Weekly Round-Up #34

September 6th, 2009 | Weekly Round-Up

Things this week quieted down after last week’s craziness. Still, it’s cool that there’s always stuff to update with or talk about even though EarthBound is almost 15 years old, which is more like 400 in game years.

Also, it’s crazy how time flies. It’s already almost been a year since we released the MOTHER 3 patch. Seems like only yesterday that I was fixing the bug where Flint got Nut Bread for a hat and then people drew him doing that. Much like how I can look back at the blog and point at when certain things were going on, with these weekly round-ups here I’m sure it’ll be interesting down the road to look back and say, “Oh that’s when blah blah happened.”

In any case, that old fartedness aside, let’s have a look at what’s happened this past week.

Site News

• Did some big upgrades to the site, as mentioned here. Probably the biggest thing of note is the new auction page.
• The big news last week was the EarthBound Zero prototype that showed up on eBay. Unfortunately, a bunch of jerks were jerky and eventually got the auction taken off eBay. I think it was later sold to someone without going through eBay.

  I’m planning to make a page that catalogs every known EB Zero prototype, their histories, their pics, and other stuff to help try to prevent this kind of lameness again. It should also clear up a lot of confusion and also serve as a reference in case anyone DOES try to sell a fake prototype. Dunno when said page will be up, but just thought I’d throw that out there.

EarthBound News

• EarthBound composer Keiichi Suzuki turned 58
• MOTHER series in Nintendo World magazine
• Cool EarthBound 64 tribute video I rescued
• Paula and Jeff take a bus
• Cool simultaneous defeat glitch
• Mr. Saturn is a nuclear bomb
• Kickass Runaway Five song
• Itoi and Iwata hang out

Cool Auctions & Merchandise

I completely revamped the EarthBound / MOTHER auction listings page, so check it out from time to time. I also made it so that the current auctions from the current day will appear on the sidebar, and the list will reset at midnight each day. So it’ll be easier for fans and collectors to follow these things 😀

Also, I plan to have a fancy RSS feed for that page someday, but for now this feed should keep you up to date with a lot of EarthBound merch.

Anyway, here are some cool things from this past week:

• EarthBound car decal – only $4 to pimp your ride!
• Shigesato Itoi Bass Fishing (Super Famicom) for only $7 buy-it-now!
• Handmade Mr. Saturn plushie – looks very well-made 😀
• Fan-made Franklin Badge for only $3
• EarthBound SNES Complete, Mint
• MOTHER 3 Deluxe Box
• Complete MOTHER 3 for a good price – seriously, it’s cheaper than some auctions that are for just the cartridge 😯
• EarthBound w/ rare display box
• Rare MOTHER 2 piano book!

And here’s some cool stuff on Yahoo! Auctions Japan:

• The MOTHER 3 Mr. Saturn plushies hit Japanese arcades this past week, so there are TONS of them on YAJ all of a sudden. If you’re interested, check this out.
• MOTHER 1+2 Alto Recorder sheet music book
• Some Japanese magazine from 1994 that has a big MOTHER 2 thing in it or something

Here’s some stuff on Amazon:

• Copies of EarthBound are less than last week, but still a bit pricy. If $87 isn’t too much for you, this might be a good way to get a cart though.
• There are currently no EarthBound Player’s Guides for sale on Amazon. I think that’s the first time I’ve seen that happen since I started this site.

Community News

• Great ideas from Nintendo fans
• Memories of EarthBound
• back on track
• EarthBound for the SNES
• La historia interminada, los juegos incompletos
• Mother 3 Translation updates with Patch 1.1
• Arte de Quinta: Fassad
• Harmony comic
• The Chosen Four comic – Paula gets kidnapped
• Taken comic
• Mani-Mani Tales updated
• EarthBound / MOTHER 3 designs for MySpace

I drank Saturn coffee, so I can’t possibly keep up with every single thing that happens in the EarthBound community, so if you’ve done something cool or if you know of something cool that belongs here, let me know!

What’s Up With Itoi

• Itoi mentioned this week that his Firefox browser was acting up, so he thought it was about time he cleaned up his bookmarks. In doing so, he noticed that a large # of them were now dead links, which made him feel kind of sad, like they were houses where people used to live but now they’re just lonely, empty buildings.
• He also noted that terms like “Net” and “blog” are no longer the buzzwords they used to be – they’ve been absorbed into the culture and are regular words without that feeling of “wow! new!” to them.

Upcoming Stuff

Gonna hopefully post about the latest MOTHER 3 Mr. Saturn plushies this week if possible. Also got another magazine scan or two, plus a bunch of other stuff people sent in this last week. And we’ll just see what else happens too.

End

If I were a millionaire, I’d start a burger shop and serve the burgers inside mini trash cans made out of paper. You open them up and then tadah! I’d also serve Fly Honey ice cream.