It’s likely a well-known fact by now, but Earthbound is actually the middle game in a trilogy. The first game, titled MOTHER, was released on the Nintendo Famicom in Japan back in 1989. Pitched to Nintendo by celebrity copywriter Shigesato Itoi, it took the then-standard medieval-themed JRPG genre and brought it into the then-modern era with a lot of parodic twists to the formula. However, despite an English release being planned, MOTHER would not reach the English-speaking world until 2015… Unless you count the localized prototype which was leaked back in 1998.
Being a game from the tail end of the third generation of gaming, MOTHER is a bit rough compared to its successors. To make matters worse, aspects of the game were rushed, leading to some areas feeling unpolished or unbalanced. This had led some fans wanting a remake to make the game more accessible to new players. However, with Nintendo’s relative non-interest in the MOTHER series and Itoi having moved on due to MOTHER 64‘s troubled production, it seems to be up to the fans themselves to make it happen.
In the year 1988, strange paranormal phenomena start to happen around the world. An instance of poltergeist occurs at the house of a boy named Ninten. After managing to quell the uprising of inanimate objects, he finds a music box in a doll that plays a mysterious but incomplete melody. At the suggestion of his father, Ninten locates his great-grandfather’s journal. Reading it causes him to black out, awakening his latent psychic powers. He receives a telepathic message, urging him, “Seek the shell in the cave…”
The base story of MOTHER: Encore doesn’t seem to have changed too much, at least as far as the first demo is concerned. The game opens with an exposition dump much like the original, though this time it’s accompanied by images much like Undertale’s introduction. Another change is the expansion of Pippi’s role in the story, going from an objective to having a minor subplot with a couple of new boss fights.
The world seems much smaller than Earth Bound Beginnings, but this is actually a positive. The original game had a lot of empty space, so the change makes the world feel fuller. The few dungeons have their layouts changed and adds unique gimmicks. This actually makes them less confusing as they end up with the rooms feeling less repetitive.
The gameplay is a huge improvement over the original. It borrows a number of things from its successors, like the odometer health system, enemy encounters on the overworld, or the ability to run and ram weaker enemies. It also makes unique changes as well, like how poison works by making the health drop faster, a meter that fills with damage given or taken which can be used for character-specific actions and mortal damage increasing offensive. The only complaint is that the game still feels like you need a lot of level grinding, which is made harder now that random encounters have been replaced.
The graphics are a huge improvement, though we’re talking about a jump from the 8-bit graphics of the NES to something that looks similar to MOTHER 3‘s Game Boy Advance-style graphics. The transition from the map to battle is pretty impressive, with the player characters jumping to their section of the interface while enemies move to the center of the battlefield. The characters’ in-battle actions are now visible as well, with animations for attacking, healing, and even taking heavy damage. They even have victory poses that give them a lot of personality.
There aren’t a lot of complaints in the sound and music department. Most of the sound effects are carried over from Earthbound and Mother 3 and serve their purpose. The music mostly consists of remixed songs from the original game, though a number of tracks from the later games are also imported and remixed. A few new songs have also been created, most notably battle themes for certain bosses. If I had one complaint, it’s that the “waking up at an inn” music is maybe a bit high-pitched for my liking.
MOTHER: Encore is still in development, though the developers seemed to have switched to an episode-based release system. The first episode, or “Act” in this case, finishes when Ninten first enters Magicant, so the second act will cover that and meeting Lloyd. I’m not sure how many acts there will be or if the game will see completion, but I do look forward to seeing what this remake has in store.
MOTHER: Encore Website – Download on itch.io
CaptObvious42 is otherwise the very definition of a nerd. He’s a fan of many things considered retro, with his biggest obsessions being science fiction series both known and obscure, detective shows mostly out of the 80’s and 90’s, video games mostly from the Genesis/SNES years, and dinosaurs.