Just the Tomato Mother 1, not 2! After beating it on the Switch's NES emulator I immediately started this version, just to see how the translation, audio, and graphics differed.

It doesn't matter what you do with it, Mother is one of the best games ever.

One thing about the GBA version I'm not a fan of compared to the Switch Emulator version is that the train-tunnel to Snowman has quite strong monsters! In the Switch Emulator version, it's clear! Of course, brute-forcing your way through with 4th-D Slip and luck is its own fun!

(I used this version to play the Tomato Translation of Mother 1, and as such this review will only be covering that aspect of the game.)

Mother is one of those games I care for deeply, but would NEVER advise someone to play unless they enjoy old school RPGs.

What I value in this game is not the gameplay, though I think there is some charm in it (like Ninten's asthma), but the story of love. Friends who love each other, neighbors who care for each other, mothers who loves their children. And an alien who can't go through with his invasion because he heard the lullaby his mother sung to him.

I find this game sweet, I find this story kind. Everything is okay in the end because of love.

And if you EVER want to play it (truly suffering) consider the tomato patch that makes the game easier. Using it I got my characters overleveled and still died in the back end of the game because of how intense the difficulty spike is.

Mother 1 i cant find on this site alone for some reason, so im using this since i already covered earth bound, mother 1 is the best of the trilogy and is an extremely emotional tale of an alien who was raised on earth struggling with his attachment to his earth parents and his actual race where he ends up spending most of his life, the main character, who is raised by the same parents must confront the enemy in order to save the earth from an alien invasion, will they be able to get through to each other with their shared bonds to nintens grandparents? youll have to play to find out

I just cant adapt to Mother 1. Tried multiple times with multiple versions, and now with this last chance playing for 10 hours, I know for sure this game is not for me. I absorbed the story trough other means, read many interviews and articles by the translation team and the original developers as a way to be grateful to them.

Mother is a product of its time. Charming, but also brutal, with many old game design mannerisms that didn't age well. But I think Mother is a piece of history to show us how much games as an art form evolved as a hole, and how to absorb all its flaws and create something that was born of passion for the medium like Earthbound is regarded as.

I hope I can experience more of Itoi´s greatness soon. Now to Earthbound!

Mother 1 terminado:

Um rpg classico, com uma música até que boa e uma historia simples, que te leva até final facilmente( tirando que o jogo te joga no mundo e vc tem que se virar, algum que não me incomoda, mas que pode demandar um tempo para tentar descobrir o que é para fazer), os personagens são ok, gostei do que foi mostrado na relação final entre os personagens, uma pena que o 4 personagem é totalmente desperdiçado. Achei o final um pouco corrido, jogo te da um plot interessante, mas não da tempo de absorve-lo muito bem. Enfim foi uma boa jornada, as vezes andando perdido pelo mapa por algum motivo me deu uma nostalgia de quando eu era criança acho que esse é o principal sentimento desse jogo, a inocência as aventuras malucas, tudo de uma boa época que é a infância.

Nota final 4 estrelas de 5.

Como practicamente todas las reviews de aquí, esto solo aplica a mother 1, y no como una review del port en si, debido a que el parche hecho por fans en ingles SÓLO traduce el primer mother.

Mother 1 es un juego....Que es algo dificil de poner en palabras, por un lado, es un juego muy mal envejecido en donde no sabes que rayos hacer en gran parte del tiempo, ya que te otorgan una libertad enorme de ir a donde quieras, y el objetivo del juego es recolectar 8 cosas (melodías), para poder luego enfrentarte al jefe final, el cual está en una locación (que es un tanto dolorosa, una cosa con mother es que la curva de dificultad es muy rara, asi que aveces te salen enemigos poderosisimos si es que no te preparaste), fuera de esto, aveces el juego puede ser tedioso por lo envejecido que está, y el sistema de combate, para nuestros estandares, es bastante simple.

Pero por otro lado...Tenemos la historia, que a simple vista no es la gran cosa, un par de niños tienen que salvar al mundo de una invasión alienigena, los personajes son bastante simples tambien, tienes al protagonista callado de siempre, un nerd que recibe bullying, a Ana, la chica dulce que es el interes amoroso del protagonista, y a Teddy, un delincuente que usa su fuerza bruta para pelear. Pero, sucede que mientras juegas, encuentras varios momentos en la historia que son bastante agradables, y otros que te rompen el corazon, como toda la historia referente a Giygas, el villano final, todas estas escenas parece que fueron hechas con mucho corazón por parte del escritor, y hacen que la historia de mother no te sea tan indiferente, y al mismo tiempo, puede hacer que te encariñes con el juego. Y su pelea final es una cosa MUY memorable.

(This is only for the Mother 1 part of this package)

Beaten: Dec 7 2021
Time: Not sure, I'd guess less than 20 Hours
Platform: GBA

Well I've finally beaten a Mother game! And the first one at that!! After falling off Earthbound multiple times and getting ~halfway through Mother 3 before getting stuck, I've gotta say I wasn't expecting to head back to the first game and beat it in like 3 or 4 days. But I did! Partially I think it's because it's not a very long RPG, like many other NES RPGs, but also because uh the fan translation for this version comes with an easy mode, which allowed me to kinda stroll through the game. While I do kinda feel bad about not taking the time to properly plug into the combat system, I also kinda figure I wouldn't've been able to beat the game if I had to play at the original difficulty. Even as it was, there were some rather tough parts of the game!

Let's stick with talking about the battle system for a sec. So Mother is heavily based on the early Dragon Quest games, and most of it's mechanics and flow are imported from those games. The thing is, those early DQ games are tough as well, but the numbers behind them feel like they were hammered into place, refined and stable and never quite unfair. Mother feels a bit more slapped together, more focused on really differentiating the characters through the battles rather than creating a system that's inherently robust. This tracks with my experience in the other games in the series too. The battle mechanics don't give me weird absurd joy like the SaGa games, and I can never really tell how strong or survivable I'm meant to be to progress. The easy ring in this translation helped with getting through that, but you can still feel the characters through the battle system, maybe more than you feel the battles.

The other thing that kinda bothered me was clarity of progression? Which, tbf, isn't an issue resigned to this game. Loads of early JRPGs are rather cryptic with their progression, honestly the only NES JRPG I've played that wasn't so far was FF2. So yeah, it's an early JRPG, and inherits a lot of the issues common to those kinds of games. If I was a younger kid with oodles of time and only one game to play, maybe I'd prefer it this way. Just exploring around to find melodies, checking every square inch of the map. Honestly it does sounds pretty nice, but unf I've got a job, and an enormous backlog of games, so that's less my jam these days.

Alright so everything else about this game is stellar. Like, literally everything. The writing is the most obvious bit for me, so I'll start there. Pretty much from the time you hit the ground, the characters in the game are all the way into speaking like... well, characters, rather than plot points. Some of them ruminate on their own issues, some of them talk about you, some of them just talk about whatever's on their mind. Now that could get jarring, but here it just adds to a feeling of liveliness in every town and city, the hustle and bustle and random thoughts poking out from the crowd. I think this might contribute to the progression issue a bit, but I'd easily take this side of that trade if given a choice.

The music is also absolutely fantastic. Now maybe I just haven't played too many NES games with great OSTs, but the way the 3 tracks of the NES are twisted and shaped to create tunes equal parts eerie and comforting genuinely blows my mind. It never sounded harsh or aggravating, just always pleasing and melodic with just enough unnerving dissonance to create a real sense of atmosphere. The art here is also pretty good, though maybe more from an art direction kind of view rather than a "wow this game is really pretty" vibe? Like I think the art here is drawn pretty well, but more importantly it's all crazy cohesive and bold, with a lot of unsung phsyicality to it (imo lent to it by the fact that all these models were created using clay first).

So yeah, it might not be my favorite JRPG, but it's easily one of my favorite pieces of art on the NES. As a story it remains interesting and curious all the way through, and as an experience it's more singular than you might think. Something in it's bones feels different than Earthbound, but I can't really put my finger on what. Anyways yeah it's a good time give it a go

i was honestly scared of mother 2 when i was a kid,but well...

Mother 1:
pretty interesting,im not a big fan of RPGs but i like it 3.5

Mother 2:
i think it is better than its predecessor, history is more interesting, its is a upgrade overall, 4,0

Mother 1 + 2 its a pretty different experience that everyone should try.

This review is just for Mother 1.

I remember back when EarthBound Beginnings was announced to release on the Wii U, I can't remember but I think around the time that Super Smash Bros Brawl came out was when I learned that EarthBound wasn't the first in the series and it's known as the Mother series. That's about as far as my knowledge of Mother 1 went for a long time, until I bought the Mother 1+2 collection due to it playing better than the Wii U release.

With that out of the way, it's really hard to describe this game. The graphics are actually really good for an NES RPG game, despite playing it on a GBA, it still retained the original look. The best part about the Mother 1+2 cart is it retains the original game with nothing censored so it feels authentic with the script and the sprites which added to the environment.

Speaking of...the music is actually amazing, I had heard a lot of it in the Smash games, but oddly enough they sound actually better in game than what was used in Smash in spots. I never once got tired of the music or the very fitting and at times crunchy sound effects in the game.

The story is the best part of the game, and when I say that I don't mean the story itself like word wise, I mean the adventure feels grand, because it's just an odd feeling game of getting attacked by crazy trucks and weird off the wall enemies on top of the world being weird and unpredictable of what you'll see and run into next. I mean the game starts with you getting attacked by your lamp in your room, then you must go find 8 melodies and just goes from there. The game feels like a weird fever dream of an RPG at times, where you just go to see what happens next and what you'll have to deal with.

The only downside of the game honestly is the grinding, it's expected in an RPG, but this game tends to go waaaay overboard with it sometimes, and if you don't grind those difficulty spikes are gonna get worse and worse, despite this game having an item to make the game easier, it works for like 75% through the game, maybe slightly less, but when it stops working you can feel that difficulty and might not be prepared.

All in all, a REALLY good game for it's time, also word of note, if you get a copy of Mother 1+2, Mother 2 (Earthbound) likely doesn't work as it should and isn't translated so best to play that on Switch, SNES or 3DS.

The relationship between Mother 1 and Earthbound is an interesting one. Many elements of Mother 1 are later reused and refined in Earthbound, which gives Mother 1 the reputation of being simply a beta Earthbound. This really doesn't do justice to the unique set pieces and characters of Mother 1. Earthbound is certainly a bigger adventure with a global scale and just more stuff but Mother 1 does a better job making the adventure seem more open and free like you are just some kid lost in a big world while still being quite linear. The true nature of giygas in Earthbound is a more disturbing twist if you last saw him coherent and physical in Mother 1. Decades before Team silent realized that exploring the mind of the player character in a physical space was far more interesting then that of a third party, a similar choice was made from Mother 1 where magicant became a figment of Ness's imagination rather then an NPC's.

Ninten and his party are never referenced in Earthbound. Based on the ending it seems people did respect the party for their quest (atleast Lolyd's classmates did), but perhaps due to people not understanding what was truly going on Ninten and friends ended up as little more then local celebrities quickly forgotten by the outside world.