Let us first travel to Happy Happy Village
Don’t spit out your Cup of Lifenoodles, but there’s some interesting EarthBound news on the horizon. Fangamer and Jeff Benson, whom you may recognize from EarthBound Saga on YouTube, are collaborating on a movie! Now you can spit them out. EarthBound, USA centers on the re-emergence of EarthBound as a cult hit in the USA, as well as the enthusiasts who support it. After trying to keep the project quiet for sometime, the cat was finally let out of the bag by none other than Shigesato Itoi in a tweet where he mentioned an interview by the EarthBound USA team.
The Mother/EarthBound series has traveled down quite the rocky road, especially for US gamers. The first game in the series (Mother) ended up completely localized for a US release as Earth Bound (with a space) and was slated to be released in the fall of 1991. However, due to the new release of the Super Nintendo, Nintendo of America decided against gambling on an NES game and a release for North America was quietly canceled.
Mother 2, the game that we know as EarthBound (no space), was plagued by a horrible marketing campaign. In addition, players were skeptical of this quirky, modern RPG. These issues and more prompted mediocre sales for EarthBound in the US.
Mother 3 (EarthBound 64/EarthBound 2) had an extremely long development cycle that took it from the 64DD, to the 64, and finally to the GBA. Plans were never made to localize this game to the United States, despite outcry from the fans.
All these developments lead to a very interesting and dramatic story. Given the intense love for EarthBound that its fans have as well as the stubborn refusal to recognize them from Nintendo, I think we’re in for a real treat as the saga of the EarthBound cult following is told in professional motion picture format for the first time. A Kickstarter should be popping up shortly, with a tentative release date for 2015. Now it’s time to go dust off the old cart and play!
EarthBound, USA Announced: Fan Documentary Featuring Interview with Shigesato Itoi [NeoGAF]
