There's no good reason this isn't on DSI or the Wii VC either.

DSi doesn't support Virtual Console titles in general, and why would they put it on the Wii when they want to encourage people to buy the new platform?

Can we get a quicklook of this? Either from @patrickklepek or the rest of the crew? I would love to hear their take on the updated version of the game. I only ever played a snippet of Mother 3 (a sin, I know), but this game always intrigued me.

@patrickklepek if you didn't already know, the game has some deviously ingenious anti-piracy measures as well. I mean brilliantly evil stuff.

Probably should check that out after finishing the game though. Spoilers and whatnot.

Spoilers? Not really. The biggest things that the anti-piracy measures induced were:

• An anti-piracy message would appear at start-up.
• An absolutely psychotic enemy encounter rate throughout the game.
• The game freezing just before the final boss fight.
• You game data being wiped when restarting after said freeze.

Genius, it was.

Why do you affiliate or link stuff from polygon? That video is objectively terrible. Ugh they have the worst sense of humor. I'm mad bro.

Oh Polygon. I'd make a comment laughing about Polygon's awful views that busty/stylish character art is somehow 'discrimination and hatred of women', but Patrick tends to share that mentality, so I can see why he linked to their site.

Oh well, there's always the comedy of Polygon giving Sim City 2013 a 9.5/10 at first. That was pretty hilarious.

You are just flat out wrong.

I said that people looking at year books and say what they wearing was ridiculous because it's a trend, which is the crux of my whole argument. What that person is wearing, when they are looking at their year book, will look just as outdated 20 years from THEN. Not because clothes have "evolved" and "gotten better", but because the fads change. And then, who knows, maybe it will all come back in fashion, as it does cyclicly.

Gaming is the exact same way. Turn based gaming is suddenly all the rage again, but after Warcraft 2 came out, you couldn't find a turn based game ANYwhere. Even Xcom, which was even more popular then, than it is now, wound up putting real time RTS elements in Xcom 3, which is why the game tanked and wasn't heard from again for like 15 years. Or, for instance, take co-op gameplay. Co-op suddenly became all the rage again after Halo brought it back to the forefront. But Halo didn't invent Co-op. Co-operative play was absolutely EXPECTED in the 8 and 16 bit eras of gaming. Almost every game had it until the technical limitations of the Playstation 3d gaming era meant that 2 player gaming was expensive on the hardware.

And, yes, I am absolutely going to tell you that Halo being better than Goldeneye is ABSOLUTELY just preference. Sure there were HARDWARE IMPROVEMENTS like having dual analog sticks that let Halo do some things that Goldeneye couldn't, but from a gameplay perspective, there are a ton of things that goldeneye does better than Halo. Recharging health? Personal Preference. Two gun limit? Personal Preference. Open landscapes vs. corridors? Personal prefence. Jump-happy gaming vs. gameplay where you can't jump? Personal preference.

And your dumb example of there being indue games that forced manual saves, and resetting to the beginning if you die is ridiculous because THERE ARE INDIE GAMES THAT DO THAT. I'm not sure what you were trying to prove by suggesting there aren't.

And as for Resident Evil's tank controls, those controls existed for a reason. I mean, firstly, Resident Evil controlled TERRIBLY. When it was NEW Resident Evil controlled poorly. This is because the control of RE, much like the rest of RE, was poorly ripped off the PC game Alone In The Dark. The "tank controls" exist because when the camera angle shifts (a cinema technique) the "absolute" controls would lose their orientation. If you are pressing "up" to move your character forward, then when the camera shifts to be in your characters face, pressing up would suddenly mean moving your character "backwards". "Tank controls" were actually a slice of genius and used in dozens and dozens of PC games like Little Big Adventure and Grim Fandango. It's also worth mentioning that "tank controls" were designed to be used on a keyboard.

I really, really enjoyed this game when it came out, but like a lot of classic RPGs from the NES / SNES era, I'm cautious of going back to them because I just can't do grinding like I used to.

I'm glad to hear that it can still be appreciated by relatively new players today.

I first played Earthbound at my friend's house, I guess I was 8 years old. I was pretty good so he just wanted to watch me complete it. It was exciting figuring out that last battle. I went back to it at around 16 and found it to hold up then. Enjoy Patrick.

These fans are beaten, bruise

Bruised maybe @patrickklepek? I really enjoyed reading the article though, seems like a really cool game; too bad I don't have a Wii U, hopefully it comes out on 3DS at some point.

@patrickklepek: "I’m about halfway through"

Man, then you don't even know. The ending is incredible. Genuinely touching. Follow-up article, please.

16 bit JRPGs are perfection in video game form. I was a few years too young to get into them when they were new on SNES, but I discovered them during high school when they were rereleased on GBA. The first 16 bit JRPG I played was Final Fantasy V Advance and I instantly fell in love with the genre. Playing other classics like FF4, FF6, Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, Tales of Phantasia (my favorite JRPG), Super Mario RPG, Secret of Mana convinced me that there is a special something about the time, style and hardware limits that combined to create one of the greatest styles of gaming in existence. This is highly subjective but I have to say that JRPGs lost the special something that makes the 16 bit era so glorious immediately after the genre moved to Playstation. Games like Final Fantasy VII and Chrono Cross, direct heirs of the 16 bit legacy, don't have the same purity of style and focus as their SNES ancestors.

I am very interested in playing Tales of Destiny and any other 2D PS1 JRPGs that might be out there. I think it would be a good test to see if the magic was tied directly to the SNES hardware or simply the type of games the hardware encouraged. I suspect that it is more the style and relative simplicity of the games that makes me love them so much. As far as I can tell the developers of Tales of Destiny made a SNES JRPG on the PS1 so it would probably give me the same joy as older games.

So... it's super juvenile, but start a new game and set "pussy" as your favorite food. Makes for a hilarious conversation with your mom next time you talk to her.

Only EarthBound and The Wonderful 101 have me interested in the Wii U.

That's no different to calling Epona "Your Mom". A perfectly valid gameplay method :D

Reading about the useless items reminded me of Dark Souls. There's a starting item that does absolutely nothing at all.

Or does it...? *creepy ghost noises*

But yeah, I think the director confirmed he trolled everyone.

Scoops, did you know that crap like this goes to my Instapaper withing seconds?

Cuase this ain't crap, it's great writing. Keep it up!

Wait. Protractors and rulers actually don't do anything? I figured you got buffs to your accuracy.

http://button-mash.tumblr.com/post/56043910669/enter-your-initials-prt

Man, guys, due to the differences in how the games actually play, I don't think the dark souls example is really equivalent. Earthbound may benefit sometimes from a guide due to obscure game design but in Dark Souls the "needing a guide because this game is too obscure" problem is a fucking epidemic and probably the games biggest flaw, IMO.

Also, to those saying "There is no such thing as improvements in game design": LOL

Its perfectly fine to love old games, lord knows I do, and many still play great. But gaming can and has improved over time, I can't believe that's even a question. And can you seriously, honestly say that there's not a single game you enjoyed at first that you've then gone back to and kinda felt eugggh about? Frankly, I wont believe you if you say no. And even if you don't, the hypothesis that "oh, people who don't like it now wouldn't have liked it then" is absurd. Sure, some fit that label, but there are plenty who liked certain old games but feel, in light of modern game design, they're just too clunky or primitive to enjoy. It's fine to disagree about which games are hit hard by this but denying the phenomenon at all is madness.

One of my favourite quirks about Earthbound was that you could control the entire game using just your left hand and it was a completely viable way of playing that game (I think the only thing you can't do is ring the bell on the bike since that's the only use for RT). You could bring up the menu using the select button and the L shoulder was your confirm for everything. I find modern day controllers are a bit ill suited to doing this but it was a great little unique thing in a game full of unique things.

No the final boss is literally just straight up invincible in hacked versions of the game

it's a little something the developers put in the game that when it detects that it isn't a legit copy of the game it lets the gamer play the game like normal, but the final boss will be unbeatable meaning you had wasted all that time to get to the final boss and can't beat the game....it was a fantastic troll

I played a bit of this game during the early days of emulation on PCs. It was really cool but I could never make the time to finish it. I was a Genesis kid so this wasn't even on my radar at the time of release. Not surprised to hear that it holds up. I really like how mundane a lot of the early enemy and item types are. I would really like to get back to it some day but I don't have any plans to own a WiiU. Thanks for the article.

Holy shit!

@patrickklepek didn't dark souls do exactly that with the pendant gift? I don't remember anyone getting "furious" there, either.

The Mother 3 fanslation is pretty solid and it is a better game I think, in the the weird stuff is weirder and the emotional stuff is somehow way more gutwrenching. Its such an odd combo. The distinction it has and continues to have stems largely from the fact that no other game has since really entered the same territory.

You're missing the point.

There are absolutely old games that are hard to go back and play, but those games were bad when they were new. Take Golgo 13 "Top Secret Episode" on the NES for example. That game is almost impossible to go back and play. But it was also almost impossible to play when it was new. That's just a POORLY DESIGNED GAME. (which I loved) And yes, it is absolutely hard to go back and enjoy poorly designed games.

Contrast that with something like Faxanadu on the NES. I remember loving that game to death, but I can't go back and play it now because it takes too much time to play, and I just don't have that much time as an adult.

FAXANADU HAS NOT CHANGED. I HAVE CHANGED.

Vinny put it perfectly when he was doing the quicklook of Dark Souls, or Demon's Souls. One or the other. He said that it was the perfect game he would have eaten up when he was a kid over summer break, but as an adult, it seems like it just takes too much time, and he doesn't have that kind of time. Dark Souls is not poorly designed, VINNY HAS CHANGED.

There are tons of "evolutions of game design" that Brad will point out as loving, like games that sell all your equipment back to the store with a push of a button, sometimes not even requiring to go back to the store. This is great for Brad, who plays so many games that he appreciates games that mostly play themselves, but to other people who buy 2 or 3 games a year, it's dumbed down gameplay to the point to being no fun at all. It's not "evolution", it's personal preference.

What you consider a "bad" game isn't necessarily bad, nor has it always been bad. Game design has evolved, just as hardware has. As designers and programmers have gotten better at what they do, the general quality of games has increased (though there are still plenty of bad games being made today). But relative to their time, some of those games you consider bad are still actually quite good. They weren't necessarily poorly made games; they've just been eclipsed by experiences that are better designed. Golgo 13: Top Secret Episode and Faxanadu are the same games now that they were back then, but the fact that game design has generally gotten better over the years doesn't negate the enjoyment that people have with them, or games like them.

@patrickklepek: I hope you can dig into Mother 3 at some point, it's got all of the charm of this game and arguably more, and things such as UI and overall game design are much smoother and modern(not perfect, obviously but I never got as frustrated.) I gotta say I love EarthBound as well, even if there are some shaky design decisions now and then and the game's UI is pretty awful.

Excellent write up, Patrick.

"These fans are beaten, bruise, and can't be trusted with sharp knives."

somethings...missing...

At some level, your right- It is us that's changed, but also, duh. ANY game only has worth based on how people perceive it. Thats the point. Our expectations have changed. It's like- imagine a top of the line computer from 1995. It was good then. Now place it in a modern context and, as a computer, its crap- computer design has changed, and people's expectations are different. It would be ridiculous to say, as your are, because it's crap in a modern context, it was secretly crap when it came out. Likewise, its dumb to say that, if it was good then, it has to still be good now. What was cleverly designed for it's time has been hopelessly antiquated by it's successors.

Think I am going to go dig out my smell-o-vision cards and game guide.

: D Glad you liked it Scoops. I played it on a couple years ago for the first time and thoroughly enjoyed the cute world of crazy happenings. Download the fan translation of Mother 3 it is very good.

I don't think Patrick has played Dark Souls.

Anyway, great write-up. This is a cool game I should finish sometime. I rented it as a kid but never got through to the end.

Love Earthbound. It's my number 1 feel good game even today. Some of its systems remind me of Pokemon but its got a blissful charm of its own. Mother 3 us worth tracking down for GBA if your able to read Japanese ... Or run the translated version on an emu!

I have the original cart. Hardcore.

You're talking about hardware, which is COMPLETELY different than talking about game design.

Again, you're walking into the myopic trap of thinking that modern game design means that a game is empirically better than old game design in the same way that a modern computer is empirically better than and old computer.

Yes, a modern computer is way better than a 80386 PC. But Gone Home is not inherently better than Kings Quest 2. Game DESIGN does not evolve.

Does Gone Home have better graphics than KQ2? ABSOLUTELY. It came out like 25 years later. But that's technology, which absolutely DOES evolve. Game DESIGN is just trendy. As is influenced by the fact that Gone Home is a huge anomaly in 2013, that is causing a huge stir, but in 1997 it would have been on a shelf with a dozen or so similar games.

@fancysoapsman: I keep hearing about mother, but what about the original mother? Is it bad or something?

I hope once the WIi U sells enough units to sheeple that it isn't a Dreamcast, that Nintendo will FINALLY merge the Eshops and make all virtual console games bought on 3DS count for Wii U and also for every other Nintendo system. No more buying virtual versions of Mario 1. I've bought it 3 times already. No more Nintendo. Sorry. If you force me to buy Mario 1 for the 4th time when I finally get a Wii U, I will not buy eshop anymore.

Seriously hope this comes to 3DS!

Played it on the Wii, virtual console style. Don't ask how though, because then I would have to kill you. :D

The things you are describing about Earthbound made the game the most memorable. Talking to animals? Items that don't do anything. Signs that acknowledge that you are reading a sign in the middle of nowhere? Fighting hippies and crazy old coots? The game's imitation of real life was strange and intriguing.

Mother 3 is okay... it just has less of all the weird wonderment. The story's pacing was plain jarring. Where Earthbound's story rarely changes acts without your walking involvement, M3 changes acts, timelines and scenes whenever the fuck it feels like it. The themes are standard Japanese tropes that take precedent over the weird stuff going on. It's powerful but Earthbound is more memorable to me because in my mind, the weird stuff (especially the long ending part) just stuck out more since it was different.