November 14th, 2016 | EarthBound, Itoi, Uncommon Knowledge | 10 Comments

I’ve been going through lots of old game magazines lately for my Legends of Localization work, and there’s a lot of old MOTHER 2 info in there. I cover a lot of it in my EarthBound book but here’s something that I found in a magazine I got last week: (Click for larger pic) This was from April 1994, about four months before MOTHER 2 was on store shelves. Almost every screenshot h...Read More »

July 15th, 2016 | MOTHER 3, Uncommon Knowledge, Videos | 11 Comments

MOTHER 3 was released on the Japanese Wii U Virtual Console last year but no one really knew if it had undergone any changes from its original Game Boy Advance release. That changed last month, when some of the EarthBound hacker guys and I finally got to dig into the new game’s data! In all, it appears that three small changes were made. The programming code that makes these changes work wer...Read More »

June 24th, 2016 | EarthBound, Uncommon Knowledge, Videos | 6 Comments

A new Kirby game was recently released, and one of Kirby’s powers involves ESP. Kirby’s appearance and the ability’s description clearly refer to Ness: This isn’t the first time Kirby and EarthBound have teamed up, here’s an old video I made years ago: Thanks to everyone who sent in info about this new connection! ...Read More »

March 2nd, 2016 | EarthBound, Uncommon Knowledge | 31 Comments

A couple months ago I released my very first Legends of Localization book – in it, I explore the localization for the original Zelda game, as well as related merchandise, marketing differences, and more. If you’re a Zelda fan, a retro gaming fan, or even just someone interested in obscure game trivia, it’s right up your alley. (BTW, if you request it in the order comments Poe and...Read More »

October 31st, 2015 | EarthBound, Uncommon Knowledge | 3 Comments

Cap from the Nerdy Show recently posted an in-depth article on the horror elements in the MOTHER series and what their inspirations were. Check out the article here! Some of the topics include the inspiration for the Happy Happy cult, info about the movie that inspired aspects of the Giygas battle (with nary a mention of fetuses!), H.P. Lovecraft, David Lynch, and more. Also, on a similar & ...Read More »

October 24th, 2015 | EarthBound, Images, Uncommon Knowledge | 16 Comments

A couple weeks back I posted on Twitter about how an unusual copy of MOTHER 2 was uncovered. The details of where it came from are unknown – in fact, the only reason it was posted online was so that the owner could try to learn more about it. It looks like it’s the same sort of unusual cartridge used in competitions like Nintendo PowerFest 94 and in other similar situations: #g...Read More »

August 10th, 2015 | EarthBound, Uncommon Knowledge, Videos | 6 Comments

This year’s Summer Games Done Quick event was amazing, and EarthBound was one of the games played! EarthBound speedrunner Aurilliux managed to reach the end of the game in 1 hour and 27 minutes as hundreds of thousands of people watched from around the world! Here’s a look at the live run, which features some crazy random number manipulation that almost feels like card-counting in a c...Read More »

July 9th, 2015 | MOTHER 1, Uncommon Knowledge | 14 Comments

A fellow named RandomAnon sent me an interesting e-mail recently – probably the earliest-known English review or mention of MOTHER 1 has been unearthed! So, this might not be worthy of being featured on EBC, but I thought it was really cool nonetheless. So there was a thread on 4chan’s retro games board about old-video game related Usenet (now Google Groups) posts and one anon found th...Read More »

June 17th, 2015 | MOTHER 1, Uncommon Knowledge | 20 Comments

EarthBound Beginnings was released a few days ago on Wii Us outside of Japan, and it appears to be the exact same as the NES ROM that leaked years and years ago, with no known changes. The Japanese version was also released on Japanese Wii Us… but it HAS had some changes. There isn’t a full list of what changes exist in the Japanese version so far, but they seem to be in line with some...Read More »

May 16th, 2015 | EarthBound, Uncommon Knowledge | 9 Comments

A few weeks ago, JWitzz posted a video showcasing similarities between EarthBound/MOTHER games and Pokemon: There’s info in there about “NINTEN” being a hidden default name in a Pokemon game – if true, that’s news to me, especially with “SONY” being the antagonist’s hidden default name too. I’m sure the NINTEN name is just a coincidence (simil...Read More »