I've heard so many great things about EARTHBOUND over the years. It's clearly about time that I tried the game!

I didn't realize until recently that Earthbound is the second instalment in the Mother series. So, I suppose I should start with Mother 1, right? How exactly would a North American gamer get his or her hands on Mother 1, Earthbound and Mother 3? I'm not interested in ROMs or anything illegal, obviously... so does this really mean that my only options are those exorbitantly priced Ebay auctions? I don't even a GBA! I do have a DS, though... and a 3DS (but it's unlikely Nintendo will make the Mother games available on the 3DS VC, right?)

Thoughts?

I don't think you can get Mother here at all. Unless it was released on GBA.

Earthbound is pretty standalone though, and people seem to be really down with that.

Earthbound is a blast you should play it. I played it when it came out and then two years ago played mother 3. http://mother3.fobby.net/ made a fan translation that was amazing and fangamer sells a guide for it that is totally worth buying even just to have a collectors item.

Mother 3 was only released in Japan and is not in English but there is a fan made patch to make the rom of it in English. Earthbound didn't sell well in America so it will be hard and expensive to get a copy. Mother 1 on the nes is the same as Earthbound on the snes, so you can forget about Mother 1. It doesn't matter what order you play them in since they are both diffrent stories.

Unfortunately, I don't see a way to escape this without expensive ebay auctions, if you refuse to use ROM's.

If you're not interested in the roms you're not going to be able to play them. Mother or Earthbound Zero was only released as a test cart for the NES here. It sold for a ridiculous sum.

Then you have Mother 2 or Earthbound. The prices of the SNES cartridge are between $80 and $100 as you mentioned.

Mother 3 was for GBA in Japan only. I believe there is a fan translated ROM, but that's the only way you'd be able to get that.

Mother 1 and 2 were re-released on GBA in Japan, but it didn't and never will come to America.

For some reason Nintendo can't release Earthbound/Mother 2 on the Virtual Console. It has something to do with copyright problems.

I looked it up for you and on ebay this is the cheapest I found:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rare-Super-Nintendo-EarthBound-Game-used-condition-tested-/280824097220?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item41626ba9c4#ht_500wt_1156

Unfortunately that already has 9 bids and it has 4 days left on it.

@Lotus_Flower: The sad truth is unless you can read Japanese your probably never going to play mother 1 and 3, and unless your willing to spend 100's of dollars on Earthbound for the Snes you'll probably never play that either. Also Earthbound gets no love in the states which may be due to the fact that many songs sample other famous tracks.

I think there are ways to modify the legal japanese cartridge of Mother 3 with the english patch but that would require you to do stuff I have no idea about.

Earthbound is my favorite game of all time, it was the first RPG I ever played and I've played it dozens of times. Mother 3 is probably even better than 2, the only reason I don't rank it as high is because I only played it once. I never got around to the first game. Interesting fact, it was once set to release in the US, but it got canceled because the SNES was about to be released, it was fully translated too, if you ever found a ROM in english that is an official translation.

Now I'm not saying piracy should be taken super lightly, but these games were never released here, if they won't sell it to you, download it but support the developers in other ways, buy merch or buy a copy if NoA ever decides to release them here.

Skip Earthbound Zero, as it's not very good. Earthbound is the best one, given all that personality just oozing out of it. Mother 3 is OK, but it doesn't know how to work emotions.

ROM that shit son.

I don't see why you would avoid ROMs but think Ebay is okay? Either way the publishers/developers will not receive any money for their work.

There's really no realistic way of playing Mother 1 and 3 in English without doing something in a legal grey area. But if you morally feel the need to pay the developers, you could possibly pay to have some new copies imported from Japan. Then you could download the translated ROMs. I wouldn't feel bad about doing that at all and I don't see why anyone should.

I think you should at least try out Mother 1, but I'm gonna warn you right now that you'll be grinding the shit out of it. But definitely play Earthbound from beginning to end if you don't mind spending about $140.

@Aldrenar47 said:

I don't see why you would avoid ROMs but think Ebay is okay? Either way the publishers/developers will not receive any money for their work.

There's really no realistic way of playing Mother 1 and 3 in English without doing something in a legal grey area. But if you morally feel the need to pay the developers, you could possibly pay to have some new copies imported from Japan. Then you could download the translated ROMs. I wouldn't feel bad about doing that at all and I don't see why anyone should.

Well, Ebay is a legal means to acquire these items. I know that both options do not bring any money to the publishers/developers, unfortunately.

@Video_Game_King said:

Skip Earthbound Zero, as it's not very good. Earthbound is the best one, given all that personality just oozing out of it. Mother 3 is OK, but it doesn't know how to work emotions.

look at how wrong you are, that final battle in mother 3 made me cry pretty damn hard

@Animasta:

And then the ending couldn't commit to itself.

Skip Mother 1, buy Earthbound (if you must, its absurdly expensive and benefits greatly from a turbo button) and use the fan translation on a ROM of Mother 3.

Earthbound is a great game. I cannot tell you anything else.

I've browsed other forums where users are saying skipping Mother 1 is BLASPHEMOUS.

@Lotus_Flower said:

I've browsed other forums where users are saying skipping Mother 1 is BLASPHEMOUS.

Fuck those guys. It's not even like the game gives you important story elements (IE you can understand Earthbound on its own).

@Lotus_Flower said:

I've browsed other forums where users are saying skipping Mother 1 is BLASPHEMOUS.

Y'know, it kind of is, if you're a huge, crazy dumb fanboy of the series like I am.

But if you're looking to get into the series, then no, I'd say Mother 1 doesn't hold up very well and probably isn't very engaging to most people. Just start with Eartbound or with Mother 3, and if you end up as a crazy fanboy, then go back to M1.

It's e-bay or ROM, baby.

Thankfully I actually own a copy of Earthbound for the SNES that I got when it launched, so none of that paying 200-300$ shit for me!

But really, the only way to play Mother 3 is to download the ROM, use the fan translation, and buy a Japanese copy of the game. If you cannot get your hands on a Japanese copy, you can still support the series by buying soundtracks or the like instead. I know you may want to ride some moral high horse here about not breaking the law and pirating these games, but, truthfully, Nintendo is likely to never release any of these games state-side.

Earthbound has been, if not still is, the most requested game to be put on the virtual console, and has been or was that way for months, if not for more than a year. It's just simply not going to happen. So you can either pay some dude you don't know and that has no ties to Nintendo or the Mother Teams an absurd amount of money for a game that you're not even sure you'll like, or, you can ROM the games, see if they're worth the money to you or not, and then make decisions from there. But I think spending hundreds of dollars on a game you're not even sure that you're going to like or not, is insane. You are legally obtaining a copy of the game, but, honestly, Nintendo couldn't care less. Nintendo even knew that people were doing a fan translation of Mother 3 and did nothing at all to stop it or to shut it down after it was complete despite the fact that the only way to use it is with a ROM copy of the Japanese game.

So I guess it's your choice. Moral high horse and only play Earhbound if you're willing to fork over some serious cash, or step down to reality and play at least two of them on ROMs.

If you're gonna play Mother 1/Earthbound Zero, get the ROM with the "Easy Mode" patch. Double money & EXP works just enough to eliminate all the grinding ya need to do.

But yeah, you should probably start with Mother 2/Earthbound. It's a good game.

Dude, if there's one series to not feel bad about playing 'illegally,' it's this one. This is no chance in hell of any of these games ever being released outside Japan. Use google and emulate that shit, they are amazing games that deserve to be played. Well the original Mother hasn't aged well but there's a translation of the GBA Mother 1+2 which is less punishingly old school hard.

The older the game, the grayer the area of piracy. Just ROM it already. It won't kill you. Play it with a USB enabled SNES controller and you'll forget it's on a PC.

No replies since the move, huh? That sucks.

No replies since the movement of this thread to a dead board.