MOTHER/EarthBound series

Well, Mother 3 certainly isn't easy. Taking the "They'll just baby you through the first dungeon..." approach got Flint incinerated.

Actually, just going over the characters section to get the Canon Name for each family member alarmed me at how much of each was in spoiler text. I might have to avoid the wiki pages and this thread until I complete my run through.

I remember one of the first hand-drawn webcomics I ever read was a recreation of Earthbound... Although the gender of Ness and his sister where reversed.

edited 8th Oct '12 11:51:00 AM by ShirowShirow

There's a "don't care" option that gives you 7 names to choose from. They're all the same. So just select that to get their canon names.

Well I already checked and got Lucas (Knew that one before), Claus, Flint, Boney and... Hinawa. And my favorite food is Snitchel. Because Snitchel is @$%&ing awesome.

Fun fact, the fan translation was going to turn Hinawa into Amber (Flint and Amber, get it? Hinawa's apparently some sort of gun in Japan. So a different theme there.), so her name wouldn't be like scary Japanese. Then Brawl came out, and one of the trophies (For the love of god, if you have that game, DON'T LOOK AT THE TROPHIES!) called her Hinawa, so they kept it for consistency.

edited 8th Oct '12 12:20:51 PM by Marioguy128

I think that if Brawl was delayed a bit more, or the fan translation came out faster, they would have called her Amber. Brawl's trophies do have quite a bit of errors, especially when Melee's trophies didn't had very few errors.

I just discovered that MOTHER 1 (never played it, don't come down on me) had a Dance of Romance scene between Ninten and Ana, and it's really sweet. How much time passed between it and FFVIII, which had something similar?

To respond to the first page: Mother 1/Earthbound Zero is generally considered difficult because of its extremely large maps with little direction, and its very high encounter rate. I haven't tried it yet myself, but I've played some games with some pretty abysmal encounter rates (I'm looking at you, DS Digimon World games), so I might be able to take it.

Mother 3 is a rare game where I was spoiled on most of it ahead of time, and yet it still manages to get me deep. The ending of the prologue choked me up like nobody's business. Though I miraculously went without Chapter 6 being spoiled for me...

One thing I only recently noticed was the fact that Flint and Lighter being friends has another subtle little joke, in that both of their namesakes can start fires. The Lighter-Fuel relationship in that sense is more evident, of course, but I only picked this one up while I'm doing a challenge screenshot run of the game for the Nuzlocke forums. My ruleset amounts to the following:

-The only actions I can take in battle are to attack and to use healing items (no running or using in-battle PSI, abilities or items like bombs and the Shield Snatcher). Healing PSI outside battle is fine, however, and I do have to make a necessary exception for the Mecha-Drago.
-No contributing to the economy; once the monetary system is introduced, buying and selling stuff is prohibited
-No using hotsprings, Instant Revitalising Machines or any other conscious method of instant full recovery.

I'm calling it Busking Mode, and entitled the thread 'Dancing for my Supper' (since I have to rely that much more on using the Rhythm Battle combos, and am basically considering all the PCs to be homeless).

edited 9th Oct '12 3:22:49 AM by TheHeroHartmut

Luckily, I know of some hacks that lower the unfair difficulty of MOTHER 1, both for the original NES version, and for the GBA re-release.

Every time I think on Mother 1, and how Pippi's stat growth exceeds that of even Teddy, I always imagine a picture of an INCREDIBLY buff Pippi. Too bad she's a temporary party member.

They need to officially remake MOTHER 1 if anything, since that game needs several improvements, and I don't think that one has that much legal issues tying it down.

I know a number of fan-hacks working towards that goal. I need to officially "experience" that game in some fashion still...

Didn't Clyde "Tomato" Mandelin cancel that hack already?

I'm pretty sure the hack I'm thinking of isn't Tomato's. Lemme check... yep, it's being done by someone called H.S.: Example, with more links below.

I heard that hack isn't finished. Also, the enemies are visible on the overworld because it uses Earth Bound's engine, right?

It isn't finished; hence why I said "working towards that goal," instead of something like "has reached that goal." But it's making interesting progress, and there's a few walkthtough-of-the-maps videos up.

And yes, it does use EB's engines. One of the videos (that shows off the Big Bag item) shows an overworld enemy encounter.

Mother, tell your children not to walk my way....

Anyway, it's a cool series, but Japan really needs to make it more accesable to western audiances. Lucas debuted in Smash Bros, you know.

Considering the legal hurdles they would have to jump through to localize Mother 1 and 3, I'm not sure it would be worth it.

I'm aware of a few legal hurdles for MOTHER 3, but what legal issues are there for the first game?

Jonny B Goodie for one. The Hippie battle music.

Couldn't they just replace a few tracks? It's not a perfect solution, but it's better than missing out on 2/3 of the series wholesale like what's happened so far...

I'm enjoying my current playthrough of 3 so far BTW. Not that I've gotten very far... Just named Duster. Good thing about that "Don't care" option or I'd have to keep checking the wiki for the names XD reminds me of when I was a kid and kept naming characters after friends and family. That tended to get awkward when the inevitable romance starting sprouting :/

That's what I ment. Why Japan had to put in all that copyrighted stuff is unknown to me. Mother 4 shouldn't do it.

Because some of Mother's appeal is in the references.

There's not gonna BE a Mother 4. Itoi said he was done with the series.

@Shirow: It's more than just music. This explains it better than I could.

edited 10th Oct '12 8:31:00 PM by Marioguy128

Oh lovely.

Soon you won't be able to walk out of your own door without stepping into court.

Also I thought there was a Mother 4... Just made by the fans. :P I suppose that brings up a whole different host of legal issues though, hmmm?

edited 10th Oct '12 8:47:54 PM by ShirowShirow