Encyclopedia Mother

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The cover of the 1989 release.

Encyclopedia Mother (Japanese: エンサイクロペディア・マザー, stylized as ENCYCLOPEDIA ＭＯＴＨＥＲ) is a Japanese-exclusive supplementary guide for EarthBound Beginnings, roughly serving a similar purpose to the EarthBound Player's Guide. It contains expanded backstories for the game's events, exclusive character biographies for Ninten, Ana, Lloyd, and Teddy, alongside a player's guide with information on the game's locations, a list of items and PSI moves, a list of enemies, and developer interviews. Two versions of the book exist, with one being released in 1989 for the original launch of EarthBound Beginnings and the other in 2003 for the launch of Mother 1+2. Both versions are 166 pages long.

Content Summary

(Write detailed synopsis on the book's contents. this section may be removed if it is not needed.)

Gallery

Encyclopedia Mother (1989)
The Jacket cover for the book.	The actual cover for the book, revealed after the red jacket is removed.	File:Mothersday Paper.jpeg A Mother's Day newspaper inset.
File:Road Map.jpeg The back of the newspaper inset, showing a full-scale map of the EarthBound Beginnings world, styled after the classic Rand-McNally road-trip maps.	Ninten's character file page. There are character files for the other three protagonists, as well.	These pages covers Ninten's house, with the exterior of the building shown with a photograph of a real-life house.
These pages cover Mother's Day, expanding its backstory while also laying the section out like a mock travel brochure. The right page provides a picture of an old man with a cowboy hat, who the book depicts as the Mother's Day mayor.	These pages lay out the map for Mother's Day in the same mock travel brochure style, while also providing supplementary information regarding the town. Each location in the book is laid out similarly to this set of pages and last two sets of pages before.	These pages cover Queen Mary's Castle. Notice that the picture used for the exterior of the castle is the Taj Mahal.
These pages cover Snowman. Similarly to the Taj Mahal picture, the photograph used in the bottom of the left page to reference Snowman's location is actually a state map for the real-world U.S. state of Alaska.	The page on the right displays English lyrics for the Eight Melodies, as well as alternative lyrics for the song to the right of the first lyric set.	These pages list items in the game that are either purchasable or non-purchasable. The top right section of the page on the right details an artist profile.
The page on the left shows all of the vehicles you can ride in the game with papier-mâché models, while the page on the right shows the best way to use your items efficiently.	This section details every PSI move you can use to attack your foes in the game.	This section covers multiple interviews with the cast and team of EarthBound Beginnings, as well as interviewing the makers of the Japanese Mother Template:Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= vihaxNoSJ0.
These pages reveal fighting tactics for the game, as well as detailing a list of some enemies and their stats on the right page.	This section lists every single enemy in the game and their respective stats. Every enemy that is not represented by their papier-mâché model is represented by their in-game sprite.	The end of the section. The bottom right corner of the right page is an artist profile, in which the artist Tottori is revealed to have spent ten months creating every papier-mâché figure for the book. The book uses a Wally model for the profile picture instead of his face (since Tottori is shy), but according to the artist, the model was "pretty accurate" for being a facial stand-in, anyways...

Trivia

• This book was published by Ape Inc., the same company who assisted the development team for EarthBound Beginnings towards the end of the game's production.
• This book is notable for using real-life photographs of places, people, and objects and equating them to the fictional Mother universe. It is also notable for providing expanded backstories, detailed character information, and a list of the character's favorite things for each of the four main protagonists.
• This book is one of the only official Mother sources from the game's release to refer to the main character by the name of Ninten.
• It is unknown if this would have been published in the U.S. later on if the game's English localization, Earth Bound, did manage to be released in the fall of 1991 like originally intended.
• In the book, each location is laid out and detailed like a mock travel brochure. This could have inspired the English localization team behind EarthBound when they were writing the Player's Guide for the game, as the guide/manual follows a similar framework.
• Most of the book is Japanese only, but some pages such as the opening newspaper segment are completely in English, as well as the lyrics for the Mother songs laid out in various parts of the book.

References

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