I did it.

I always planned to play this. I thought Earthbound was great when I first played it on the Wii U Virtual Console, and I knew I wanted to get to it before Deltarune fully released, since I'm pretty sure it's in conversation with Mother 3. Eventually, I finally did it. I don't remember what caused me to finally start the game. Maybe it was the Deltarune Valentines event that reminded me I needed to hurry up and beat it first.

I took a long break from the game because of the Attic dungeon, but once I returned I had much smoother sailing.

I was worried that the ending wouldn't hot for me since I got spoiled a long time ago. But, despite knowing the twist, it still got to me.

I can see why Nintendo wouldn't want to localize the game. I don't think they want normal people to know about it. But I think they someday will. I think the most likely thing they would do is to make it a timed exclusive. Maybe shadowdrop it so that only the Fans would see it. No way they would use the Mato translation, but there's that book coming out with the dialouge of all the Mother games, including an English release...

Played on RetroArch mGBA on Steam Deck, with the Mato translation.