Heard you stepped in dog crap in Yucca. Let's Play Mother/EarthBound Beginnings! [Finished]

[Cullen]

This one goes out to everyone who believes in silver linings and second chances.

The Game

At some point in the 80's, copywriter and general celebrity Shigesato Itoi decided he wanted to add video game auteurism to his already lengthy list of accomplishments and contacted Nintendo with a proposal for a Famicom RPG. The story of Mother's development is a pretty interesting yarn on its own, but that has been relayed by far more eloquent people than me and it would bloat the text here anyway. The point is, Itoi created a fairly popular RPG series that spanned 3 games and a handful of ports that are respected installments in the RPG annals in Japan and are lauded as cult classics in most of the rest of the world. I'm guessing the majority of you have at least heard of Earthbound, the quirky SNES game that inspired four thousand and eighty independent RPGs in the modern era, but we wouldn't have Earthbound without its predecessor in Mother, and I think this could always use a little more love!

The English version of this game actually has a pretty interesting history, entering the localization process and reaching the point where it had a fully completed translation with a more polished build of the game ready to be placed on actual cartridges. And some prototype cartridges were indeed made... which didn't really mean much as the project ended up being shelved and going unreleased. It was late in the NES' life cycle by the time the project had finished, the Super Nintendo was already out, and it was determined that the game was unlikely to be a financial success or even a wash if it was released, so they simply moved onto the sequel which had a mostly stand-alone narrative anyway. Because the project had reached the point where prototype cartridges were made though, Nintendo of America had this game collecting dust in the vault, and some cartridges managed to escape into the wild. The first experience most people had with this game in English was when an individual browsing eBay found a cart for the game going for 1,000 bucks and decided to snatch it up. Post sale, they were contacted by a rom hacker known as Demiforce who was interested in dumping the cart for its rom so the general public could play the previously unreleased game. A deal was struck, the cart was successfully dumped and the game circulated online with the title "Earth Bound Zero" to differentiate it from its more well known sequel. Fast forward to 2015, and Nintendo decided to release their own archived version of the game, giving it the subtitle Beginnings instead and posting it to the Wii U Virtual console. It was a pretty interesting release, truth be told, as it is identical to the Earth Bound Zero rom, thus putting to bed any doubt it may have been an enterprising translated rom hack with elaborate lore attached. You can also play the game on Switch now if you so desire, so the game continues to be widely available to newer generations!

With all that out of the way, we'll be taking a look at this surrealist gem of the NES/Famicom library, taking side long glances at the OG Famicom release to better appreciate what the English version of the game brought to the table.

The Let's Play

This is a nice and simple game, so we'll just be running through completing the story and scooping up the scattered sidequests and secrets the game has! I'll generally try to go about things in a way that communicates what the intended method to accomplish things is, but as an old RPG there are sometimes where you just have to wander around and see what you find. As previously mentioned, we'll also take a look at Mother for the Famicom at various points. The original release of the game was over time and budget for its development cycle, resulting in a game that has a lack of polish and some unfinished bits, and it's fun to compare and contrast it with its formerly unreleased NES port. Some of the changes and censorships are well known, but there are a handful of littler things that might escape the general knowledge pool of people who have played or know about this game. With that established,

The Videos

Part 1, Poltergeist
Part 2, Zoombies
Part 3, Life is But a Moment
Part 4, Boy Meets Girl
Part 5, Have Gun, Will Travel
Part 6, Teddy
Part 7, Last Dance
Part 8 (Finale), Love Song

Full LP Playlist

[Cullen]

As is so often the case, we begin our journey at Part 1! The game has a pretty interesting opening in contrast with its more widely known sequel. The meaning of the opening text scrawl will take its sweet time to become relevant, but keep it in the back of your mind! As is common for old NES RPGs, a lot of this game's progression is routed in talking to every NPC for the one or two that give you a valid clue on what to do and good ol' fashioned level grinding. I'll be sure to give recommendations on effective levels for each area we come across! In this first installment of the LP, we begin our quest and obtain 2 melodies. Like the opening text, it's best to keep these in the back of your mind just as Ninten does as they will be very important later.

One funny little detail that I forgot to mention while switching over to Mother for the Famicom is that Ninten's sprite was subtly altered for the international release, with the black line running through his center instead being a white stripe in EarthBound Beginnings. This is likely to try and make his sprite more closely resemble the striped shirt he wears in official artworks, but because the color of the stripe is the same as his skin, to me it looks like he has an undersized shirt with a pot belly in Beginnings.

[Cullen]

Part 2 is out! Podunk proves to be quite the problematic place to live currently, with children missing, berserk animals and the dead rising from the grave. But hey, it gives us quite a bit to do! There's not too much to say beyond what I already covered in the video, but there are a couple scattered points I'd like to emphasize,

-Be absolutely sure to grab the Melody in the Zoo and the Canary Village melody before moving onto the Mysterious Cave! We do need all the melodies to finish the game, and while you can't permanently miss them, you're liable to forget about these areas once you're past them unless you've been taking notes.

-Before entering the Mysterious Cave, make sure you have at least 1,200 dollars in the bank and preferably 1,510 as there are some important items to purchase coming up. If you're playing the Famicom version, be sure to grab this money before activating the rock in the Cave, as you won't have access to your banked funds for a little while in that version of the game.

-For the most part, our level doesn't matter too much at this stage. We will eventually stop to do some grinding again, but that'll be when we get our next party member. You'll probably naturally reach level 10 by the end of the Zoo, and that's more than enough for anything you have to deal with in the immediate future.

Next time, the game will be getting a little trippy.

[Cullen]

Part 3 is out! Magicant is certainly a welcoming enough place, with friendly people and unlimited Pizza, but we do have a quest to complete so an escape is necessary! Afterwards, we finally get our first permanent addition to the party, and Bein' Friends will be the overworld theme for the foreseeable future.

We actually missed a couple interesting enemies in Magicant, which in a normal playthrough is good luck but in an LP is unfortunate. In the town outskirts, you can run into Magic Snails, potentially two to an encounter. These guys have high defense and can draw closer to deal huge damage. If you encounter two of them and don't have a Gold Ring, your best choice is to run. If you decide to fight it out, they are vulnerable to Hypnosis so be sure to disable one of them, and then hit the awake one with Defense Down to deal reasonable damage. Rinse and repeat once the awake Snail is defeated. You can also run into Big Woodohs, a bulky enemy who if the first we encounter that can explode upon defeat! They'll deal ~30 damage when this happens, and since the scrolling HP mechanic introduced in Earthbound has yet to be introduced, this is flatly a huge wound you have to suffer and can potentially kill you if you're weak enough when it happens. Big Woodohs are worth 140 dollars a pop though, so it's not all bad if you encounter them.

Once you have the Onyx Hook, Magicant becomes a great base of operations, as you can warp back to it at any time and utilize the free healing services, plus upgrade your equipment as needed (remember that the armor stores in Magicant are the ONLY armor stores in the game!). If you want, you can even store your cash card in the NES version and rely on the Benevolent Old Man for getting money, though once we get Lloyd inventory space isn't that big of an issue anymore. Once we get another upgrade, the Onyx Hook becomes one of the best ways to quickly zip around the game.

Speaking of Lloyd! His stats are quite bad, but he is a warm body to soak up hits for us, so you could just have him Guard to serve as a meat shield. His Fight can increase by 1-3 per level, so if you're lucky he can actually be pretty close to Ninten in firepower. His Speed is horrible though, with a range of 0(!)-1 potentially gained per level. Not only does this mean Lloyd is almost always dead last in the turn order, his Defense is miserable in the late game once the defense gained from Magic Coins and Gold Rings isn't enough to cut it anymore. Still, he gets a serviceable amount of HP, and some of his battle items are quite good, though nowhere near the level of what Jeff in the sequel is capable of.

The next area is quite dangerous and a Level 1 Lloyd won't fly, so we'll do some training! As stated in the video, the preferred place to train in the NES version is Magicant. I fight the weaker enemies around the town until I can afford a Gold Ring for Lloyd, and then I return to the Crystal Cave. Within the Cave you'll frequently run into Ullrichs and Dadseyes, worth 65 and 53 dollars respectively! You can also get the family encounter (Dadeyes, Watcher and Momseyes) that is worth more than 100 dollars. With a Gold Ring on Lloyd, I can just hit Auto Battle and shut my brain off since he has enough Defense with it to not get obliterated by everything. You can grind to get all the Magicant equipment, but that's pretty overkill. Gold Rings, H20 Pendants and Boomerangs for Ninten and Lloyd are more than enough for the immediate trials. Depending on your encounter luck, Lloyd will end off between level 10-12 in this process. Note that every character in the game has their own unique EXP track, and all of them level up a fair deal faster than Ninten, so Lloyd isn't quite as far behind as you might expect. If you're playing the Famicom version, it's best to just stick to the valley south of Merrysville since you can't withdraw your bank funds in Magicant. There is an off chance that Lloyd will get demolished by Eagles starting out (or just get fried by PK Beam Gamma from Barbots), which if it happens just use the Onyx Hook to return to Magicant to revive him for free and then trek back out to Merrysville.

Just for an added fun bit of trivia, the Flying Men have a theme song but for whatever reason it never made it into the actual game. You can hear the full vocal version on the Mother Vocal soundtrack, which contained a variety of arranged music pieces based on the in-game music as well as the intended lyrics for said songs that obviously couldn't be included in an NES game.



A remix of this song would find its way into Earthbound, fittingly in the home of the Flying Men in that game's version of Magicant! The title for this part is in reference to the opening lines of the song, which incidentally were also referenced in the English fan translation for Mother 3, being one of the battle lines for everyone's favorite encounter: the Negative Man.

[Cullen]

Part 4 is out! With Lloyd geared and trained up, we're ready to... properly explore Merrysville! After which, we hit the main attraction of Duncan's Factory, which is best summed up with the Gamefaqs map for it.



Now I know that may look bad, but once you do know how to get through it, it is RELATIVELY quick. The main issue is getting through without getting too badly mauled as Lloyd needs to be alive by the end in order to activate the Rocket. There's plenty of items you can grab in here from Bombs to Balms (LifeUp Creams) but I stuck to what I considered the most important or unique items to grab. The Franklin's Badge and the Capsules are the most important, while the Super Spray can only be gotten here so I decided to swing by for it. The route you take to get it is the fastest way to clear the dungeon anyway, so it works out. This was actually the first time I took this route though, so you can see me fumble a bit as I get my bearings. I didn't really dwell on it, but the Super Spray is an upgraded variant of the Insecticide, dealing huge damage to them and being reusable! Now if only there were more insect enemies in the game... The lone PSI Stone is tempting, but we'll get all the stones we need in a future area so this one can easily be passed over.

You must clear the roadblock to Union Station eventually, but funnily enough, Union Station itself is completely optional, it's just what's past it that you must eventually reach. With some difficulty, you can make your way to Snowman on foot, before even recruiting Lloyd if you so desire. This is tedious but easier to do in the Famicom version where they never got around to actually putting enemies in the tunnels. There's not much point to this beyond a fun little route mix up if you want to spice up replays.

Since we're at this stage of the game, time for some more fun trivia! Did you know this game had an official Light Novel adaptation that was written by someone who had yet to finish the game but also had complete creative freedom over the story? Well that is a thing and boy does it show in that book's writing! The reason I bring it up is because Ana is actually the point-of-view protagonist of the novel, with the book actually starting with her meeting with Ninten and Lloyd in Snowman. Mother series focused Youtube MonkeyNess did a readthrough/breakdown of the book, mostly just going over its plot but giving some insight into why certain decisions with it were made. Give this a watch if you're curious,



With Ana in the party, we have another bit of grinding to do, but it's the last we'll be doing for... like 2 videos I think. I more care about money and getting her geared up though, she'll get the levels she needs incidentally. Most people return to Reindeer and Spookane after doing this, but we are actually going to follow up on Ana's desires and travel to Youngtown, as it'll let us complete the tasks we have in that part of the world map with a bit more efficiency.

[Cullen]

Part 5 is out! Getting Ana up to speed was a quicker process than doing so for Lloyd since we had money already from Duncan's Factory, we didn't need to buy her a weapon and she levels up just about the fastest of anyone in the game. With that taken care of, we take a trip off to Young Town before clearing up loose ends in Reindeer and Spookane. Typically people head to Young Town last, but doing so first lets us grab Teleport which greatly cuts down on backtracking and lets us use Magicant as a true base of operations since we can just Teleport out of it once our business there is done.

No particular points to cover that I didn't adequately address in the video, but that doesn't mean I am completely without trivia! Did you know that this LP qualifies as a remake?

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... D288BFFE09

I've been at this LP lark for quite some time, this thing is 15 years old! Looking back on this, I'm actually surprised at the efficiancy of the playthrough, albeit that is partially due to circumstances and differing priorities. This LP was made when Youtube still had the global 15 minute time limit (Possibly it even started when it was still an 11 minute limit, I'm not sure) so I had to get through the game quickly and decisively in order for it to have decent pacing. This meant I couldn't really stop to smell the roses and I largely ignored NPC dialogue and sidequests since I viewed them as unnecessary fluff. Funny how our priorities change over the years! I also made use of the old standby of super speeding the footage and setting music to clear long and difficult areas such as Duncan's and Rosemary Manor, classic stuff. I do fondly remember keeping a scratch pad with a checklist of everything I wanted to accomplish in a video, which is probably something I should do more these days as going completely off the cuff as I do these days does result in some things falling through the cracks. It's not particularly good, but it's a fun curiosity to look back on, and if you enjoy video content from cringy teenagers with chronic head colds, knock yourself out.

[Cullen]

Part 6 is out! After a lull in activity on the melody front since Part 2, we're back to getting at least one melody per video! That aside, believe it or not we're already at the end game. This is actually quite short when you know what you need to do (and spare your viewing audience the level grinding). Getting Teddy in Ellay is the last thing we're intended to do before entering the game's final area of Mt. Itoi, though obviously there's still a handful of secondary things to check out plus the Dragon to defeat.

I didn't get to mention this in the video, but Yucca Desert does also have a different name in the Famicom version. As you'd expect, it fits into the Holiday theming and is know as Advent Desert instead.

There are a handful more bone piles you can talk to in the desert, though most of them have nothing but jokes for you.

The only thing mandatory in Yucca Desert is the singing cactus, which when I was heading toward Young Town in the previous video I could have easily detoured to collect and then moved on with the game. That's not very exciting or informative though, is it?

While the Monkey Maze is optional, it's worth popping in to collect at least a couple of the Psi Stones so that you have them for Mt. Itoi. 4th D Slip is going to be seeing a lot of use there, so better stock up to account for anything!

Much like Ana, Teddy is completely optional (and coincidentally enough you can't get him without Ana). The game's ending does assume you pick him up, but you can totally just go straight to Mt Itoi and never encounter him if you so choose. That said, Teddy is incredibly powerful and makes getting to Level 25 for the Dragon a breeze, so he's worth grabbing just for that if you aren't already at that point. We had the Sword in storage so we were able to save money on a weapon for him, but in truth the Sword is only marginally stronger than the Survival Knife (a 6 or 8 point difference iirc) so it's not necessary to have that for him to be effective. I actually did sell the Sword in the Famicom version because I didn't really feel like detouring to store because of that. With him geared up, we can do our final dedicated grind of the game. I have no particular desired end level for the game once we reach 25, but if you're playing along at home, I'd recommend hunkering down to get Ninten to Level 31. At that point, he learns Life Up Beta and PSI Shield Beta, which are potent in his hands with his high speed and are highly valuable for managing the enemies on Mt Itoi if you don't want to just 4th D Slip away from almost everything.

[Cullen]

Part 7 is out! With our last bit of grinding done and dusted, we can collect the 6th Melody from the Dragon and begin our initial ascent of Mt Itoi, the game's final area! It's important to note that most of the enemies on Mt Itoi are ridiculously overtuned and are more balanced for characters that are Level 40 instead of around 25. It takes quite a bit of time to get that strong though, and the game can be completed well below those levels.

You'll have more money than you know what to do with after your last level grinding session, so may as well spend it on some joke items! Funnily enough, even the Abel doesn't give you anything material for the Tofu you provide him, his hint is the only genuinely useful reward for that detour.

If you're not planning on grinding Ninten to Level 29, definitely pick up a few LifeUp Creams from the generous drug pusher Doctor before going up Mt Itoi. We won't be using them for random battles, but they will improve our action efficiency for a specific battle later on.

To be blunt, fighting most things on Mt Itoi is not worth the effort as the only mandatory encounters left are ones where you stats don't actually matter (more or less). I'd recommend keeping you PSI stones at the ready and 4th D Slipping like no tomorrow. To highlight a couple things you should ABSOLUTELY run from,

-Grizzlies. We saw one in the video, these guys are obscenely overpowered and will almost assuredly kill someone if you try to fight it out with them. They can be felled with PK Beam Gamma if you have it, but good luck getting Ana to actually fire it off without getting flattened in the process.

-Rockgoyles. These guys frequently come in groups of 3 and can use Freeze Gamma and Freeze Omega. Freeze Omega deals 80-100 damage to your entire party, so if you're unlucky enough these guys can immediately team wipe you.

-Juanita. Same as the Grizzly, ridiculously overtuned, enough defense to wall out any physical attacks, and immune/resistant to most PSI. Often paired with a Super Energy to make them even more impossible to kill.

-Omega and Giga Borgs. Once again, just too strong to be worth fighting it out with.

There are more reasonable enemies such as Gargoyles, Last Starmen and Star Miners that can be engaged if you are in good enough condition, though note the Last Starmen can come in groups of 4 and that can be perilous.

Ninten and Ana's dance only happens if you have Teddy in the party. Reminder that you can completely ignore getting Teddy in Ellay and come straight to Mt Itoi, which is actually required if you want to finish the game with alternative party compositions.

[Cullen]

At long(?) last, we've reached the end of Mother/Earthbound Beginnings! Melodies will be learned, secret relationships will be uncovered, and the true final battle against the one responsible for all the strange phenomena happening in America will be waged! Much like how most of the final dungeon was spent avoiding as much combat as possible, brute force will not be sufficient for the final boss fight.

And that's a wrap! I hope you enjoyed this game, I certainly had a fun time throwing this LP together. I think the best LPs I do are the ones where I learn even more about games I already knew a good amount about, and I did end up discovering a bunch of new things in my practice playthroughs for the game and even during recording itself. It was nice to revisit this and give a bit more love to a game that I feel like I previously did a slight disservice to with coverage of it on my channel.

I don't want to say too much in this post because I feel that it's always best to let a Finale video speak for itself, but there is one thing I ran up on time to mention before I cut the recording: There are a variety of parties you can take into the final battle via unintuitive methods, but the ending will always be the same, and rather amusingly Earthbound Beginning's epilogue will always assume you played the game the intended way with all party members recruited. Here's to the could-have-beens on that!