/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.6149373]

What does /vr/ think of Earthbound and the Mother series?

[Anonymous No.6149401]

m3 > m2 > m1

[Anonymous No.6149402]

It's a great case study of how anything can be memed into success nowadays.

[Anonymous No.6149405]

>>6149402
Heart + soul required to understand appeal

[Anonymous No.6149410]

>>6149373
It's great and shit at the same time

[Anonymous No.6149510]

>>6149402
When exactly do you think Earthbound got popular.

[Circuit Shitty No.6149547]

>>6149510
Earthbound has never been popular. Super Smash Brothers was popular which put Earthbound on people's radar and a small soccer of those people decided to obsess about it.

[Circuit Shitty No.6149550]

>>6149510
Earthbound has never been popular. Super Smash Brothers was popular which put Earthbound on people's radar and a small segment of those people decided to obsess about it.

[Anonymous No.6149568]

>>6149550
Not entirely wrong, but the cult fanbase has existed since the 90s in the west (it was just very small), and in Japan since its conception.
Also, I'd argue the point where Mother's popularity really took off was in 2008, when the Mother 3 english patch got released. That, coupled with the hype for Smash Dojo, triggered Mother into mainstream awareness.
Sure, Smash's hype helped, can't deny that, but the Mother 3 fan translation was what converted a lot of people.
Personally, I like the Mother series, but I came from a different place since I'm not that big of an RPG fan, nor did I care that much for Ness in SSB. I'm here for Keiichi Suzuki's music and Itoi's writing. Already a fan of them because of the music they've worked on together. Itoi really can write some interesting, unique stuff, and that's reflected on his lyrics, and the writing in the game.

[Circuit Shitty No.6149571]

>>6149510
Earthbound has never been popular. Super Smash Brothers was popular which put Earthbound on people's radar and a small segment of those people decided to obsess about it. Then actual unironic market manipulation by the investors who both the enormous amount of unsold back stock drove the price up and tons of morons started to think expensive = good

[Circuit Shitty No.6149573]

>>6149568
All these fan bases you're talking about are tiny outspoken memers

[Anonymous No.6149583]

>>6149573
The concept of internet meme didn't even exist back in the 80s/90s.
Mother was popular in Japan because of Shigesato Itoi's fame, in the west it was just a bunch of nerds who happened to have found a special kind of game that got underadvertised and at a time where video games were heading toward 3D, or more advanced 2D graphics like DKC, Mother's simple sprite work just didn't cut it.
But again, in Japan I think it was always decently popular. Not DQ/FF levels, but recognizable enough. And again, this was all before social media.
But there was usenet, here's a review from some guy, dated 1990.

[Anonymous No.6149586]

>>6149571
This.

[Circuit Shitty No.6149612]

>>6149583
Mother is not Earthbound. Mother was always (modestly) successful but Earthbound's popularity is a meme. Not an "internet meme", a literal meme.

That having been said there ARE organic ways that it is successful as a meme. It's a good example of a game that ages well. It looked straight up bad compared to the next gen RPGs that were coming out in 1995 but as a "retro game" its not awful in an particular way and it's setting its unique enough to be memorable plus the setting has a direct appeal to the type of gamers who get to the point of reaching out and exploring old games. It's not a factor that it's design and mechanics are straight out of the late 80s like it was when it was a new release.

[Anonymous No.6149645]

>>6149568
>I'm here for Keiichi Suzuki's music and Itoi's writing
As is everyone who's into the Mother series. No need to argue this with a brainlet that calls everything it dislikes memes.

[Anonymous No.6149652]

>>6149373
Midwit: The Videogame Series

[Circuit Shitty No.6149659]

>>6149645
Just because YOU like something doesn't make it popular. In fact, Earthbound's bubble bursting is proof positive that a significant portion of its fan base was hipsters who abandoned it once it became known to average plebs.

[Anonymous No.6149661]

>>6149583
>that review
So its just an average jrpg that got popular because nintendrones always crave for anything nintendo?

[Anonymous No.6149664]

>>6149661
Mother 1 didn't even get released in the west.
In Japan, it was more because of Itoi than Nintendo.

[Circuit Shitty No.6149687]

>>6149661
The first game sold about as well as the first Fire Emblem game. The second one (Earthbound) didn't even sell half as many copies as the most popular Super Famicom Fire Emblem game.

[Anonymous No.6149694]

>>6149571
>Earthbound has never been popular
What, compared to the most popular series? Yeah sure.

How old are you, by the way. Am I arguing with a tiny zoom who's trying to reconstruct a history I lived through?

[Circuit Shitty No.6149704]

>>6149694
Old enough to have been working in a used game store in the late 90s to see the cases of unsold backstock being hauled in and sold to us at $15 a copy.

[Anonymous No.6149707]

>>6149704
cool story

[Anonymous No.6149721]

>>6149373
Overrated. Most other SNES RPGs are better.

[Circuit Shitty No.6149724]

>>6149707
Go ahead and tell me what you think you "loved through" then because I can fucking assure you that people did not buy Earthbound at release. The US sales numbers are based on by-the-case clearance sales then the people who bought those cases sat on them for ten years then started trickling them out until they inflated the price to the maximum the market would bear. I knew one of the guys that was part of the damn racket but you don't have to believe me, you can just study the numbers and compare them against other similar snes games and you can see very clearly that something unnatural happened.

[Circuit Shitty No.6149725]

>>6149707
Go ahead and tell me what you think you "lived through" then because I can fucking assure you that people did not buy Earthbound at release. The US sales numbers are based on by-the-case clearance sales then the people who bought those cases sat on them for ten years then started trickling them out until they inflated the price to the maximum the market would bear. I knew one of the guys that was part of the damn racket but you don't have to believe me, you can just study the numbers and compare them against other similar snes games and you can see very clearly that something unnatural happened.

[Anonymous No.6149728]

>>6149724
Not even the guy you were replying to, but anyway the fact Earthbound didn't sold well in the US isn't something only retail workers from the 90s know, it's a well-known fact parroted by pretty much every single e-celeb in existence.

[Anonymous No.6149729]

I really like earthbound.

[Anonymous No.6149730]

>>6149725
You are one shitty poster. On top of being a namefag, you keep deleting your posts and reposting.

[Anonymous No.6149731]

>>6149373
How fucking new are you?

[Circuit Shitty No.6149742]

>>6149728
Then why are you arguing to the contrary? Earthbound was not popular and has never been popular. What limited notoriety it has is based on its reference in Smash Brothers, its artificially inflated resale value and its circle jerking fanbase that is rapidly diminishing as they feel less and less like special snowflakes for liking an "obscure" Nintendo RPG.

Earthbound is a meme by every definition

[Anonymous No.6149745]

>>6149742
>Earthbound is a meme by every definition
Convincing. But of course! This is not a video game, but a meme!

[Anonymous No.6149748]

>>6149731
Pretty new to /vr/ honestly, I just lurk /mu/ and /fa/ but I recently re-played Earthbound again, I’ve loved the Mother series since I was a kid and wondered what /vr/ thought about it

[Anonymous No.6149760]

>>6149748

[Anonymous No.6149762]

Mother 1 is kino

[Anonymous No.6149785]

>>6149725
I don't even understand what the speculation market has to do with anything. Everyone in the early 2000s was aware of Earthbound and most of the retro video game community who would play an RPG tried it out. It's not Kirby or Fire Emblem popular but it's well known and well liked.

[Circuit Shitty No.6150174]

>>6149785
So the problem is that you have a very loose definition of "popular"

[Anonymous No.6150367]

>>6150174
Look, no one here understands your seething autist worldview. Take your meds.

[Anonymous No.6150368]

>>6149373
Great games.

[Anonymous No.6150380]

>>6149373
Love the music, the colors and characters. Hate the gameplay.

[Circuit Shitty No.6150392]

>>6150367
Popular means that most people in a group like it. I guess I autistically assume you mean "among gamers" or "among retro gamers" or even "among RPG gamers"

[Anonymous No.6150403]

>>6149748
>I just lurk /mu/ and /fa/
Peak normalfag. You might as well just use reddit at that point.

[Anonymous No.6150682]

>>6149373
Spawned too many lolquirky retro pixel hipster shit "homages" for me to like it any more. Same with Paper Mario.

[Anonymous No.6150698]

>>6150682
>disliking a game for unrelated shit such as modern indie games
why do you do this to yourself.

[Anonymous No.6150701]

>>6150682
>letting a fanbase affect how you view a game/movie/whatever
I know people with 80 IQ, and let me say that my heart goes out to you.

[Anonymous No.6150708]

>>6149373
I liked it.

[Anonymous No.6150713]

>>6149373
imho eb is memorable, but not really worth playing more than once; it really is a slog

[Anonymous No.6150717]

>>6149373
I really love it, but god damn the fanbase is off the spectrum

[Anonymous No.6150732]

>>6149725
>The US sales numbers are based on by-the-case clearance sales then the people who bought those cases sat on them for ten years then started trickling them out until they inflated the price to the maximum the market would bear

Post a source retard. You're talking out of your ass just like that Linux thread you got BLOWN THE FUCK OUT in

[Anonymous No.6150742]

The amount of boxed copies has always been suspicious

[Anonymous No.6150749]

>>6149373
2>1>3

[Anonymous No.6150786]

did they get together and have a wholesome relationship?

[Circuit Shitty No.6152113]

>>6150732
Earthbound's sales are pathetic whether you accept what I'm telling you about most of them being clearance sales or not but people capable of rational thought can look at the historical price data and see it for themselves. I'm sorry that you only believe what you see in YouTube videos. Will post a video demonstrating 1 frame lag on NES on Windows soon. There's no actual reason it won't work, there are SNES 1 frame demos on Windows

[Anonymous No.6152516]

>>6149373
One of the few games in history to have gone from "slighty underrated" to "grossly overrated" over the years

[Anonymous No.6152531]

>>6149730
Have you noticed how he sometimes deletes them after the amount of time has passed that regular users are able to delete their posts?

[Circuit Shitty No.6152669]

>>6152531
Gee that must mean I'm a Janitor right? Fucking idiot.

[Anonymous No.6153249]

>>6150786
Considering it was they along with Jeff that created the White Ship, I'd say yes.

[Anonymous No.6153450]

>>6149373
Never heard of them.

[Anonymous No.6153697]

>>6149373
It's alright.

>>6149402
What a worthless post. Everything is memes.

>>6149571
I never paid a dime for Earthbound and I thought it was pretty good.

[Anonymous No.6153715]

>>6149373
It's overrated like anything that's obscure yet still steadily recruits a small audience

Got into it from smash bros and tolerated the antiquated and boring battle system. It's interesting aesthetically I guess, I'm still not sure why I liked it for as long as I did.

Mother 3 actually has a good story even though the last act is handled poorly. Rhythm battles were fun the 2% of the time it worked on an emulator.

[Anonymous No.6153735]

I prefer Earthbound, but Mother 1 is solid. Haven't played 3 yet.

>rented it in like 1996 or 97 or so
>thought it was cool
>brought it to a friends house. He hated it, despite liking SNES RPGs
>ended up buying a used copy in 2001. No box or anything, for like 25 leaf bucks
>me, another friend, and my brother played it pretty obsessively between then and our friend left town in 05
>was pissed off that he found a copy at kmart for like 15 a few months later, when they were closing out

I seem to be the only person here who played it in the 90s

[Anonymous No.6153784]

>>6153735
There's some others, but fact is it didn't sell that well in the US, its popularity was on a slow boil.

[Anonymous No.6155464]

>>6153784
Yeah, it started becoming a meme game about a decade ago.

[Anonymous No.6155518]

>>6153735
It was the first RPG I ever played. I rented it and hated it because it wasn't action oriented like Mega Man X or Super Mario World. Could not wrap my head around the concept of turn based combat as a kid so I didn't even get far.
I'm 30 now and I've since went back and replayed and enjoyed it along with many other SNES RPGs.