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NES (Games) Classic Games (Games)

NES Earthbound 'Mystery' Probed 27

Posted by simoniker from the slaying-dragons dept.
packratshow writes "Lost Levels has put up a story about the infamous NES prototype of classic RPG Earthbound. It includes an interview with Nintendo localization producer Phil Sandhop in which he verifies certain details about the alleged cartridges, sometimes considered to be fakes, and squashes most myths about its origin, explaining: 'EarthBound was not cancelled, it was just not produced... Sometimes these things sit for years before the studio feels its right. Nintendo had that luxury with games, especially NES games.'" We've previously mentioned the fanaticism of Earthbound fans.
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NES Earthbound 'Mystery' Probed More

NES Earthbound 'Mystery' Probed

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  • People thought it was fake? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Pluvius ( 734915 ) <pluvius3&gmail,com> on Monday August 02, 2004 @02:09AM (#9861584) Journal
    I suppose I can understand skepticism when it first came out (though it seems to me like translating Mother then acting like the translation was an official prototype is a pointless thing to do), but anyone who still thought that it was fake after the updated Mother was released for the GBA in Japan is an idiot.

    Rob
    • If you look for it you will find many questionable games that noone really knows where they came from.

      For example, Somario is a cross between sonic the hedgehog and mario and runs on Nes emulators.

      There are also fighting game rom hacks of TMNT TF that give you a Smash Brothers game. Plus there is a SuperMario world Hack complete with horizontal/vertical scrolling (supposedly I have never been able to get the rom to run).

      Also a Kings Quest V rom I never got my hands on. If you look there are plenty of c
      • "Also a Kings Quest V rom I never got my hands on."

        King's Quest V really was made for the NES. I recall seeing quite a good deal about it in my old Nintendo Powers (it's probably in a box somewhere). I also recall some Councilor's Corner questions about the game as well.

        IIRC, Somario is a pirate cart from everybody's favorite gray market: Hong Kong. And the others are simple ROM hacks by fans. While I have yet to beat EarthBound Zero, I've put enough hours into it to be able to say it feels like a
  • WHy is this game called "Mother" ? That name's just plain stupid.

    • Re:umm wtf? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by DLWormwood ( 154934 ) <wormwood@meCOMMA.com minus punct> on Monday August 02, 2004 @11:19AM (#9862702) Homepage
      That name's just plain stupid.

      To an English speaker, perhaps, but not to the Japanese. The name was probably meant to suggest our "Mother Earth," given the USian name. The popular market (In Japan!) is more comfortable with effeminate or "kawaii" names and images than the USian market.

      • Cute or not, "Mother" in the English language doenst have the same, i assume, intended effect.

    • Because it's the mother of all RPGs! Anybody who's played the game knows that!

      Hell, it deserves the title because of its kitchy music alone...
  • I liked the Sonic "X-Treme" article they have on this site as well. Sounds like Sega was a real mess back then. It's suprising the Dreamcast turned out to be a great system, but i guess not so surprising that it folded.
    • The Dreamcast had some nice internal politics as well. Sega Of America also designed a console, based on 3DFX chips rather than PowerVR. Sega chose the Japanese one, but this caused then to be sued by 3DFX, and pissed of EA (who owned shares in 3DFX). So Sega ended up paying 3DFX a load of money, and lost and chance of EA supporting them. Nice job!

      But the main reason the Dreamcast failed was that Sega basically ran out of money, mostly because of the failure of the Saturn had already lost them tons of mone

  • well it must have been floating around for a while because i had the rom for some reason. i quickly loaded it and took some screenshots in case you want to see what it looks like

    http://files.radixpub.com/earthbound/ [radixpub.com]

  • but what I really want to know about is when EarthBound / Mother 3 is coming out.
  • The basic story is this: Neo Demiforce (already well known in the romhacking scene) bought a prototype cartridge that was already mostly translated (the game WAS almost in stores when it was dropped), then finished it.

    In order for this to be fake, someone would have had to go to the trouble to almost completely translate the game (a mammoth task for the small groups that do this unofficially, as opposed to large localization teams that have direct access to the original work's source), dump the game onto a

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