Get the MOTHER Arranged Soundtrack on Vinyl!

Perhaps a CD would have made more sense.

@Matt
CDs don’t know love. Vinyl for the win!
Also it’s more nostalgic this way. I’m glad the funding’s almost complete!

@Matt
You can already buy it on CD.

This is very exciting project.

However, I agree with Matt that a US release of the CD would also be welcome. The Japanese CD is out of print, and at the moment, I can find only a single copy on eBay, for more than $40. It’s not especially easy to get one’s hands on it and a re-release would be most welcome.

I don’t know about this.
For one thing the guy in the ad looks sketchy and he said Mother 1 was exhausting.
I didn’t even get here the a sample of the music either?
Plus it’s on vinyl wouldn’t a CD be more profitable?

I’m guessing it’ll go over the funding goal soon. It’s cool that it will be available in the US, but they should have made CDs at least available as an option. Saying “These songs will be remastered specifically for vinyl to ensure that they will sound the best they ever have” seems kind of disingenuous. First off, you need a good, relatively expensive turntable for vinyl to sound as good as CD in general. Then it all depends on the pressing of the vinyl. The kickstarter says nothing about where it will be pressed, and is even giving those who donate the most transparent red vinyl, which notorious for being much nosier than regular vinyl.

Since I’m guessing they’re just going to take a rip of the CD and take the bass frequencies and filter them so that they are mono and apply the RIAA curve, which is standard with vinyl pressings. Remastering/tweaking something for vinyl doesn’t magically make it sound better. The original CD was not badly mastered to begin with.

Anyway, I think why a lot of people are investing in this and are excited because it will be a cool Mother collectible to have more than anything.

This was heavily aimed at vinyl collectors, too. Not just Earthbound fans.

Earthbound fans making a hipster project? SHOCKER!

What I don’t get is why they’re not including the Smiles and Tears demo from the album’s Mother 1+2 rerelease. Or why they ARE including the “direct game rip” track at the end, which I think spoils the feel of an “arranged album” experience.

@Anon
That was actually funny.

Vinyl collectors are a pretty big subculture, probably even bigger than the Mother fan subculture (are we calling ourselves that now, at this point? Oh right, we’re “starmen” according to Itoi, that works).

Now, I’m not one of that group. I got an old record player from my mom as a kid, and played around with it, but the moment I could play cassettes, and later CDs, I abandoned that old thing. What do I know though? I collect old video games and play them on the original hardware. It’s just not the SAME on a Retron 5 or virtual console, say I. Heck I got a GBA flash cart just to play Mother 3 on it’s original hardware. (I don’t regret this, considering the text hiding glitch the beard bros ran into playing it on an emulator.) I think next time I’ll play Mother 3 on my Gamecube Gameboy Player though, just for the full screen TV experience.

What I can say is this. Records don’t sound better than CDs in a technical sense. CDs have a crystal clarity that records can never match (and WAVE or FLAC files are even better, as they can go for higher bitrates than standard audio CD format is designed for). Some LP collectors are fully aware of this. For them, the imperfections in the audio are actually the point. They want to hear all the scratches and little imperfections exactly as the album was originally made, as for them it’s nostalgic, or even adds to the experience of listening to it. I don’t fall into that camp, but I understand it.

This is an interesting project, but it’s aimed at the ven diagram overlap between Mother fans and LP collectors. If you don’t fall into that overlap, it isn’t for you. As was said, the CD is very hard to come by though. I really hope that they decide to release it as a downloadable FLAC collection available separately though.

Oh, if you’re looking for the CD, try Amazon instead of eBay. It’s about half the price there.

@DJMankeiwicz, can you link to the Amazon listing for the CD? I checked there first but couldn’t find it on Amazon at all.

Why would anyone pay $40 for .WAV files pressed to wax?

DAMMIT! I missed the limited edition red vinyl tier. D: D: D:

Oh well, I’ll get the $150 tier. Whoooo.

@LucasTizma

They just added a white vinyl version.

@Anonymous
I wouldn’t, but I’d easily pay for FLAC files pressed to wax instead.

Hmm, there’s a lot of talk about how some wished it were a CD, or how the vinyl won’t be “profitable”… I thought people usually freaked out around here whenever something official comes to the west? xD That’s all I was going to say. I can’t afford it either way, but I still love that this is happening at all!

It’s really annoying that I can’t pick multiple tiers or add-ons. I want all the vinyls for my collection.

Yeah, some of the tiers are weird. I want the $125 level screen print…but I also wanted to be in the $250 tier to hang out with them in NYC…but that tier won’t let me pick the screen print. Hm…

@Nope

FLAC is just a lossless compression format. WAV is uncompressed. If you’re converting to an analog format, there won’t be any difference between them.

I was under the impression that analog audio was always better than digital from a technical standpoint. Analog waveforms are continuous and have infinite resolution, whereas digital signals eventually, at some point, represent discrete values. In reality, I think this doesn’t have any impact on perceived audio quality, but still…technically speaking, analog audio is “better” than digital audio.

This vinyl is not going to provide better sound quality than any other format out there. Anybody who is buying this is not buying it for the sound quality.

Correct. Unless they have access to the source vinyl, they can’t improve the quality at all. It’s just an awesome campaign and a chance to support MOTHER. 😀 I can’t believe they actually got the licensing rights. 🙂

@LucasTizma Hi, I work at Ship to Shore and if you want to donate at $250 with the screen print you can! Unfortunately the tiers can’t be changed once the campaign is live…

Also, if any of you guys have questions about the project we will answer them here or on our email (motherost@gmail.com)

We are so amazed at how fast this got funded. When we first started this project over a year ago we never thought it would come to fruition. You guys are the absolute best and we can’t thank you enough for sharing in our dream of putting this out on vinyl.

Really? You actually figure out a way to work out the rights, do some behind the scenes digging, and then you go and fuck it up and ONLY offer it on Vinyl and nothing else? Get the original source audio and get it converted to a higher quality digital format! I know I’m not gonna buy it on Vinyl when I can just get it off YouTube as it is. I’d only pay for either an American, non overpriced CD release, or a digital one.

Very well-said DJMankiewicz. I’m not a vinyl collector or anything, but if I ever do attempt to listen to a vinyl record (usually at a friend’s house) it is because I want to hear that style of playback with the scratches and pops. It is a very soothing feeling to hear that and I’m not even someone who really grew up with records as tapes were well underway by the time I started getting into music and I ran away with CDs when they arrived. So there must be a little something extra there that goes deeper than pure nostalgia. 🙂

This is great! It’s nice that this is finally becoming available officially in the States. I may have to get a copy, even if I can only listen to it at my parents’ place.

Some important updates about Mother OST campaign!

http://maxzilla.kinja.com/indie-record-label-fully-funds-mother-earthbound-zero-1691475209

Dudes, don’t over pay for the CD! Play Asia have them for $22 ATM! http://www.play-asia.com/mother-preceding-title-of-earth-bound-paOS-13-49-en-70-7rv.html

@Mic
The reason we chose vinyl is because it is a format the album has never been released on. We wanted it to be something special any Mother fan could appreciate. We have put great effort into making this release as close to what it would have been in 1989 if it had been a companion to the game. This is being remastered specifically for the format, so it is practical as well.

However, we have heard the fans and are potentially looking into other formats.

We need this on cassette!!

I pledged the red vinyl version 😀
I own something like 300 records and something like 4 CDs, and yet I’m the first to say that they don’t absolutely sound better than CD, there’s a tons of variable involved in this. I mostly listen to digital files anyway. And it doesn’t really matter. The main thing about records is that they’re neat things to collect, and they make the music matter. Taking time to remove the vinyl from the sleeve, putting the needle on, it makes you more involved, and somehow is a greater experience. Yeah, it’s purely psychological and my arguments won’t win anyone.
Also, when you have friends at home, it’s great to look at a record collection.
Much like collecting games on cart.

cds are better than vinyl because they will always be perfect as long as the disc is clean and the player works fine

Well, we’ll have an announcement regarding other formats very soon!!

I hope this gets released on iTunes. I need this on my phone!!!!!!!!!

How can anyone be angry about any Mother project? I have vinyls and I don’t have a way to listen to them.

Also, they said in the reddit thread that they might be able to get more Mother OSTs later.

Blargh. I’m gonna have to try to eBay snipe the red vinyl one or something.

I hear ya, LT! I saw this days ago, but the red ones were all gone so fast!

I have the original ’89 pressing of the CD, so I have no desire for a vinyl copy to listen to or collection even, but the red one would have been a killer framed display piece.

Sadly, I bet they’re going to go up for a hefty margin if they end up on eBay at all.

Hey all,

We’re reissuing the CD! Check out all the info here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/972481375/mother-the-original-arranged-soundtrack-album/posts/1169254

Good news indeed everyone! Before it was an interesting project, but now I’m very interested in getting it myself. Mind, the small number will make this rather hard to get a hold of, but if a digital release is forthcoming, production costs drop to zero and it’ll be legally available to all who can’t get the physical copies.

I’m now following this.

looks like mother fans really *will* buy anything

That’s not very nice…

I got the money and I got the desire. So why not?

That’s pretty cool. I’d get one if I had a vinyl player.

I love mother/earthbound and always will support their projects. This album is not supposed to be on vinyl. It’s gonna sound crappy if they don’t have access to the actual master tapes. Remastering a cd to vinyl is gonna distort the sound and the bass will sound absolutely terrible. I’ll definitely buy the cd, but not the vinyl. (I actually already own the cd). I’ll buy the usa version just to support this project so they can release more video game music in the usa. I hate paying $25 for an imported cd. Oh…

AH why did I see this too late to get the Red Vinyl!?

Pledged for the White Vinyl. I recently started collecting and listening to Vinyl (and recently started expanding my Mother/Earthbound collection) so this is right up my alley!!

I wish I had money. Vinyl is cool but I probably wouldn’t be able to find a way to play it. I need the soundtrack for CD though maybe someday I’ll buy it off the internet or something.

Its pollyanna time

Was able to switch my pledge from the white vinyl to the translucent red (@STSPhonoCo is tweeting when one becomes available, due to red pledger’s switching to white). Even increased my pledge to get a black vinyl along with it so that I have one to play, and one to frame!