EarthBound Beginnings

Gameplay EarthBound Beginnings is standard for Japanese role-playing games of its time ^[2] . The essence of the gameplay remains the same: the player controls a detachment of three heroes, travels the world, communicates with non-player characters , and performs various kinds of tasks. During the exploration of the world, the player opens a menu in which he can view the inventory, characteristics and, if available, the psychic abilities of each of the characters in the group, as well as configure the controls. To interact with the outside world, you need to select one of the “Inspect” ( English Check ) or “Talk” commands: when you select these commands, Ninten will either check the cell in front of him or talk to the non-player character in front of him . EarthBound Beginnings stands out among Japanese role-playing games of the eighties in that the game world is not a series of disparate locations between which you can travel on a schematic map of the world, but a set of interconnected places with a seamless transition (like the way it is implemented in games of the Pokémon series ) ^{[ 3]} .

As in the Dragon Quest series of games, battles with enemies begin during random encounters . The player explores the world in travel mode with a view from above, and sometimes it can be attacked by various kinds of opponents. The battle takes place in a step-by-step mode. During the battle, the player displays a menu where he can choose the actions of the heroes: attack the enemy with weapons, use psionic abilities, use an item from the inventory (each hero has his own inventory), check the enemy’s characteristics or try to escape from the battle, and the last action is impossible if the battle is due to the plot. With the help of psi-abilities, you can either attack or weaken the enemy, or heal and strengthen the heroes ^[2] . Each character and each opponent has health points ( English health points, HP ), which decrease when taking damage. If all the heroes have finished, then the game will be considered lost, and the player will have to start again from the moment before the battle. The enemy is also considered defeated if he runs out of all health points. The use of psionic abilities also consumes psionic points ( eng. PSI points, PP ). In addition, it is possible to transfer the battle to automatic mode. In this case, the members of the squad will perform actions independently, without the participation of the player ^[3] . After defeating the enemy, the heroes gain experience points . Upon receipt of a certain amount of experience, the character's level increases, and with it the character's characteristics. In addition, for winning a Ninten bank account, money is credited to which you can buy various game items. Money must be withdrawn from the terminals using a Ninten bank card. The points for saving the game are telephones, through which Ninten can call his father and ask him to save the current state.

The game begins with a story about a couple of newlyweds living in the American outback. The husband's name was George, and his wife was Maria. Both of them disappeared without a trace in the first decade of the 20th century. Two years later, George appeared as suddenly as he disappeared. He never told anyone where he had been all this time, and delved into his mysterious research. Eighty years later, George's great-grandson, a 12-year-old boy named Ninten, discovers that household items are attacking his family. After talking with his father on the phone, Ninten discovers that this was a paranormal phenomenon and that his great-grandfather, George, studied such phenomena, as well as psionic abilities ^[3] . Father asks Ninten to go on a journey to investigate the cause of these events, which, as the plot later turns out, will be the work of an alien race planning to invade Earth.

Some time after the start of the journey, Ninten finds himself in a parallel world called Magikant ^[3] . Magician Queen Mary asks Ninten to find eight tunes and play them for her. Returning to his world, Ninten makes friends with a nerd boy named Lloyd, who was ridiculed at school. Together they go to Snowman to deliver the lost hat to a psionic girl named Ana. Ana tells Ninten that she saw him earlier in a dream, and sets off on a journey with him and Lloyd in order to find her missing mother.

Having collected most of the tunes, Ninten enters the karaoke bar and gets involved in a conflict with Teddy, the leader of the local gang. Having been defeated by Ninten, Teddy subsequently joins him to avenge his parents killed on Mount Itoi, and replaces Lloyd on the team under the pretext that Lloyd is too weak. In the house at the foot of Mount Itoi Ana calls Ninten to her and asks him to always be with her. Two dance and fall in love with each other. When the heroes want to leave, they are attacked by a huge robot, which easily defeats them. Lloyd arrives on the tank and destroys the robot, but Teddy is mortally wounded, and Lloyd returns to the team. After that, they board a boat and sail along Lake Itoi, but fall into a whirlpool, and through it into an underwater laboratory. There, they meet the EVE robot, which claims that George created it to protect Ninten. The laboratory is flooded, and the robot helps them get out. Upon leaving, the heroes discover many prisoners, among them - Ana's mother. To free them, the heroes need to destroy the main ship. Another robot appears, an improved version of the one that Lloyd destroyed and attacks the heroes, but EVA sacrifices herself and leaves the last melody. Having learned all eight melodies, Ninten and his friends find themselves in Magikant. Ninten sings eight tunes to the queen, and she recalls Giygas, the alien she cared about as her own child. It also turns out that Queen Mary is none other than Mary, George’s wife and Ninten’s great-grandmother. She disappears, and after her and Magikant, the mirage world generated by her consciousness.

Friends find themselves on top of Mount Itoi, where they find George’s grave. The cave of Mount Itoi is littered with stones, but the power of Mary destroys them, and the heroes penetrate inside. In the cave, they see the main ship and a transparent vessel filled with liquid, in which Giigas is located. Giigas admits to Ninten that he is grateful to his great-grandfather and great-grandmother, George and Maria, for the fact that they raised him after being abducted by aliens, however, he explains that George escaped from aliens to Earth with the most important information for them - knowledge about psi abilities. The aliens considered George’s escape to be a betrayal and decided to destroy humanity, and the destruction was entrusted to Giigas himself. Ninten constantly interfered with Giigas's execution of the plan. Guygas suggests sparing Ninten the only one of all mankind, but he refuses. Giigas then tries to put Ninten to sleep, but Ninten, Ana and Lloyd begin to hum eight of Mary's tunes. Giigasa is overwhelmed with emotions, because these eight melodies are the lullaby that Mary sang to him in childhood, and he can not do any harm to the children. Realizing that he lost, Giigas flies into space on a ship, but finally tells Ninten that they will meet again ^[4] .

In the western version of the game and in its subsequent reprints, the ending was somewhat expanded, and the further fate of the heroes is indicated in more detail in it. The updated ending explains that the adults captured by the aliens were successfully saved, and the main characters parted ways: Lloyd returned to his school, where he was greeted as a hero, Teddy recovers from injury and gets a job in a karaoke bar, and Ana gets a letter from Ninten, who returned home and rests after hard trials. In this ending, the credits show images of all the characters in the game, which later became a kind of tradition in the Mother series, in addition, a scene after the credits is added, where the father calls Ninten and tries to tell him something urgent (which is seen as a clear reserve for continuation) ^{[5] [6]} .

EarthBound Beginnings was developed by Ape and published by Nintendo ^[1] . The idea for the game came about when copywriter Shigesato Itoi entered the Nintendo office for business. Having met with Nintendo game designer Shigeru Miyamoto , Itoi suggested that he develop a role-playing game that takes place in the modern world. Itoi believed that the world of the game would be unique, since the entourage of modernity is apparently incompatible with the rules of role-playing games: there is no magic in everyday life, and children will not be allowed to use real weapons to fight enemies. Itoi’s main intent was to turn these restrictions into a feature of the game. Miyamoto endorsed the idea, but doubted whether Itoi would be able to cope with its implementation. Being a specialist in advertising, Itoi got used to the fact that the concept was approved before recruiting, but Miyamoto reassured him of this, explaining that when developing the concept of games, an already assembled team is required. At that moment, Itoi, he said, felt helpless ^[7] .

Miyamoto, in turn, was also reluctant to start working with Itoi: at that time, celebrities were often attracted to promote games, and Miyamoto did not want the game to become popular only because Itoi, already known at that time, participated in its development. Having met Itoi, Miyamoto handed him a concept document for a text quest and commissioned him to write a similar document for EarthBound Beginnings . Miyamoto said that, as his own experience showed, the quality of the game depends on how much effort Itoi put into it, and he could not completely concentrate on it because of his main work, so Itoi reduced his bid and unloaded his work schedule on game, and the team was assembled by Miyamoto. After the team was assembled, development began in the city of Ichikawa in Chiba Prefecture . The game was named after John Lennon ’s song “ Mother, ” which, according to Itoi, moved him to tears when he first heard it ^[8] . Itoi wanted the work environment to be like a volunteer circle of interests, and Miyamoto tried to provide these conditions. Itoi wrote the script for the game and periodically went to his team from Tokyo. According to his recollections, it was very tiring. When Miyamoto asked Itoi to devote more time to developing the game, the staff criticized him for attracting a copywriter and allowing him too much. Miyamoto replied that he did so because he believed in Itoi’s success ^[7] . Mother was released July 27, 1989 for the Famicom game console ^[1] .

The music for the game was written by composers Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka . Tanaka previously worked on other projects of Nintendo, Super Mario Land and Metroid , and Suzuki worked in many different genres and played in various music groups ^{[9] [10]} . The Famicom prefix was able to play only three notes at a time, which seriously limited the ability of Suzuki, who could not translate what he had originally planned ^[11] .

In addition, an album of eleven tracks based on music from the game was recorded. The recording took place in Tokyo , London and Bath . The album was released on August 21, 1989. It contained orchestral arrangements of music from a game with vocals in English. The last track on the album is eight-bit . Some musical themes from the first game of the series can be heard both in the second and in the third ^[3] . The RPGFan columnist compared the lyrics to The Beatles and the headlines of children's TV shows. He called the words of the songs “stupid and banal”, but praised the simplicity of the lyrics of the song “Eight Melodies”, as well as the “bizarre and wonderful” theme of Magikant ^[12] .

Initially, the game was planned for release in English in the USA under the name Earth Bound , but localization was canceled in 1991, despite the fact that the translation of the game was almost completed and ready for publication ^[2] . The reasons for the cancellation were called the size of the game, which required a lot of space and made the production of cartridges more expensive, and also that the Super Nintendo Entertainment System was about to come out to replace the Nintendo Entertainment System ^[13] . During the localization, Nintendo of America carried out significant adaptation and censorship work, in particular, hints of violence and jokes on sexual themes were removed, cities and locations were renamed (for example, Mount Holi Loli became Mount Itoi), the graphics were partially redrawn, and the text was rewritten dialogues. In addition, the content of the game itself was expanded: the interface was slightly changed, the ability to run in world exploration mode with the clamped "B" button on the gamepad was added, and the ending was expanded ^[5] . Before the localization of Mother was canceled in the West, the game was planned to be published with an 80-page guide, and there were also plans to publish a soundtrack . In addition, an advertisement for the game managed to appear in the Nintendo Power magazine ^[13] .

In 1998, a prototype cartridge was discovered with almost complete localization of Mother . The cartridge was bought by enthusiasts at an auction, removed its ROM and posted it on the Internet. Для того, чтобы убрать несостыковки с нумерацией ( Mother изначально планировалась к изданию под названием EarthBound , под которым впоследствии на Западе издали Mother 2 ), при публикации в Интернете заменили название игры на EarthBound Zero , под которым она стала неофициально известной ^[2] . Хотя Mother так и не была опубликована на Западе вплоть до 2015 года, случай с игрой навёл Nintendo на мысль, что следует разрабатывать игры с оглядкой на международную аудиторию ^[13] . В интервью сайту LostLevels.org директор по локализации Mother Фил Сэндхоп вспоминал, что неудача с выпуском открыла глаза Nintendo, и с тех пор японское подразделение стало плотнее работать с американским. Кроме того, японские разработчики решили воздерживаться от добавления в игры тех аспектов, которые могли принять не в каждой стране ^[14] .

14 июня 2015 года перед Nintendo World Championships компания выпустила Mother под названием EarthBound Beginnings на Virtual Console для Wii U в Северной Америке и Европе ^[15] . Эта версия стала первой официальной Mother с переводом на английский язык ^{[16] [17] [18]} .

Критики отмечали сходство игры с серией Dragon Quest и постоянное высмеивание шаблонов жанра японских ролевых игр ^{[3] [23]} . Часто высказывалось мнение, что сиквел EarthBound Beginnings , EarthBound , демонстрирует точно такие же геймплейные идеи, что и прошлая игра ^{[3] [23]} , но значительно лучше реализованные ^[2] . Игра запомнилась рецензентам высокой сложностью и проблемами с балансом ^{[2] [3] [23] [24]} . Всего было продано 150 000 картриджей с игрой ^[25] . Mother попала в «Серебряный зал славы» журнала Famitsu с оценкой в 31/40 ^[19] . Редакция Famitsu указала, что, принимая во внимание все достоинства и изъяны игры, это весьма «сильная» работа. В качестве изъяна была указана временами слабая «направленность» сюжета, среди достоинств же редакция указала музыкальное сопровождение ^{[26] [27]} . Японское издание Yuugii отмечает, что игра отлично показывает мир глазами 12-летнего мальчика и, по словам обозревателя, «заставляет искренне хотеть, чтобы она не заканчивалась» ^[22] .

Джереми Пэриш из USgamer отметил в игре лёгкое пародирование («на грани сатиры и пастиша ») жанра ролевых игр в целом и в особенности линейки Dragon Quest ^[2] . Он указывал, что Mother , подобно прочим японским ролевым играм , подражает стилю Dragon Quest (это выражалось в интерфейсе, основанном на окнах, виде от первого лица в бою и в общем графическом оформлении), но отличается своим сеттингом. Пэриш отмечал, что в Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei 1987 года компании Atlus действие тоже происходит в наши дни, но впоследствии условная современность сеттинга быстро превращается в населённый всевозможными демонами мир, где смешаны приёмы научной фантастики и фэнтези, тогда как создатели Mother сумели этого избежать. Рецензент также писал, что в игре «присутствуют ощущение чудес и магический реализм , естественные в контексте детского воображения», поэтому Нинтен может восприниматься и как обычный ребёнок, играющий в героя в духе серии Dragon Quest , а не как настоящий герой ^[2] . Пэриш добавил, что эта тема впоследствии была развита в таких играх, как Costume Quest и South Park: The Stick of Truth ^[2] .

Кассандра Рамос, рецензент RPGamer, похвалила графику и музыкальное сопровождение и сочла Mother одной из лучших игр на консоли из-за «богатого […] отлично детализированного» визуального оформления, персонажей в духе комикса Peanuts и «простых, но эффектных» звуковых эффектов ^[3] . В то же время ей показалось, что бои ничем не примечательны и являются наиболее слабым аспектом игры ^[3] . В конце рецензии она написала, что Mother на удивление сложна для своего времени, а её сюжет оказался лучше (но не таким «безумным»), как её продолжение ^[3] . Рамос настоятельно рекомендовала игру фанатам EarthBound ^[3] .

Пэриш высоко оценил художественное видение Итои и сравнил его игру с творчеством американского автора Гаррисона Кейллора . По мнению Пэриша, мастерство Итои как писателя и копирайтера сыграло ему на руку при разработке 8-битной ролевой игры, где было множество технических ограничений, и именно поэтому Mother была на порядок выше других игр того времени, сценарии которых писали непрофессионалы. Было высказано предположение, что отмена англоязычной локализации косвенным образом поспособствовала популяризации продолжения игры ^[2] . Рецензент IGN Джаред Пэтти похвалил EarthBound Beginnings за атмосферу, диалоги и оригинальную идею, однако резко раскритиковал игру за устаревший игровой процесс и «раздражающе частые» случайные встречи ^[20] .

Хотя Пэриш и решил, что сценарий Mother так же остроумен, как и в EarthBound , ему показалось, что игровая механика первой игры выглядит намного хуже, чем во второй. В Mother нет «убывающей шкалы HP », но при этом, в отличие от более поздних игр серии, есть случайные встречи . Рецензент высказал мнение, что баланс недоработан, поскольку рост характеристик персонажей и уровня сложности по мере прохождения плохо между собой согласованы ^[2] . Компания Rose Colored Gaming, которая имела собственное производство картриджей для NES, отмечала, что японская версия была сложнее, чем невыпущенная англоязычная ^[24] . Рамос с RPGamer тоже увидела подобные огрехи с балансом, чрезмерно утомительными и частыми боями, сложными противниками и необходимость в длительном гринде и чересчур большие и запутанные подземелья ^[3] . На сайте 1UP.com писали, что в сравнении с EarthBound Mother была хуже практически по всем параметрам, просто клоном японских ролевых игр того времени, в то время как сиквел стал сатирической деконструкцией ролевых игр как таковых ^[23] . Пэриш утверждал, что историческая ценность игры состоит не столько в её значимости как игры, сколько в пробуждении интереса у игроков к эмуляции игровых консолей и к поиску и сохранению невыпущенных игр ^[23] .

Mother была переиздана на сборнике Mother 1+2 для портативной игровой консоли Game Boy Advance в 2003 году. В данном переиздании используется расширенная концовка из невыпущенного англоязычного прототипа, но на японском, кроме того, в ней улучшены интерфейс и управление ^[3] . На сайте Starmen.net фанаты создали хак игры, в котором перерисовали графику, внесли изменения в игровой процесс и исправили ошибки перевода диалогов ^[28] .

Comments

Sources

• - the official site of EarthBound Beginnings (jap.)
• Russification of a ROM image distributed as a patch