The mother / earthbound thread

[rancher]

I want to preface this thread with a link to 3 patched versions of the mother games' roms, with things like decensorship, improved localization, bugfixes, UI improvements etc: thanks Free Beer Extremist for hosting these

If you have never played any Mother (Earthbound) games before, the normy order is 2 ->3 (you play as the first smash bros guy and then the next smash bros guy) and call it a day. But the real, proper, deluoode level gamer way to play the games is, as always, chronologically.

Time to get the ball rolling with a LONG POST full of RIGHT OPINIONS. The issue: Mother 1 and 2 are very similar to each other. The popularity of Earthbound cannot be understated, but is it really the better game? I think not: and here are 4 reasons why.

1. Mother 2 holds the player's hand too much. You could be partially forgiven if you thought this game was for kids at first glance. From the lame over-detailed maps, to the lack of mazes, and on to the overabundance of save spaces, Mother 2 basically removes everything from the original game that both made it a challenge -- but also made it, despite satirizing the genre, a true JRPG yet by its own virtues. Mother 1 has a kind of rabid primitivism that stands out against modern handholding games -- when you go back and replay it today, you'll really feel yourself playing a classic game! It's like playing Pokemon Gold instead of SoulSilver.

2. Mother 2 relies too much on Reddit humor. Haha, barf and farts. Kids do drugs. Silly SO RANDOM aliens!!! It's still a fine game, but Mother 1 has to be recognized again for keeping a serious tone while satirizing the JRPG genre. You are fighting beefy gangsters full of bullet holes. One of your party members is a nasty gang member who runs around with a knife and used to molest women. Mother 2, which is basically a remake of Mother 1, replaces bad ass Teddy with Asian lady's man ascetic playboy Prince Poop. yawn...

3. Mother 1 has a more consistent tone. Mother 1 fines itself squared surely in the realm of 1950s B movies, with the kinds of tropes you'd find in a MST3k episode. An early episode of the game takes place in the town zoo, fighting tigers and gorillas that broke out of their cages and began wreaking havoc after getting brainwashed by an evil alien. Freaky! Higher level enemies include haunted suits of armor and zombies in a haunted house, gangsters, and (very late into the game) powerful aliens and robots. There are fantastic elements but the difficulty and zaniness scale appropriately. Meanwhile Earthbound will throw one joke character at you after another. It's not a bad time, but it can be hard to take it seriously at times. You can maintain a willing suspension of disbelief easier in the first game.

4. Mother 1 establishes a stronger connection between the player character and the big bad evil guy. In mother 2, you're told, "Giygas (mewtwo prototype) has returned, and it's up to you to stop him!" It doesn't really go into much depth about who he is or why he's so awful -- you just know that he's causing trouble, and by the time you finally face him in the endgame, his mind and body are long gone. You're also not exactly told why you're chasing down 8 melodies to prevent the end of the world brought about by alien attack. If you couldn't tell, all the really important, deep plot stuff is explained in Mother 1.

After you play through Mother 1 -- which can be challenging at times, but is all the more rewarding for it -- going to play Mother 2, which is basically a remix of the first game, feels much more impactful. The open world is reduced to an amusement park of a linear map and you can laugh with the game as you go at it again with an improved battle and item system. Characters take on a much more prominent role. But more importantly, you also know who, what, and why you're fighting -- and it feels all the better to wrap things up.

Going from Mother 2 to Mother 1 is less satisfying. You're playing M2 again but with a clunkier game engine, reduced art and music, increased difficulty, and less humor. You'd be abnormal to go back to mother 1 and call it a peak gaming experience -- because you already were exposed to a lot of the things that it did well in a more accessible format.

Do not play the mother 1 version that Nintendo released on Wii U / Switch (called "earthbound beginnings") -- they dumbed it down and took away anything potentially "offensive" like a cross in a church or a red spot on a scientist's lab coat. Play the version linked at the top of the thread in your NES emulator of choice, and thank me later.

[Blond]

Not only a person that calls it Mother instead of Earthbound, but also a Mother 1 fan!? Rancher, you're the coolest.

[Amlux]

While I do prefer Mother 2 to Mother, rancher made many excellent points and made it clear why I love the first game and think everyone should start with it. I think Mother 2 wins overall for me and the biggest reason is that the combat is more interesting. I do also think the humorous tone is mostly quite successful. It's the kind of thing which would be annoying in most other games, but somehow it all just lands here. I actually thought the "Reddit humor" (I wouldn't use this term because that's a hell of a slur to me, but I know what you mean by it) was worse in Mother 3. That's the game it sort of got to me in while nothing in Mother 2 ever really pushed me over the edge. I still think Mother 3 is a fantastic game, by the way. The combat is arguably the best in the whole series. I just like the story and tone of the first two games more.

So yes, I do prefer Mother 2. But I have trouble reading much into that. Really, they're just very different games. And I do think that Mother has many strengths that the second game does not. Is it more desolate and empty? Yes. But that also makes the game really feel menacing and eerie in ways that Mother 2 often doesn't (with some notable exceptions). There's just a weirdness to the game due to its often bizarre-looking sprites, dark-ish tone combined with a little kid protag, and sort of very subtly off-the-wall humor. Mother 2 has more whimsy to it, but I do think it's just as good at what it does.

So yeah, it makes me sad that a lot of people dismiss Mother as just kind of a trial run for Mother 2. It's a great game in its own right, easily worthy of a play. Though I do think the combat will seem boring if you go backwards, so you should probably start with it. And DEFINITELY don't play any of those pussy ROMs that make the game easier. It's not that bad of a game. You just have to grind. You can do it.