EarthBound Beginnings

Originally posted on Facebook on 12 February 2022

Mother 1 / EarthBound Beginnings is now available to all on Switch, so I'm using this opportunity to play through it again.

and...I am just astounded at how much more fun I'm having with this game compared to Dragon Quest 4, which is an 8-bit RPG I've played very recently.

Dragon Quest 4 on NES feels so stiff and old and awkward and ugly and irritating. I did enjoy it to an extent, but it irritated me far more than it endeared itself to me.

Yet Mother 1 on NES still feels really cool and fun and silly and strange and enticing and... ... ...uh, hey, did anyone mention that I'm a huge EarthBound fan? No?

Yes, Mother was absolutely inspired directly by DQ. And DQ is practically responsible for the entire JRPG genre to begin with. I'm not disrespecting DQ, I'm just saying that the original four 8-bit DQ games are really awkward to play nowadays.

In the wake of this new release, a lot of people online are saying that Mother 1 hasn't aged very well, or it feels too grindy to play...

These people clearly haven't played an NES Dragon Quest. Mother 1 feels amazing compared to all four of those old NES games. 

The first four Dragon Quest games have received remakes and enhanced versions over the years. Dragon Quest 4's remake on Nintendo DS is actually really fun and quite good - even if it follows the exact same story progression as the NES version, all the gameplay improvements introduced in the DS version make it so much nicer to go through. After playing the NES version of DQ4 and the DS version of DQ4 back-to-back, there's no contest - the DS version is a fun game I would actually recommend to RPG fans, while the NES version is just an outdated curiosity I would recommend to no-one... 

While I feel this way about DQ4, I feel like Mother 1 is an old RPG that truly doesn't need any remake like that. It was fun and playable back in the day, and it's fun and playable today. I don't know if this is an unpopular stance or not... maybe my innate EarthBound nerdiness is saying this. But I do truly believe this.