SNES

EarthBound

Trivia

Ness appears as a playable character in the super smash bros. fighting games. However, he uses moves he didn't learn in EarthBound, such as PK fire and PK thunder.

Jeff appears as an assist trophy in the Wii game Super Smash Bros.: Brawl.

Contributed by Sciere (119175) on Apr 01, 2008.

In Peaceful Rest Valley, you'll encounter a large statue of a pencil blocking your path. At that point, you'll receive the Pencil Eraser and Apple Kid will jokingly warn you about using the machine nearby a place that sells pencils.

In the japanese version, the statues aren't pencils but instead octopus statues. So in the japanese version, Apple kid will joke about using the machine nearby a "Takoyaki" (grilled octopus) restaurant which wouldn't make sense to some United States players.

Shigesato Itoi, the creator of Earthbound, added a few personal details to the game.

Firstly, Ness's father never appears in person. According to an article from an issue of Edge magazine(either a classic feature on Earthbound or a review of Mother 3), this was inspired by the fact that Itoi's own father was absent for a great part of his childhood.

Secondly, the dialogue of Giygas was inspired by a traumatic childhood experience where Itoi mistakenly walked into an adult movie theatre and caught a glimpse of a sex/rape scene in the 1957 movie "Kenpei and the Dismembered Beauty".

In the Japanese version of the game, at a certain point, the main character Ness is nude. This was changed to having Ness appear in his pajamas for the North American release. However, on close inspection of the strategy guide (page 111), there is an image of Ness in the nude on the bottom left of the page. This was an obvious oversight on the part of Nintendo of America.

Since this game also came with a strategy guide the box was far larger than any other SNES game box.

One of the enemies is a tribute to the marine from Doom. You can see it in the screenshots section.

At one point in the Japanese version of Earthbound (Mother 2), Pokey and Picky are punished by their dad for coming home late. He takes them off-screen, and a noise is heard resembling hitting/slapping. If you talk to Pokey afterwards, he complains that his "butt hurts." When Mother 2 was translated into Earthbound in the US, the "hitting" sound effect was changed to a shorter, more comical effect, resembling "yelling". When you talk to Pokey afterwards, instead of complaining about his butt, he whines that his dad took away his dessert privileges.

While Nintendo's censorship practices during this time were considered harsh and often ridiculous in some games, this censoring of Earthbound was justified (unlike the censoring in the other areas of the game).

Included a card of scratch-'n-sniff spots, featuring monsters from the game. I recall the mushroom one smelling extremely bad.

As of May 2004, A re-release for the Game Boy Advance, featuring both Mother (NES, 1990-unreleased in the united states) and Mother 2 (Earthbound). Details are still sketchy, but sites like gamespot have been following its progress for some time, check there for further details. Also unknown is if the game will be brought to the english-speaking world if it does achieve release in Japan.

At the end of the last song, Ending 3 - Smiles and Tears (5:05), during the credits the words "I Miss You" are digitally spoken, presumably by Ness.

As the U.S. audience knows it, EarthBound is a stand-alone game. In Japan, however, it's the sequel to an NES/Famicom RPG simply called "Mother". Henceforth its alternate title, "Mother 2: Revenge of Gigyas!".

However, the U.S. ALMOST got the NES Mother (it was fully translated and everything by Nintendo), but it was pulled at the last minute, probably due to lackluster sales of another RPG Nintendo brought Stateside: Dragon Warrior. (For the record Nintendo ended up having to give away a free copy of Dragon Warrior to everyone who subscribed to Nintendo Power.)

EarthBound was packaged with an Official Nintendo Player's Guide, which also doubled as its manual.