Go back to the 1980's. An RPG was a game involving Knights, Dragon, Wizards, and other such Medieval things, where you grew stronger by battling and gaining experience, and where you found new party members with special skills to aid you in your quest to save the world.
Now go to July 27, 1989. A new kind of RPG was released, one without the classic Medieval settings. instead of common RPG weaponry such as Swords, Spears, Bows, and Clubs, you had to save the world with Baseball bats, frying Pans, Laser guns, and Butter knives. Other features that broke the RPG mold included Magic being replaced with Psychic powers, Inns with Hotels, Goblins, skeletons, mutants, and other such creatures with Stray dogs, Hippies, Crows, aliens, and the enemy that strikes terror into everyone's heart; The Fish. And the knight off to save his kingdom from an evil warlock, lost his part as main character to a young teenager discovering his psychic powers and investigating a polterguest attacks. This game, was known as Mother.
EarthBound 0 (Mother's North American counterpart) was never released. Nintendo translated the game to English, but never released the game. In 1998, a group of ROM translators discovered that Nintendo had auctioned off a prototype of the EarthBound 0 cartridge. They contacted the individual who had acquired the game, and made an agreement to borrow the game for a few hundred dollars so they could dump the cartridge to a ROM file. That is how we get to play EarthBound 0 now.
EB and EB0 are very similar, but do not appear to have any connection. Although perhaps it may come together when Mother 3 is released in Japan...
|
