User:NintenBOUND/EarthBound fan community

For Wikipedia's article about the subject, see EarthBound Fandom.

The main page for EarthBound.Net/Starmen.Net, which lasted from 2000-2005 before the site was moved.

The EarthBound fan community consists of the fanbase surrounding the EarthBound/Mother franchise created by Shigesato Itoi and produced by Nintendo, Ape Inc., HAL Laboratory, and Brownie Brown, specifically its main three titles; EarthBound Beginnings/Mother, EarthBound/Mother 2, and the Japanese-exclusive Mother 3. The franchises's fanbase began in the late 90s, as multiple fan websites started appearing soon after the release of EarthBound in North America in 1995, the most prominent one being Starmen.Net (originally EarthBound.Net) in 1999. The fanbase only grew stronger upon Ness, the protagonist of EarthBound, receiving representation by being a fighter in the popular Nintendo 64 fighting title Super Smash Bros. in 1999 (with the main protagonist of Mother 3, Lucas, becoming a fighter in Super Smash Bros. Brawl in 2008), with multiple petitions and campaigns being organized by Starmen.Net and other fan sites for the release of the first game on the Game Boy Color in 1998 , the release of EarthBound 64 in the U.S. before the game's August 2000 cancellation , among other forms of representation and awareness by Nintendo since the fanbase's germination. The EarthBound fan community has advocated the series' growing awareness and attention, in particular the official english localization of Mother 3 which has persisted to this day; now-defunct gaming website 1UP.com wrote that "no other game in the history of time garnered such a rabid demand for translation". In response to Nintendo's unwillingness to create the desired localization, despite EarthBound fans launching a massive campaign named EB Siege championing the creation of the localization (including a 270-page tome, the EarthBound Anthology), a Starmen.Net team headed by Clyde "Tomato" Mandelin localized the game in english themselves over a two-year period, releasing the fan translation in August of 2008-which garnered over 100,000 downloads within its first week. While the fan community's efforts have done little to raise interest of the series within Nintendo, the fanbase's passion and innumerable petitions and campaigns to raise the awareness and overall interest in the EarthBound franchise have been noted by Nintendo, with Mario and Zelda series creator Shigeru Miyamoto describing EarthBound's fanbase as being "really solid" after the "Mother 3 petition" (a campaign for Nintendo to create Mother 3) received 30,000 American signatures alone in 2003.

Although Nintendo has not responded to the EarthBound fanbase in a tone other than a formal one, it has shown awareness towards the fanbases' dedication and passion towards the EarthBound franchise, with the official trailer for the 2022 release of EarthBound Beginnings and EarthBound on the Nintendo Switch Online service retaining the same unique and wacky spirit that EarthBound shares, with Nintendo also deciding to release EarthBound on the Wii U's Virtual Console service in 2013 based on the fan community's massive outcry on sites like Nintendo's Miiverse service. The EarthBound fan community has been called one of the most "passionate" and "active" fanbases in the gaming industry by gaming website Polygon , with 1UP.com commenting that no game was as poised to have a cult following as EarthBound. While technology news website The Verge cited the two-year fan translation of Mother 3 as proof of the fanbase's dedication, gaming website IGN's Lucas M. Thomas wrote in 2006 that EarthBound's "persistent", "ambitious", and "religiously dedicated collective of hardcore fans" would be among the first groups to influence Nintendo's decision-making through their purchasing power on the Virtual Console service. Because of the series being strongly advocated by the fan community for further series releases and representation in other Nintendo media (especially the official English localization of the third title in the series), the EarthBound series has grown from being a niche cult franchise to a well-known and broadly-recognized series in the Nintendo stable of franchises by the public, with even celebrities and Nintendo themselves acknowledging the franchise and the demand for the english release of Mother 3. Although Nintendo has not done so due to the financial effort and time required to do so, the fanbase has still clamored for it to this day, making the EarthBound/Mother franchise the prime example of a cult classic series in the video game world. While many were impressed with the amount of passion-directed EarthBound "fan art, videos, and tributes on fan sites like EarthBound Central or Starmen.net", with gaming website Wired describing it as "mountainous", others were more impressed with the dedication and passion of the EarthBound fan community itself, with British game journalism website Eurogamer considering EarthBound a "sacred cow among gaming's cognoscenti" in their 2014 Mother 3 review.

Games

For more information about EarthBound Fan Games, see here.

ROM Hacks

For more information about EarthBound ROM Hacks, see here.

Translations

Mother 1+2 fan translation

See also Mother 1+2 fan translation.

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The Mother 1+2 fan translation is a fan-made translation patch of Mother 1+2, created by a team headed by Clyde "Tomato" Mandelin.

Mother 3 fan translation

See also Mother 3 fan translation.

The only added screen in the translation

The Mother 3 fan translation is a fan-made translation patch of Mother 3, created by Clyde "Tomato" Mandelin and the fan translation team and released on August 17th, 2008. After Nintendo stated their non-interest in localizing the third game in the EarthBound/Mother franchise, Mother 3, the team spent two years painstakingly translating the entire game into a readable english form for the english-speaking audience. Text boxes and dialogue were hacked and altered significantly in order to accommodate the english vocabulary and the spacing of the english language, with great difficulty involved in the process of doing so. Several names were also stylistically altered from their original Japanese translation, such as the character Yokuba taking on the name of "Fassad" and the enemy "Osohebi" taking on the moniker of "Oh-So-Snake". Upon the completion and release of the patch in 2008 (which was released alongside a fan-made guidebook for the translation), the patch garnered over 100,000 downloads within its first week alone. The team also publicly offered the patch for free to Nintendo, for use as an official release of a Mother 3 localization; however, the company has not taken the team up on its offer. Nevertheless, the fan translation has gone down as one of the most impressive fan translations in the gaming community, with Ars Technica calling it a "a massive success" and citing the translation as having "made many, many gamers' dreams come true—my own included."

Merchandise

For information regarding series creator Shigesato Itoi’s company Hobonichi, which often sells Mother-related merchandise, see here.

The You Are Now EarthBound Fangamer bundle

You Are Now EarthBound Fangamer Box Set

The You Are Now EarthBound Fangamer Box Set is a fan-made box set consisting of multiple pieces of fan-made EarthBound materials, including the EarthBound Handbook guidebook; a physical copy of the EarthBound, USA documentary (originally); Psychokinetic Album, a music album by BAD DUDES containing fan-made remixes of music from the EarthBound franchise; Psychokinetic Zine, a 80-page fanzine containing fan-made EarthBound art and writing; an 8GB drive containing bonus material styled after Ness as a robot; EarthBound-style trading cards; and a multitude of assorted EarthBound themed inserts, playing cards, and other memorabilia, some of them made to look like they came from the in-game world of Eagleland. Named after an EarthBound fan site from the late 1990s with the same name, the You Are Now EarthBound box set was initiated on Kickstarter in late 2014 and was released along with a project trailer on YouTube on October 27th, 2014. The project had various tiers, where donators could obtain various parts of the box set depending on the amount they donated; the project received the donations needed to fund the project ($100,000) in a 24-hour timespan. The project was officially released to its backers in 2016, minus the EarthBound, USA documentary, which was not completed at the time of the box set's release; it would later be officially released on physical and digital media on November 27th, 2023. Initial versions of the box set included a brown-colored replica of Ness's backpack; later versions would replace it with a yellow-colored backpack to better reflect the in-game sprite of Ness's backpack.

Books

EarthBound Anthology

The EarthBound Anthology is a fan-made 268-page, fully illustrated book detailing the history of the EarthBound franchise as well as the series' fanbase's dedication, passion, and love towards the EarthBound series, as well as 200+ pages of fan-art. Made as part of the 2007 EB Siege campaign, the book, along with four DVDs and CDs containing fan music, media, videos, art, and performances, was sent to Nintendo's offices in order to convince them to release a fully-translated, localized english version of Mother 3 in North America and other regions. It was also meant to spread awareness of the franchise to Nintendo and to the world in general, with Destructoid's article describing the goal of the EB Siege campaign as "to extend the reach of the community out towards would-be allies to the cause, media, developers, and Nintendo itself and communicate their message: that this is a series, beyond all others in Nintendo’s catalog, that should not be swept aside."

EarthBound Confidential

A promotional card produced by Lindblom's company, Carried Away Games.

EarthBound Confidential is a cancelled book detailing the localization process of EarthBound that was set to be written in 2013 by the game's former localization head, Marcus Lindblom. After being welcomed into the EarthBound fan community in 2013, and upon seeing the dedication and perseverance of the EarthBound fan community years after the game's english release in 1995, and the fanbase's interest upon Lindblom writing a book on his time localizing EarthBound, Lindblom decided to write the book as something to give to the fans, as he felt that he "owed them something" and that they "deserved to hear the full story" behind the localization. Planned to be funded by the crowdfunding website Kickstarter and by Lindblom himself, Marcus reached out to Nintendo before beginning the writing process to request permission to write the book. While he was not expressly told otherwise, he was "gently reminded" that he had signed a non-disclosure agreement when joining the company, so as a result, Lindblom indefinitely shelved plans for the book with no plans for a future release. While the EarthBound fan community expressed disappointment at the book's cancellation, the general consensus and overall speculation of Nintendo's line of reasoning was that as a Japanese company, Nintendo did not want the internal processes of their companies to be revealed to the general public and possibly their rivals/competitors; Polygon's article described the matter as the case possibly being just simply "Nintendo being Nintendo", which means no one "gets to see how the sausages are made." Despite the book's cancellation, Lindblom has continued to discuss parts of the localization process with the fans, as he feels that the EarthBound fan community is "owed some tidbits of information" and that he "will continue to do that and talk about it."

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Mother 3 Handbook

The Mother 3 Handbook is a fan-produced 272-page guidebook to the fan-made english translation of Mother 3, which was released along with the patch's release on August 17th, 2008. Manufactured by Starmen.Net subsidiary (and fan-made game merchandise website) Fangamer, and designed by Jon Kay (with additional NPC and enemy illustrations by Emilio Orsi and Marty Elmer and item illustrations by Sebastian Hardy), the book follows a style similar to that of the Encyclopedia Mother and EarthBound Player's Guide guidebooks, describing each event and area of the game in detail in an 8-chapter format similar to the actual game itself (with accompanying fan-made clay figures of each main character and enemy in the game, sculpted by artist Camille Young, which are shown along with the guide like the Encyclopedia Mother and EarthBound Player's Guide handbooks). The book is available in both a digital and physical form, with the hardcover version having a slipcase depicting the book as a Pigmask Army survival training guide (which also doubles as a poster). The book is also credited as single-handedly launching Fangamer as an independent website.

Documentaries

Mother to Earth: The Untold Story of Earth Bound

Mother to Earth: The Untold Story of Earth Bound is a 2019 non-fiction American documentary produced by 54&0 Productions that covers the history of the cancelled english localization of the first Mother title, from the localization transformation of the game from "Mother" to "Earth Bound" in 1990, to the unreleased cartridges being circulated around the internet and one cartridge in particular being dumped online in 1998 by Neo Demiforce, to the game's eventual 2015 release on the Wii U Virtual Console as "EarthBound Beginnings". The story of the documentary is an interview-based one, where documentary producers Evan Butler and Josh Bone-Christian and their crew journey across the U.S. (and even to Japan) to interview key participants in the documentary's story, including: Phil Sandhop, the head of the Earth Bound localization team in 1990; Matt Alderman, one of the game play counselors at Nintendo who played the translation in 1990; Greg Marioti, a game collector who held a copy of the Earth Bound translation before a mysterious seller named "Kenny Brooks" purchased it from him; Steve Demeter, the former head of Neo Demiforce, which temporarily loaned the copy from "Kenny Brooks" and dumped it in 1998 before returning it to him; the current owner of that cart, Andrew DeRouin; Joey ("Roo") DeSena, a game collector who owns a separate Earth Bound cartridge; Koala, a Mother collector centered in Japan, who owns another separate Earth Bound cartridge; and even Keiichi Suzuki, the main composer for the original Mother title. The documentary's Twitter account details updates regarding Mother fan conventions, fan-art, Mother to Earth showing events, and details regarding the producers/crew's time in the EarthBound fan community. The documentary's official website also sells the film on DVD and Blu-Ray, along with exclusive fan-made merchandise centered around the documentary, which can be found here. The documentary is also available online at Vimeo.

EarthBound, USA

The EarthBound USA documentary's official logo, which can be found on the project's official Twitter account.

EarthBound USA is an upcoming non-fiction documentary that covers the history and documentation of the EarthBound/Mother franchise and its fanbase since the first game's release in 1989, planned to be released on November 27th, 2023. The documentary has been in Development hell for over a decade, with multiple complaints and criticisms being directed towards the project's continuous delays; however, an official trailer was officially advertised at the end of the Mother Direct for 2023, releasing on the project's Twitter account a short while after. Terabytes of footage have been filmed for the project over the course of its development, with editing taking an abnormal amount of time in comparison to a standard documentary film. The overall story covers two American teenagers as they bond over EarthBound in the late 90s over an EarthBound fan website. The You Are Now EarthBound Fangamer bundle was initially planned to include the documentary, instead shipping out the rest of the packaged bundle to its backers in 2016; it its unknown whether the bundle will be rereleased with the completed documentary upon the project's official release. The documentary is also slated for a digital and physical release, with DVD and Blu-Ray releases of the documentary being likely to happen after the official release of the project. Updates on the documentary (and its trailer) are regularly posted on the project's Twitter account, which can be found here: https://twitter.com/EarthBoundUSA

Events

Mother Direct

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