Difference between revisions of "EarthBound Beginnings"

== Release ==

Mother was originally released in Japan for the [[Famicom]] on July 27th, 1989.

The game was officially translated into English by Nintendo of America in 1990 and slated for a Fall 1991 release under the new title of '''Earth Bound''', but marketing delays prevented the game from being released. The fan group Neo Demiforce, who had been working on their own translation of the game at the time, discovered that a prototype cartridge had been sold to Kenny Brooks, a game collector, and made a deal with him to release a ROM of the game to the public in 1998. The ROM was released with a patch that featured minor alterations from the prototype cartridge to get around the copy protections Nintendo had placed on it, as well as the addition of "Zero" to the title screen for confirmation that the ROM was patched, as well as to differentiate it from [[EarthBound|its sequel]] of the same name. Since then, four other cartridges with the prototype have been found, one of which resides in Nintendo of America's headquarters.<ref>[http://www.earthboundcentral.com/2009/09/earthbound-zero-prototype-info/ EarthBound Central: "EarthBound Zero Prototype Info"]</ref>

Unlike the original Japanese release of ''Mother'', the prototype English translation contains detailed enemy descriptions, some redesigned areas, and an ability to run, among other differences. A few of the changes were requested by Nintendo of America producer and scriptwriter Phil Sandhop, who stated that there were plans to release the game with an 80-page instruction manual and a separate release of the game's soundtrack, but the production costs ended up having the game cancelled. Most of the alterations later saw official release in ''[[Mother 1+2]]''.

On June 14th, 2015, Nintendo announced and released Mother for the Wii U Virtual Console service, in Japanese as well as its first ever English release, under the title '''EarthBound Beginnings'''. While the English version is the same as the unreleased English prototype (minus the copy protection), the Japanese version had several changes from ''Mother 1+2'' backported to it. Notably, the [[Crow]]'s cigarette was removed and a line in [[Twinkle Elementary School]] that mentioned ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Quest_IV Dragon Quest IV]]'' had the reference to that game removed.<ref>[http://earthboundcentral.com/2015/06/japanese-wii-u-mother-has-changes/ EarthBound Central: "Japanese Wii U MOTHER Has Changes"]</ref>