The DEFINITIVE Mother/Earthbound Beginnings Retrospective 

I would be inclined to agree except for the fact that the copyright was filed in 1990 whereas Mother 2 was completed in 1994 in Japan, while the prospect of space travel was briefly considered, based on the fact that space travel was only considered for 4 months before being scrapped due to being cliched, it's hard to believe it was far enough along to consider filing a trademark for a potential title, especially for a localization of a game that would release until 4 years later.

Heya, I keep getting notifications that replies were left but when I go to check them they're deleted, I was able to read the first few words, but since then I've done extensive searching and haven't found substantial backing supporting the claim that Mother 2 was nearly named Space Bound in the states. The development process was too early for the localization teams to have a go, and while Mother's localization was partially responsible for changing the work culture surrounding localization, seeing as the entire space concept was only briefly worked on for 4 months it's hard to believe that the name would incorporate it somehow, nonetheless in the states. I like this idea, it's a really cool little fact if true, but the fact of the matter is that there just isn't any concrete proof backing it, I've searched through countless interviews with Phil Sandhop and haven't found and mention of it beyond a Video Game History podcast that makes a allusion to the scrapped title to poke fun at the naming confusion surrounding the series. I've dug and dug and dug and while I'm not saying I have seen every single last piece of content surrounding the name Space Bound, even reading through forum posts and the like I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere, but the timeline surrounding this claim makes it logically impossible to be true. If Mother 2 began development immediately after Mother 1 released as it has been described based on a plethora of interviews, Mother was released in July 1989 and the space concept was scrapped 4 months into development. In the absolute best case scenario the space travel concept would've been scrapped in early 1990, which means that there is no reason to believe the trademark for Space Bound, which was filed in August 1990, is relating to the scrapped space travel concept. Like I said, I dug for hours looking for stuff but found nothing :/

I have no idea why RU-vid keeps deleting my replies, but the information I got this from is from an interview with Phil Sandhop in the Mother to Earth Documentary

Well that still doesn't make sense seeing as Phil Sandhop wasn't involved with EarthBound's SNES localization, and the project to localize the game wasn't set into motion until January 1995 when Dan Owsen created a 10 minute demo of sorts proving that it should be localized, and from that point reusing the name "EarthBound" from the cancelled NES title was already decided upon. The localization script was completed over the course of 3 months from January to April 1995, several years after the trademark for Space Bound was filed.

Update: rented Mother to Earth on Vimeo, and despite the weird timeline surrounding it, it is seemingly correct! If anything now it just raises more questions behind their development, maybe Space Bound was merely a thought that they had without any knowledge of Mother 2's original ideas in some sort of 1/1,000,000 coincidence, or maybe it was the hypothetical title of Space Bound that gave Itoi the idea before scrapping it for being too cliche rather than it being the other way around based on our current understanding? Whacky as heck regardless lmao, pinning this btw

Your grandma sounds like a certified badass 💯 I don't really have many cool stories surrounding my family and video games, but I remember when my brother and I were little our dad let us use his laptop to look up Mario Kart Wii unlocks and that was like my first exposure to the internet. Flipping crazy! I remember this other time my dad and his coworkers used to have World of Warcraft nights every Thursday (I think) night after they all got off work. The servers were down so it was really my family hanging out with one of my dad's coworkers (everyone else cancelled) so they booted up our Wii and started playing some Virtual Console games. They played pretty much every single Mario game, some Zelda, but what made the biggest impression was when the coworker showed me the secrets in Mario 3. Nothing will ever top the sheer admiration I had for this one random guy who I can't even remember the name of because he showed me the first 2 warp whistle locations. God I wish I could experience something like that again nowadays lmfao

my grandma was like that too, she and my mom played video games, my mom did all the work and grandma opened the chests. I was born after she died and sometimes when the topic comes up my mom says I would have gotten along really well with her.

@@GribbleGob such a cool story ☺️

omg my grandma did the same thing! she had a whole map of the zelda games that took up the entire kitchen table. it's awesome haha

Would love to see pictures of those note books

Pippi has clearly been taking trips to the gym pumping that iron up XD

Yeah finding stuff for M1 was a bit more difficult bc it was before it was an established series so interest wasn't as high, not to mention it's just older so I'd imagine a bunch of stuff was lost over the years, but it's lucky we still have enough to make an hour worth of a content lmao

Thank you so much! It was just a lucky coincidence that it was an hour long, but makes it super convenient to sit down and watch, haha. I'm super excited to see your take on the game!

Thank you! It was a challenge making sure I did it justice, so I'm glad that I seemed to do a good job!

No, thank you for watching! Much more Mother content is on its way, so stay tuned!

@@MamaLouiji Definitely staying tuned!

I've been working on a few videos for quite the time now, but between balancing college and work and my personal life I haven't gotten the perfect balance of the three just yet, haha! With that said, when I finally do get a video out it'll be a shotgun burst of content so I hope you'll join me for those brief spats of activity!! And thank you so much, your words of support truly mean the world to me; as someone who's still kinda new to the content creation scene, the outpouring of support from kind folks such as yourself are what keeps me striving to create new (and hopefully) entertaining videos. I can't thank you enough, and I'm super glad you enjoyed the video!!!

Thank you so much! Im glad you enjoyed it!

Thank you so much!!

Thank you!!!!

Thanks a lot. I'm glad you enjoyed it!!

Thanks! I try my hardest with these!

I cant wait to see your video as well, and regular uploads on my end will resume in September so pardon the wait lol, thanks for watching!

@@MamaLouiji It's been a while but if you're still interested, I finally got around to uploading my retrospective. I won't link it here unless you're cool with that, but you can find it on my page :)

Hell yeah man send it my way

@@MamaLouiji Here it is chief! I think we had fairly different takeaways but can both agree, this game is pretty awesome :) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-JfF1Dq9itHw.html

I'm glad you liked it!!

Im pretty sure that the easy ring was an addition made with the fan translation of Mother 1 in Mother 1+2, meaning as far as I understand it isn't usable in an official release? Might be wrong tho

This made my day, thank you so much, and I'm glad you enjoyed the video :')

My friends have been giving me crap about the Final Fantasy 2 take ever since this video came out lmfao I tried to replay it, but it still didn't gel with me 😭

@@MamaLouiji Did you not try the better PSP or GBA versions?

D: I DIDN'T LMAO I DIDN'T EVEN REMEBER THOSE EXISTED UNTIL NOW!! I'll play through the GBA one at some point. Thanks for reminding me that those exist!

@@MamaLouiji No problem man. I also recommend the PSP version the most since it also includes this really dope bonus campaign where you get to play as the 4 characters that die throughout the story, like Minwu for example, and they get some pretty nice closure on thier stories! 😊

Oh dude I remember stumbling across that not even a month ago researching for another video, super neat! And thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Check the description and the end of the video if you haven't already!

Time Traveler spotted!

Im trying lol! I have one that'll be finished early November-ish, should be a cool one that almost everyone will enjoy, so I hope you'll be around for that!

Final Fantasy 2 is a game where I think it had a good idea, but the execution was really bad when it comes to the leveling system. It's a game I can't get into because of that and the difficulty scaling being thrown out the window at the end and the dungeon design being lackluster imo, but I respect it a lot because the failire of the leveling system here would eventually lead to the job system 3 has which is by far my favorite Final Fantasy mechanic

@@MamaLouiji let’s not forget the entire series of romancing saga (along with final fantasy legend 1-3)

No joke, this video is like two years old and I think about the fact I forgot to edit the text there at least once a week it haunts me lmfao

Thank you kindly Mr. Doopiss

Like the in-game story or the history surrounding the game? Either way, I think I have it covered, albeit the story summary I gave was pretty truncated because time, but at the end I have some conclusions regarding the games story itself?

Thanks for the support!!! Wait until my next one drops though, Ive been working on it for months and will set a new standard of quality for the channel! Appreciate your support Jon!

@@MamaLouiji I was curious, but did you use any of the recent books published about Earthbound in your research?

I own a lot of them just to future proof a Mother 2 video when I finally feel its right to cover it, but a lot of the related media just revolves around Mother 2 moreso than general series tidbits and Mother 1 unfortunately. I will be using them in the future, in fact my desk is very quickly becoming a growing mass of Earthbound related literature, but there just wasn't anything new I found related to the series conception, regardless books like Ask Iwata and Clyde Mandelin's Legends of Localization on the game are both really good!!

1 year later on the rewatch. Was confused but now laughing

😭😭😭

only putrid people make comparisons like that.

The purpose of that section was to draw a juxtaposition between the decisions made that could make the game incredibly unenjoyable to many against my unabashed fascination with several other parts of the game; the soundtrack, enemy design, etc. Pretty much every other part of the video is wholly positive so I feel having one section to ground myself as someone willing to look at something objectively was necessary to not undermine the video as a whole. It might've been missed or you might not have finished the video in its entirety when you wrote this comment, but my ending conclusion is that Earthbound Beginnings is a game I adore despite its shortcomings. At several points I acknowledge why the contentious parts ended up the way they did, but to call criticism of those poorly aged decisions moot because its an old game is entirely antithetical to the idea of the video: looking at an often overlooked game in a particularly infamous series through a modern lens, understanding its development, and understand why it's been forgotten when compared to its much more famous follow-ups. I can't overlook the random encounter problem in particular, you argue that the battles are part of the exploration but I disagree entirely. My problem wasn't really with the difficulty of the battles, beyond a few messy parts at the beginning prior to obtaining Lloyd and in late game at Mount Itoi (which if I recall are the only 2 parts I make jabs at but Im not 100% bc its been over a year since Ive watched this last), I wouldn't call the battles "challenging" as much as they are annoying. Due to the frequency of random encounters and access to the incredibly powerful equipment in Magicant VERY early you are often more than well prepared for combat scenarios (Once again, prior to obtaining Lloyd, Mt. Itoi, and other sparse occasions are exempt from this). The problem comes in when you are incredibly strong and are interrupted every few seconds for a battle, not one thats particularly exciting or difficult, but one thats incredibly easy and reliant on the player mashing the "A" button to get through the action selection and the following dialogue. It entirely breaks the games pacing and actively makes me, as a player, feel discouraged from exploring the world because the process of dealing with the random encounters is exceptionally obnoxious. Its like giving me access to explore 200 acres of wild land to my content, but every minute I have to stop and tie my shoes, at that rate why the hell dont I just get flip flops, y'know?

I explained my thought process more in my Zelda video, but I don't think the censorship of the religious stuff was motivated solely out of a fear of upsetting anyone with religious imagery in games, more so a act of respect? I think that their thought process was that some people might be offended that their religion appears in a game where zombies are crawling around and aliens invade Earth and might construe it as likening their beliefs to urban legends and folk-tales. I still think it's stupid too for the record lol

@@MamaLouiji I guess only American Christians would think this way 😅