EarthBound Zero aka Mother 1 that originally only appeared on the Japanese NES (Famicom) is OUT NOW for Wii U Virtual Console worldwide as “EarthBound Beginnings”
Check out this launch trailer for “EarthBound Beginnings”; exclusively for Wii U Virtual Console!
The original NES EarthBound game, known as “EarthBound Zero” by fans and “Mother 1″ by hardcore followers of the “Mother” series (“EarthBound” outside of Japan) have AT LONG LAST received the game they’ve been asking & praying for! They’ve been begging Nintendo to officially re-release EarthBound Zero for nearly two decades!
And now it is finally a reality, with a new title, and is playable right this minute via the Wii U Virtual Console!
For those who don’t know what all the fuss is about, the original Mother is the prequel to EarthBound for SNES (which is technically entitled “Mother II” in Japan). Mother was originally fully translated into English and set for release near the end of the NES lifecycle in 1990 or 1991, but was then scrapped (and thus never released outside Japan) in favor of “EarthBound” for SNES, which wouldn’t come to the West until 1995.
EarthBound Zero GIF Animation Title Screenshot
But the reason the game is so infamous, is due to piracy. After Nintendo continously refused to officially re-release the game, hardcore EarthBound fans like those at the EarthBound fansite Mother.net, banded together and were able to release the Mother I ROM, in it’s English translated form, onto the interwebs. They titled it, “EarthBound Zero” and the game was fully playable and in English, just as Nintendo originally intended before changing their plans.
That version has been playable for over a decade now by using an NES emulator.
However an even better retranslated fan-made English version was also released online of EarthBound Zero, this version taken from Mother I&II Collection for Game Boy Advance, a compilation that was released exclusively in Japan (representing a dagger to the fanboy & fangirl heart) in 2001.
This updated fan translation is not only in English with better quality writing & improvements that Nintendo added to the GBA re-release in Japan; but it also includes an Easy Ring that balances the game and takes away much of the frustration of the original version (giving you more experience when defeating enemies, and cutting random encounters in half).
Even with the Easy Ring however, you can still encounter a new random fight every other step, so don’t be fooled; because of this, the original version of Mother I is nearly unplayable without the Easy Ring.
So that begs the question, which version is EarthBound Beginnings?
Hopefully Nintendo did the right thing and re-balanced it themselves, essentially giving you the Easy Ring and all the enhancements made to the GBA version. It will also be interesting to see if Nintendo added any other additional tweaks or additions to the script for EarthBound Beginnings.