EarthBound 64: Difference between revisions

Though the storyline of the game is, for the most part, the same as the Game Boy Advance release, several things were changed from the planned Nintendo 64 game. For one, EarthBound 64 was intended to be placed some ten years after ''EarthBound'', in 200X, rather than the unstated amount of time the final game occurs after its prequel. The length of the game's story, in time, also was altered, with EarthBound 64 having 12 chapters spread over the course of ten years, each with their own main character, unlike the final game, which only has eight chapters spread over the course of three years. The overall tone of the story was intended to be darker than the final product was. Particularly the final boss was intended to include no dialogue and to be more of a terrifying experience.   

EarthBound 64 was planned not long after ''[[EarthBound]]'' itself was nearing release, with an in-game reference to the development team planning ''Mother 3'' in Japan, localized as them planning ''EarthBound 2'' in the English release. The initial planning stages were for a Super NES release, using pre-rendered graphics akin to Donkey Kong Country.<ref>https://twitter.com/reidman/status/1188522984132116480?s=19</ref> But with the system quickly on its way to being replaced by the Nintendo 64, development shifted to the Nintendo 64DD instead in late 1995. When the add-on kept getting delayed, and its future as a commercial success began to be uncertain, the game was changed to a cartridge release in late 1998, with a planned use of the same size cartridge which contained ''[[zeldapedia:The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time|The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time]]'' and utilization of the Rumble Pak add-on for the Nintendo 64 controller.<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20010221002017/http://www.ant.com/n64/previews/earthbound/earthbound.html</ref> Due to the difficulty of development, with the 3D aspect of the game being far more complex than the 2D sprite-based past games, the team, including Shigesato Itoi, were discouraged from making a fourth game in the Mother series. Other aspects of development were shortchanged as well, as Iwata stated in an interview regarding the development of ''Mother 3'' for Nintendo 64, "any normal project has a trial period where you make a sample product and get the green light based on the response. But ''MOTHER 3'' was special in that we skipped the trial period and went straight to game production. Without that trial period, all we had was our experience and achievements from making MOTHER 2, without the benefit of starting off with a team of people who worked on ''MOTHER 2''". These shortcuts were primarily due to financial concerns. Development also was impacted by the financial situation at HAL Laboratories, and their lack of ability to afford to train talent". To relieve this problem, the team that worked on ''Pokémon Stadium'' was brought on to help with 3D elements.

Initially, the development team was unskilled at 3D graphics, as they had only programmed 2D sprite-based games in the past; however, over time, the team's 3D programming steadily improved, with the team additionally studying physics books in order to accurately program the character's movements in a realistic manner, and development only progressed further when [[Pokémon Stadium]]'s team was brought over to assist development.

A trailer and playable demo were featured at [[wikipedia:Nintendo Space World|Nintendo Space World]] 1999, with a projected release date of March 22, 2000. However, on August 21, 2000, Shigesato Itoi announced that ''EarthBound 64'' was cancelled.<ref>https://www.1101.com/nintendo/nin13/nin13_1.htm</ref> Soon after, Itoi published a roundtable discussion, during which Itoi, Iwata, and Miyamoto discussed EarthBound 64's development, history, and its cancellation. Some time after the cancellation, Itoi uploaded screenshots and music from the game to his website.

In an interview, [[Satoru Iwata]] estimated the game was about 30% complete, while [[Shigeru Miyamoto]] believed it was approximately 60% complete from a programming perspective. Apparently a complete script was produced but not perfected. Even though EarthBound 64's development was steadily progressing, it apparently went astray when Iwata was unable to be on sight to act as a director/"game-play manager". The game's continued development also ran the risk of taking away resources from the then-in-development Nintendo GameCube. In the roundtable discussion, Iwata noted that if they had created what was essential and skipped the polishing, that the game could have been completed in a short amount of time. He also stated that the team had drastically reduced their original vision for the game halfway through development; if the team had reduced their version earlier (I.e. [possibly] switching to the Nintendo 64 cartridge format earlier than they did), then the game might have been completed and released in 2000: otherwise, the game was going to take needed resources away from the GameCube.