Retro Gaming Australia

Japanese translation blog Yomuka has posted an English version of the three way interview between Shigeru Miyamoto, Satoru Iwata (then HAL Laboratory President) and Mother series creator Shigesato Itoi which was posted not long after the official announcement of the cancellation of the Nintendo 64 version of Mother 3 (known to us as Earthbound 64).

The interview is long, but goes into a lot of detail about where the game was at, what was going wrong with it and why the cancellation occurred.

It’s a fascinating read.

Finally. A few days ago, the Super Nintendo RPG classic Earthbound was released for the Wii U Virtual Console.

Until now, Earthbound had never been released in PAL regions. Many of us have been eagerly awaiting this digital release, with it representing our first opportunity to play this much loved and much raved about game. When Earthbound originally released in North America in 1995 it was accompanied by a Player’s Guide, so Nintendo have made a digital version of this guide available on the game’s official web site – it has also been optimized for use on the Wii U GamePad, so it makes for a rather nice little bonus.

Earthbound is currently available on the Wii U Virtual Console for AU$13.00/US$9.99, which is a tad (read: a lot) cheaper than purchasing a physical version of the original SNES release on eBay.

Following a successful Kickstarter campaign, new publishing outfit Boss Fight Books will be releasing a number of books on classic video games. Each book will take what the publisher describes as a “critical, creative, historical, and personal look at a single classic video game.”

Five books have been announced at this time: Earthbound, Galaga, Super Mario Bros 2, ZZT and Jagged Alliance 2. The Earthbound book is the first planned release with a tenative release date of December 2013.

The Kickstarter campaign still has 23 days to go, so you can snap up all five books for the early bird price of $US25 for the digital version, or $US100 for both the print and digital.

After many years and many requests from western audiences, Nintendo has finally announced a re-release of the classic RPG Earthbound.

Earthbound, or Mother 2 in Japan, saw a release in North America in 1995 on the Super Nintendo and has since become one of the most sought after video game releases – with a cart only copy of the title currently fetching US$150+ on eBay. When Nintendo announced Mother 2‘s presence in Japan’s Wii U Virtual Console Trial Campaign line-up, fans cried out even louder for a re-release in the West. Lucky for us, Nintendo heard our pleas and have responded – with Mr Satoru Iwata happily announcing the games release during the latest Nintendo Direct.

Expect to see Earthbound available to download on your Wii U thorough the Virtual Console service sometime this year – in both North America and Europe. Hooray.

An example of how crap advertising can sink a genuinely good game.

EarthBound, or Mother 2: Gyiyg Strikes Back, is the second in a series of RPGs developed by APE Inc and HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo. The series was created by notable Japanese author Shigesato Itoi. It is the only game in the series released outside of Japan, and one of the most heavily demanded re-releases. Unfortunately, due to a variety of potentially copyright infringing issues and large royalty payments to Mr Itoi, Nintendo refuses to re-release the game on Virtual Console, or publish the Game Boy Advance port and sequel. As a result, the asking price for a copy of the game has shot through the roof.

Search for EarthBound on eBay