Topic: Earthbound Beginnings Announced At Nintendo World Championship

[Shaymin]

This is not a drill.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/40437/earthbound-beginnings-announced-at-nintendo-world-championship

Shigesato Itoi appeared before the Nintendo World Championships to announce that Mother 1 would come to the Virtual Console as Earthbound Beginnings at 9pm ET / 6pm PT.

Released twenty years after Earthbound on SNES, the game was originally released in 1989 in Japan and was translated for release in North America but was never released before outside of Japan.

You can see the trailer below:

UPDATE

The game is now live, and priced at $6.99.

[TOPHATANT123]

Itoi has such a wonderful way with words, that speech was powerful oh my god.

[nickmitch]

LOL, WHAT?!


Who are these people and what did they do to Nintendo?

[Adrock]

It's nice to see this finally getting released. I was hoping Nintendo would call it "Spacebound" and Mother 3 "Timebound" though "Before Earthbound" and "After Earthbound" would have worked too.

[ClexYoshi]

that's... wow.

By the way, this game has not aged well, folks. Temper expectations. >_>;;

[ShyGuy]

crazy...

[Soren]

I want to believe...

[stevey]

The end is nigh! Repent! Repent! Repent!

[ShyGuy]

Bill Aurion, if you are out there somewhere, the dream is alive! Earthbound Trilogy on the Wii U! hashtag believe!

[nickmitch]

That could be an epic bomb drop for Tuesday.

[jarodea]

It's nice to see this finally getting released. I was hoping Nintendo would call it "Spacebound" and Mother 3 "Timebound" though "Before Earthbound" and "After Earthbound" would have worked too.

Now they can bring Mother 3 over as Earthbound Endings and silence the clamor for Mother 4 once and for all.  Oh who am I kidding, silence it for most of the clamorers.

[Ian Sane]

This is completely unexpected but really cool.  Of course we all know this is just a big tease to make it more annoying when they DON'T localize Mother 3.

When Earthbound was released on the VC the (sorta) joke was that it was the Wii U's killer app.  But now we really are in a situation where if you're into Earthbound a Wii U purchase is a must.  For somebody somewhere this could be the final straw that makes them purchase a Wii U.  That's why you want a lot of variety in your lineup because every decent game is a must-play and thus a must-buy for someone.

I wonder who in Nintendo made the call to do this.  You figure a big corporate suit would feel that an old NES game doesn't matter.  This won't make a noticeable improvement in Wii U sales and won't sell millions of copies so who cares, right?  But it earns goodwill with fans and just makes the Wii U that much better of a product.  Whoever decided to do this knows that and also knows enough about Earthbound to know that for some of us this is a huge deal.

[Stratos]

I actually thought this could happen eventually. With all of the EB hype from Smash and the Ness/Lucas amiibos this made a lot of sense. Especially since Nintendo was sitting on a fully completed and translated copy of EB Zero. Not sure if I will pick it up because I was never a huge fan of the series, but I am happy for those who adore it. My sister will be stoked as she is a huge EB fan.

[Luigi Dude]

I wonder who in Nintendo made the call to do this.  You figure a big corporate suit would feel that an old NES game doesn't matter.  This won't make a noticeable improvement in Wii U sales and won't sell millions of copies so who cares, right?  But it earns goodwill with fans and just makes the Wii U that much better of a product.  Whoever decided to do this knows that and also knows enough about Earthbound to know that for some of us this is a huge deal.

Probably Iwata since he's good friends with the creator of the series and was even personally involved in the develop of these games as well.  Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if we got this game because Reggie and Iwata were having lunch last week and Reggie said, "Man, why do these losers keep asking for Mother games, who the hell would want to play that ****".  Iwata then becomes enraged and goes "Reggie you bastard, you told me nobody in America cares about Mother for the last decade."

He then punches Reggie in the face, flies to NOA headquarters and takes the copy of Earthbound Zero that was locked away in the underground vault and uploads it to the eShop right away to personally right this wrong.  That is why Iwata isn't at E3 because he flew back to Japan to personally begin the translations of Mother 3 and so it'll be ready for release later this year.

[Mop it up]

I wasn't expecting this, this was a good move. I don't know if I'll be getting it myself though. I kind of want to play it again, but this game is a real grindfest, and I don't know if I have the patience for that these days.