBound in the late 90s over a fan website. Multiple Kickstarter projects have included the documentary in the past, but have been stagnant for a period of years; it is unknown whether the Kickstarter projects will finally be released to its backers, since the documentary seems to be releasing later this year. Updates on the documentary (and its trailer) are regularly posted on the project's Twitter account, which can be found here: https://twitter.com/EarthBoundUSA