Mother

Mother is probably my favorite NES game. The characters and story are phenomenal and are the greatest part of the game. Why is that you ask? Well that is because with this being an early RPG, it requires a lot of grinding and can get very repetitive. But if you are willing to look past that and trudge through it, you will find a game with a surprisingly deep and thought out story for an NES game. On the other hand you can always play the GBA version or the 25th anniversary version which are much easier than the English NES version.

Since I can't read Japanese (yet) I had to play the English translated ROM of EBZ. While you can clearly see the roots of the game that proceeded Earthbound, the sense of humor is a little less evident. EBZ is also harder than EB, which decreases the fun of playing it somewhat. It's irritating to keep getting into a battle when you take a step.

The story and acute sense of adventure are what really make this game work. It's fun to travel to new towns and meet all the weird people there (like the kid who says "Have you played Super Mario Bros. 7? I'm still playing part 3"). Along the way you get to fight flying saucers, hippies, Starmen and a large amount of other enemies. The music doesn't have anything on EB, but it's catchy enough.

If you have NESticle, I'd urge you to get the ROM of this game (unless you have a Famicom and can read Japanese) and give this unfairly neglected game a go.

It was cool to finally play this game as I had played Earthbound (Mother II) for the SNES only last year and I was curious to see how the first one would be. I finally had my chance as I got it for the WIIU virtual console and I managed to play through it and win. Not easy though as this game suffers from the same thing a lot of the early role playing games from this era suffered from and that is being a bit too vague in areas and intensely difficult. The narrative is also not very strong which makes the story not quite as good either. It helped that I had read so many things on the story before playing; otherwise, I would not have a clue as to what was going on. I shudder at the thought of playing this one back in the day when there was no internet and no online strategy guides as I missed two of the musical notes one is supposed to get right off the bat and I do not think I would have ever stumbled upon that bird sanctuary without a guide. I did not have this problem with Earthbound, I found everything easily, but when it was released role playing games had been improved with better stories, more helpful townsfolk and they made it so one basically knew where they were going. I think Final Fantasy IV was the first one I had played that really changed how I saw those types of games and made me love them. Before it, things were just extremely difficult! The story is not readily apparent. If you were playing this and you had not played the second game or read up on the first would be very strange and at the the end of the day you would realize it was an alien invasion, but it takes a bit for that to become apparent.

A boy wakes up to find his lamps and such attacking and he soon embarks on a quest to search out the cause. Right away if you played the second game first you could see a problem with the narrative. Why is this kid doing this? In the second game, a character named Buzz Buzz kind of pushed our hero into the quest, here he just kind of goes. Well, Ninten will go to many towns and do many quests in search of musical notes, musical notes he needs for a queen who lives in a strange world that does not seem like it is part of Ninten's world. He will also find some new friends to aid him on his quest.

The game play is standard visit towns and try to figure out what to do. This is made immensely more difficult due to the fact you really have to search at times for the area you need and while doing so you are under constant assail from enemies. It is random battles and they are at times brutal! I literally would fight an enemy and take a step and be attacked again. In the second game you see the enemies on the map and if the enemy is a pushover the battle is won automatically by you. Not here, you have to fight and fight and fight some more! Like the second game, the first portion of the game is made extremely difficult due to the fact you are fighting solo. You can get this bird people to help in the queen's world, but they do not last all that long. Suffice to say, I died a lot! Finding things is hard too, as I had no idea that bird sanctuary was even there until I read a guide because I could not get out of Magicant (queen's world's name) and I also learned I missed a musical note at the zoo in the form of a singing monkey! After that, I constantly had to go back to the guide out of fear of missing something else.

Overall, the game is okay. I do understand that this game was a first of its kind, but too many games from the era were like this and that did not make them any less frustrating and at times very annoying. Fantasy Star is another that was like this one, in fact, all of those were like this with the exception of the fourth. They were just a bit too difficult at times to figure out what you were supposed to do and where you were supposed to go. With that being said, it was nice to fight the villain of the second game in his original form, before he was a nightmare! Though I was hoping to get a bit more insight into his character.