EarthBound / MOTHER series

…I miss you…

In EarthBound, Shigesato Itoi captures for all time what it feels like to be young and save the world. 

There are several versions of this course on the MOTHER / EarthBound games, some completed, some in progress–just as there are many versions of these games and the pieces that make them up. Let us know what you think, OK desu ka?

 

Bookwarm Games

An experiment in reading EarthBound on youtube and wherever you listen to podcasts; written up as illustrated essays on The Pixels 

3rdStrongest MOTHER and MOTHER 3 Discussions

Hosted on youtube and on the podcast archives; M3 Review

Middle-earth to EarthBound

Hosted by Signum Academy on Twitch, slowly converting over to youtube; streaming first and third Mondays at 7:30 Eastern

• EarthBound Beginnings (MOTHER)
  • Intro
• • Dragon Quest and MOTHER
• • First Melodies
  • Mid-game
  • Conclusion
• EarthBound (MOTHER 2)
  • Opening – Giant Step
  • Twoson – Paula
  • Threed – Jeff in the Sky Runner
  • Saturn Valley – Belch Factory
  • Coffee Break – Fourside

Suggested Reading:

“What EarthBound means to me,” by Itoi

• Itoi and Haruki Murakami, Let’s Meet in a Dream (about)
• other books
• 1UP feature on Itoi, by Nadia Oxford
• Interviews in Japan Times, Nintendo Dream, and more collected at EarthBound Central (though they may need run through the wayback machine, too)

Legends of Localization: EarthBound, and MOTHER 3 Fan Translation, by Clyde Mandelin

starmen.net – including scripts for EarthBound, EB Beginnings, and MOTHER 3 (though if you can read Japanese and can afford to buy them, the official scripts look much nicer)

Translations of the official novelizations, by Saori Kumi, tr. Nyaasu

Official EarthBound Player’s Guide and As-good-as-official MOTHER 3 Handbook. If only there were an extant Great-Grandfather’s Diary guide for EarthBound Beginnings. Translating the MOTHER instruction booklet is about the best we can do for now.

“The MOTHER manifesto,” by Pitchfork

“The Literature of the Moment,” on EarthBound, and “Billy HP 108,” on MOTHER 3, by Tim Rogers (a favorite also of the Critical Distance Compilation)

EarthBound, by Ken Baumann (review)

“MOTHER 3, a Literary Video Game,” by Isaac Yuen

“A Comprehensive Theory of EarthBound” essay series, by Max Gorynski / With a terrible fate

My piece, in progress, on asking questions in and with the series. In shorter form at the-pixels

“Press Start: Narrative Integration in 16-Bit Video Game Music” (MA Thesis focusing on EarthBound and Chrono Trigger music) and “‘This Game Stinks’: Musical Parody and Nostalgia in EarthBound,”(chapter in Nostalgia and Video Game Music) by Justin Sextro

“Mother/EarthBound Zero and the Power of the Naïve Aesthetic: No Crying Until the Ending,” (chapter in Music in the Role-Playing Game) by Tim Summers

• which cites an article in comic form by Keiichi Tanaka: “A Tapestry Woven from the Words of Shigesato Itoi and the ingenuity of Satoru Iwata”
• and notes that the “Eight Melodies” theme has been included in Japanese elementary school music textbooks for decades. Here are Itoi, Suzuki, and Tanaka in conversation about it: “MOTHER’s music was demonic” 😮