MOTHER 1/Trivia

• Fan Nickname:
  • The game is widely known as EarthBound Zero. Its North American release was canceled at the last minute, and the Dub Name Change title, Earth Bound, was later reused, albeit without the space, for the SNES sequel MOTHER 2. When a prototype of the game was discovered and dumped, after a few modifications to get it to work properly on the emulators of the day, the releasers tacked "Zero" onto the title screen to differentiate the release from the nonfunctional ROM releases, also acting as a nod to it sharing the name of its sequel, and the name stuck for a while. The name used for the English Virtual Console release is EarthBound Beginnings, although the in-game title screen is unaltered.
  • Before the official character names were known by the English-speaking fandom (as the characters were unnamed in the original manual save for Ninten in screenshots), players somehow came up with the name "Jack" for Teddy, and considered the other three Ness, Jeff and Paula. This didn't last long, although coincidentally before the release of MOTHER 2, Itoi stated that he wanted it to be ambiguous as to whether those characters were the same ones from the first MOTHER.
• Fan Translation: At the time of the discovery of the English prototype, a group of fans had been working on their own fan translation; eventually, they were the ones who obtained the prototype and released the ROM to the general public, and for a while there were those who saw that as somewhat suspicious. Full story here.
  • There was also a Fan Translation of the MOTHER 1 portion of the Game Boy Advance Compilation Re-release MOTHER 1+2 that brings the text more in line with the original Japanese version, such as making all the towns named after holidays, as well as renaming Giegue to his proper international name, "Giygas" in order to tie it in with its sequel better.
• Milestone Celebration: The release of EarthBound: Beginnings on the Wii U coincides with the 20th anniversary of the EarthBound SNES game in North America.
• No Export for You: The NES version is a particularly interesting case - it was complete and ready to go, then it simply didn't happen, likely because of both difficult marketing, the end of the NES lifespan, the fact that EarthBound began production right around the time of localization and was expected to be released early in the SNES' life (as opposed to spending an unprecedented four years in Development Hell) and the fact that the ambitiously expanded ROM size and packaging plans would've made production unnecessarily expensive; thus, from its unearthing in 1998 to its Virtual Console release in 2015, the only way to play the game was through emulation and reproduction cartridges. The GBA version could be because of rumored legal issues said to doom the franchise's western presence, but it could simply have been out of lack of perceived interest, as EarthBound already tanked in America 8 years prior (though this is often attributed nowadays to bad marketing).
  • Finally averted as of June 14th, 2015. The EarthBound-related announcement fans had been expecting for E3 turned out to be a Wii U Virtual Console release under the name EarthBound Beginnings.
• Word of Dante: The live-action commercial's depiction of Ninten is the basis of a vast majority of fanart of this game - adopting his neckerchief and (less frequently) slightly different clothing here as a way to differentiate Ninten from Ness, who is by far the more famous wearer of their standard clothing.