I thought this was pretty cool. I'm not sure what will result from this but man, you Mother fans are dedicated. Mother 3 is really good so far and I would love to see Earthbound on the VC.

http://kotaku.com/5980544/mistreated-mother-fans-swarm-miiverse-to-beg-for-earthbound

I LOVE the last one. I gotta get in on this, too.

WE WANT EARTHBOUND!!!!

It's probably not going to happen without some big edits though, which is why this is taking so long. There was also a more recent article pointing out even more stuff.
http://earthboundcentral.com/2009/02/ea ... al-issues/

Even so, the team to do the edits wouldn't take much(essentially rom-hacking), and to my knowledge, Mother 3 does not have any copyright issues.
I'm also curious as to why Japan gets away with this, especially since groups like The Who sell music in Japan, too. I'm going to assume it has something to do with the massive entertainment media lobbying in the USA, and Nintendo feels like they won't win here.

Though Mother 3... why not? I mean, they can't use the whole "BUT IT'S TRANS WOMEN AS GUARDIANS WE WILL BE FLAYED BY CHRISTIANS AND PARENTS" thing again, I mean they have Mass Effect on Wii U. I hope they at least do something like that for people. We'd take like any love at this point.
EDIT: Nevermind, many music problems: http://cruiseelroy.net/2009/01/mother-3 ... allusions/

OH MY GOSH the legal problems list. It obviously has spoilers, but I am thinking that when Dray and I can do some more Earthbound very soon, I'll print the list and just mention them whenever we stumble upon them in-game.

Also, the sheer nostalgia from the Kotaku posts.



For myself, I had a similar story. Kinda.

I got good grades all the time. It's not really a brag, it was the simple truth... so I usually got rewarded for report cards.

My mom's ex-boyfriend rented Earthbound. I had been playing any RPGs he brought in ever since I learned to read. Earthbound was no different, and I had played a couple quality SNES RPGs beforehand, so my first thought was "the menu and graphics are weird" since I hadn't touched a Dragon Quest/Warrior game at that point. After watching him play it more, I started to get really into the story, so I asked if we could keep renting it until the game was beaten. After some time though- I wanted to do my own playthrough, too(it was the pre-internet and selective game days where I would beat a game twice in a row kinda after watching basically a live LP of it, haha)... so we kept renting it. And kept renting it. Finally my mom just said it was okay to buy the game at Toys R Us. If you don't know, Toys R Us never kept its games in the actual game department in a lot of stores. What usually happened was that there were plastic sleeves with the cover art and back box description on each side, and a piece of paper in each holder graced with the price, bar code, and item name inside. I found Earthbound for $20, fully complete... no one wanted Earthbound at all then. And this was a huge deal, since SNES RPGs usually cost a lot more than that. I excitedly grabbed that, and took it to my mom in the store- at the checkout, she wrote well... a check(ancient times for all), and then after that, the ever-so-faithful register stapler was used to attach said receipt to the piece of paper akin to a golden ticket. After that, you took it to the game lockhouse-cage thing that had see-through glass by the registers, and stacks upon stacks of games and consoles. I finally had Earthbound in my hands, and I also obtained the guide obviously with it... which I remember being excited about since I bought all manner of Player's Guides back then that have been lost to time.

But yeah, good stuff. I'd love to see kids actually be able to play it on the Wii U, but I also think it just won't happen at this point.

Sadly, you're probably right. I've been dying to get an Earthbound cart for a long time because this is is a game I don't want to emulate. If I can get it off the VC that's basically emulation, sure, but Id rather play It on my tv using the pro controller than ZSnes. It sounds weird, I know, but eh.

Here is a link to Loki's retrospective of Earthbound. A great read: http://gamesjournal.wordpress.com/2011/04/29/earthbound-and-heres-why/

That's also a great story, Fay, I wish I played this back then so I could have the same nostalgia.

Loki is such a cool dude. Seriously.

But yeah, I think it would just feel good to give some money to it. I think that's why I care- because ZSNES isn't the same thing. Like you said Wii U is still emulation, but it just feels right to me. Can't explain that. Though with the Wii U VC crap, I'm glad I own like no Virtual Console games already. Well I do, but I left my Wii at home... with like 3 games other people bought on my console(when the Wii was sparse and I was at college), and also 2 I bought- Harvest Moon and something else.

Written counts too! I'll scrawl something on there later today.

And omgosh from that blog post:



Reaction:

My previous post got deleted. So this is just a repost! Sorry!

That would be nice.

All this legal issue crap is BS. There shouldn't be so much trouble over one game. I'm glad I managed to get me an original copy. It may have cost me $90 (plus shipping), but it was... actually, I don't know if it was worth it yet. We're still in Onette. =P

Onett.

Anyway, I linked this article in the chat yesterday. Dem crazy EB fans.

It's been two months since we last recorded, so sue me. =P

Actually, sue me! Though with the pronunciation, I can see the extra e. Maybe cus' I took French.

The game has dropped on Virtual Console today.

I know what I'll be playing tonight!

Not only has it launched, Nintendo has gone all out on it.

Check out the launch trailer (Kind of spoilerific, if you care about that):


But get this, Nintendo has uploaded a digital version of the original player's guide onto their site!

http://earthbound.nintendo.com/playersguide/#/15

Side note: The game is rated T now, whereas the SNES game was rated K-A (Which doesn't exist as an ESRB rating anymore).

YESSS.

And they're doing it right! The guide is just so much flavor alongside the actual game. There's a reason it was always included with the game. The art, the little articles about towns, it's all great. Everyone should check that out. I am getting an eShop card today! And I will be playing through.

ALSO. That trailer is fresh to death.

Also, me and Dray need to get back on LPing it. If I play a bit ahead, I should be able to help more since I'll be much more fresh.

Edit: I have it now!

I feel great that I spammed Nintendo for it a couple times. "Hey you, yeah you, Nintendo."


Based on this:

Played an hour of this last night and it's charm is slowly winning me over. The dialogue is cute, silly, and gave me the occasional chuckle. I really dig the style it has, its far more interesting to me than a specific "Fantasy" series if you catch my drift.