16 Bits

Super Famicom Box Art

Unlike most Super Famicom games, Mother 2 was encased in an all-red box with its logo in large print. For EarthBound’s art, a golden Starman Deluxe stands in front of the psychedelic combat background and Ness can be seen in the reflection of his visor. EarthBound also included a full-sized Player’s Guide.

Porky

Ness’s neighbor, Pokey Minch, was named Porky in Mother 2. The name “Pokey” was a mistranslation, and Porky’s swine-inspired name and appearance are hammered home in Mother 3, where he becomes known as King Porky the Pig King, leader of the Pig Mask Army.

PSI Anti-pirate

EarthBound featured enhanced copy protection which continually ran checks on the legitimacy of the Game Pak. Pirated copies of the game spawned a large amount of enemies. And if pirates could somehow manage to reach the final boss, the game froze and permanently erased their save game.

Size Matters

EarthBound was initially intended to fit on an 8 Mbit Game Pak, the standard size for Super NES games. As the five-year development cycle went on, the game increased to 16 Mbit and eventually 24 Mbit, tripling its original size and making it one of the larger games on the console.

Super Mother Bros.

Due to EarthBound’s niche status, most gamers were introduced to Ness in the Super Smash Bros. series, where he is voiced by Kirby’s voice actress, Makiko Ohmoto. Ness has appeared in every Super Smash Bros. game to date, armed with his trusty baseball bat and an assortment of PSI Powers. Mother 3’s Lucas joined the series in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and returned in Super Smash Bros. for 3DS/Wii U as a DLC character.

Debug Kirby

EarthBound’s debug menu, accessible through various tricky methods, uses Kirby as a cursor. Likewise, EarthBound and Kirby’s Dream Course, in development simultaneously by HAL Laboratory, share a number of sound effects.

Octopus Eraser

During the English localization of Mother 2, the octopus statue that blocked Ness’s way was changed to pencil. A pencil eraser item is needed to unblock the path. A second statue, originally a limbless Japanese statue called a “kokeshi,” was changed to an eraser. The Japanese word for “eraser” is “keshi,” so the item required to remove the second statue, the kokeshi keshi, was a play on words that wouldn’t translate in English. In EarthBound, it’s called the “eraser eraser,” preserving the joke with a minor text and graphic alteration.

Mario Maker-Bound

Ness and Mr. Saturn are among Super Mario Maker’s myriad unlockable costumes. While using the Ness costume, pressing up on the directional pad plays the sound used for learning a new technique in EarthBound.

ESP1

Before being named Mother, the original game’s working title was ESP1.

Mother! Part Deux: The War Against Giygas Strikes Back!

Mother 2’s subtitle, Giygas Strikes Back!, was changed for EarthBound to The War Against Giygas! Since Mother hadn’t been released outside of Japan, EarthBound players would be encountering Giygas for the first time. The Mother 2 subtitle was also too similar to Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Other Star Wars-related changes included changing the flying Sky Runner machine from its original name, the Sky Walker.

The Shattered Man

Once the final boss is defeated, there are no enemies left in the game and all other methods of defeating the party are disabled. However, if at least one Shattered Man was left alive during the playthrough, he will still be there. Losing the fight against the Shattered Man results in the area’s graphics becoming temporarily glitched, but this resets after exiting the building. Ness and Paula can then roam the world as ghosts.

Mr. Saturn

Mr. Saturn was considered for a starring role in his own puzzle action game at one point, but the project never came to fruition.

Default Names

In Mother 2, default names suggested for each character include the names of characters from not only Super Mario Bros., but also SMAP, an insanely popular Japanese boy band at the time. One of the members of SMAP appeared in the commercials for Mother 2.

Official Soundtrack

In Japan, Mother 2’s soundtrack was released in November 1994. The tracklist includes 21 songs from the game, and three remixes. Due to the various popular songs the Mother 2 soundtrack references, it was never officially released outside of Japan.

Beatle Mania

Of all the musicians paid homage to by the game, nods to The Beatles are the most prevalent. The names of the band members are among the default character names at the start of Mother 2 and a grounded submarine can be found in Souther Scaraba. Its yellow color is said to be “purely coincidental.”

The Many Talents of Shigesato Itoi

Mother/EarthBound creator Shigesato Itoi became a celebrity in the 1980s due to coining extremely popular phrases for various advertisements. In 1988, Mr. Itoi voiced the father of the main characters in the award-winning Studio Ghibli film, My Neighbor Totoro. In 1997, after the development of the first two Mother games and release of a self-titled bass-fishing game, Mr. Itoi began a website titled Almost Daily Itoi News, which has been updated every day since its inception. He has written several short-stories and returned to Nintendo for various interviews and retrospectives on the Mother series.

In 2011, Mr. Itoi released a smartphone app designed to help people quit smoking, which he himself had done in 2002. His next app, released in 2016, was designed specifically for pet photography and has been described as “Instagram for adorable animals.”