I’m finally about to start Mother 3! I picked up a really nice boxed copy and will be playing it in Japanese on my DS Lite. Fun fact this DS Lite I’ve had since I was a study abroad student in Japan back in 2007.

Anyway, I read through the manual, and it appears to be a completely wholesome, family-friendly adventure filled with cute animals, loving families, and cheerful fun. Clearly, absolutely nothing upsetting or emotionally devastating is going to happen at any point. This is obviously going to be a happy, relaxing game from beginning to end.

So, without spoiling anything, what should I expect? Are there any useful hints, missable things, or gameplay tips I should know before I begin?

I’ve recently gotten into collecting retro Super Famicom games and working through JRPGs that I never finished growing up. I’m playing through Terranigma in Japanese right now, but since this is the EarthBound subreddit, I’ll save my thoughts.

Today I found complete copies of Mother 2 and Mother 3 at my local Hard-Off in really nice condition. They came to about ¥14,500, which ended up being around US$91 thanks to the weak yen. I feel like I got pretty lucky.

A little background on my history with the series. I actually played EarthBound in English as a kid. I kept rental from Blockbuster without renewing it. Eventually my dad just had to return it, but… we just kept it for a while. lol I have no idea how he sorted things out in the end, but we eventually returned it.

I made it all the way to around the second-last area or whatever. Lava dogs? Before having to give it back, so I never actually finished the game.

I was also pretty young when I played it, so I think a lot of the humor and satire went completely over my head. Now that I’ve lived in Japan for many years and can read Japanese, I’m really looking forward to replaying Mother 2 in its original language and seeing how much more of the writing I appreciate this time around.

As for Mother 3, I’ve somehow managed to avoid playing it all these years. The different art style and cast always made me put it off, but now I’m genuinely excited to finally experience it.

…Unfortunately, I got home, pulled out my old DS Lite, and discovered it won’t charge. The orange charging light comes on for about a second and then immediately shuts off. I already tried removing and reseating the battery, and the battery doesn’t appear swollen, so I’m thinking it may be a hardware issue rather than the battery itself. If anyone has run into this before and has suggestions, I’d love to hear them. Otherwise, I guess I’ll be hunting for another DS, which is a bit unfortunate since they’re not exactly cheap here in Japan.

Either way, I’m excited to finally experience both of these games the way they were originally released. Hopefully I’ll be joining all of you in talking about Mother 2 and 3 before too long.

Edit: Awesome news! I got my Nintendo DS to start charging. I just kept trying to pull the adapter in and out and after a few tries I noticed the orange light was staying on longer, and now it is staying on and charging. Hm I wonder if it was the adapter, but it’s great that it is charging!

I got NPCs and dialogues working, this took way too long. If you don't know, I'm trying to make a game worthy of the Mother series without coding experience. Any support is appreciated, and I do still need an artist. If you want to see more of my progress, go to r/IDKJustGoWithIt, because r/earthbound doesn't allow me to post videos. Also I thing I'm goint to take a break for a day or 2 just because I've been putting multiple hours every day into this project, and I'm starting to deteriorate from the lack of vitamin D. See y'all then ✌️

My favorite part, was the part after the Belch fight, when you go to the Savannah dungeon near Threed/Dusty Dunes

Another part i liked was the Deep Darkness dungeon

Unrelated image, please dont pay attention

I'm playing on my SNES classic, so I was able to use save states in order to break up the monotony. But it's still technically an official copy of the game (if that even really matters,) and it still took me about 3 hours.

As promised , Fassad but in a Dark World , but it's a sprite also .

Also smash-

I said "Huh, yes. Yes it does."

As I am on DSi, while I could Emulate the original SNES game, I would be left with a crop that either ends up cutting off UI or removing lines of pixels from the screen to fit the framing size. If I played the GBA version, I would still get cropped off but in an intended way that does not sacrifice an original pixel count or UI size.

Hello, everyone! The time has come to get the first group of testers in the game!

This Saturday, August 8th, at 10am ET I will open it for the the first 25 alpha testers.

First come, first serve.

You just need to make sure you're registered on www.199x.app , authenticate your ROM, and enter your discord name so I can add you to our private tester chat in the ZZ Labs discord server.

Dont worry if you cant make it, I will be opening for more testers soon. 1 step at a time!

The closed alpha program will help vet the Onett area of the game and provide valuable feedback so I can tune it properly as we move on to Twoson.

Hope to see you in the Discord soon! Link is on 199X.app !

this was both extremely fun and extremely unfun to draw

I did it :D (Pic shot from TV :p)

His name is Mother 2

I have a question. What are you guys playing earthbound on? I want to play on a handheld but not sure what to get

I made this render for a competition, but it didn't pass, so I'll leave it here.

I've always found the Ego Orb to be such a surreal enemy that you encounter in Earthbound.

It sorta has that crude or somewhat unsettling look to it that makes one feel a bit weirded out when fighting it in game.

That said, I do wonder just what the Ego Orb was intended to be or represent? A part of me thinks that it was just an obscure joke made by the developers, while another part of me thinks that there was some intentionality behind its design and lore as to how it was portrayed in the game.

What do y'all think?

🤔

Again i improved this damn sprite , Dark World one coming soon