Jeffman’s been on a MOTHER 3 hacking spree lately, fixing bugs in the game, documenting the ROM, and just playing around with stuff. He’s been posting some pictures and videos on Twitter lately, so I thought I’d share some of them:

Thomas pls

Thomas what are you doing who are you talking to
Thomas go home you are drunk

(playing with door destinations)

Reconnecting unusued/misdone text

The above line exists in several places in the game’s script data, but it never got used in the game. It was clearly associated with the trash can next to Alec’s house, but I never knew why it didn’t work. I guess Jeff figured it out!

Five playable party members

Messing with battle animations

I have no doubt Jeff’s going to cause even more MOTHER 3 wackiness in the future, so follow him here!

After teasing the date 9/9 for a while, Mr. Tenda posted a video of the in-progress MOTHER remake hack, showcasing a train ride from one town to another:

MAN, that’s impressive! The team’s doing some amazing work

If you’ve never seen it before, here’s how the train ride looks and sounds in the original game:

If you want to keep an eye on this remake project and stay super up-to-date, this is the place to watch!

Every month I update the average price of EarthBound stuff on buyearthbound.com to help fans get the best possible deal and avoid paying too much. Although I didn’t update last month because I’m a big dummyhead.

It’s been a while since EarthBound was released on the Wii U, so I suspected that physical copies would’ve gone down further in price. And yep, it pretty much did!

Average Prices:

• EarthBound cart: $149 (down from $163, lowest: $61.00 / highest: $230.00)
• EarthBound guide: $86 (down from $111, lowest: $15.40) / highest: $179.99)
• EarthBound complete set: $462 (up from $452, lowest: $280.00 / highest: $1275.00)

So it looks like the cartridges are finally starting to come down in price! Even if $149 still seems like way too much; I remember just five years ago when they were going for $75 or so. Actually, that’s why I was utterly floored when I saw that cart that sold for $61! That’s craziness! And then that guide that sold for $15? I’ve NEVER seen an EarthBound guide sell for that cheap. Even when it was released I think it cost more than that. I hope this is the start of a trend… although there were a few cart-only listings that sold for over $200, so who knows.

There was also a brand new, complete copy that sold for well over $1000 – I think that’s the reason the average price for a complete set is slightly up. Without it, the average price drops to just $380… which is a pretty huge deal! So all around, it looks like prices are still on their way out of crazytown.

While working on these numbers, there were a couple of other things of interest I came across:

• Someone posted a listing for an EarthBound cart but for some reason they chose to use a picture of that EarthBound cart-shaped bar soap instead:

  Luckily, someone said something to the seller, and then some ACTUAL photos were eventually included

• A bunch of people have e-mailed me to tell me about a new type of EarthBound cart that’s been appearing on eBay. It’s some sort of reproduction cart of an EarthBound old fan hack based on my EarthBound localization analysis and was never fully completed. Also, some new people have suddenly been asking me questions on how to complete this hack, so I can’t help but wonder that there’s some sort of connection.
• While on the topic of conspiracy theories, while going through the auctions over the past month, I kept hitting on auction listings that ended on exactly $142.50. Sometimes they would happen all in a row, too:

  I’ve actually noticed similar behavior over the past many months too, just with different numbers. I used to think it was just a coincidence or just an eBay bug, but it seems pretty odd. Is this a normal thing on eBay? Has anyone else seen this sort of thing before? I guess it could just be coincidence, it’s just had me curious for a while now

Whew, that was a lot of info to compile! So, with all that said, if you’re ever looking to buy a physical copy of EarthBound or the guide or a complete set, check out the info on buyearthbound.com for more tips and info!

Andrew / Q has recently created a bunch of hacks for EarthBound Zero that update the game in several ways:

Demiforce hack – The patch will turn an clean copy of the Earth Bound prototype ROM into the most recent Demiforce version (Demiforce v1.01 Hack-2). This adds the word “Zero” to the title screen, fixes a few spelling/grammar mistakes, and, if my memory is correct, it’s also necessary to complete the game without setting off the copy protection if you’re using other hacks.

Graphics restoration hack – When Mother was localized into Earth Bound, several sprites were altered in order to censor depictions of blood/gore, smoking, religious iconography, knives, and, of course, robotic nipples. A few other sprites were changed for reasons that are not entirely clear. This hack replaces all the altered sprites with the originals.

Gameplay balance hack – EarthBound Zero is known for being somewhat tedious to play due to the high rate of random encounters and the large amount of level grinding the player must do. This hack attempts to remedy this by quadrupling experience, doubling money, and reducing the random encounter rate by approximately half. Using this hack is like using the “Easy Ring” mod that was created for the Mother 1 GBA fan translation.

Font hack – This replaces the font with the font designed for the Mother 1 GBA fan translation for an improved presentation.

Text tweaks hack – This makes a number of minor alterations to the game’s text. The character Giegue is now named Giygas for consistency with EarthBound for SNES. The menu option “State” is now “Stats.” I thought this was a more logical abbreviation for “Status.” Menu commands (e.g., Use) and stats (e.g., Offense) are no longer written in all capital letters because it looks ugly.

You can get individual patches for each one of these, or you can get an all-in-one patch here!

One of the biggest, most high-quality hacks that’s in the works is Unearthed, and it looks like it’s going to feature an addition to the battle system – blue magic/PSI!

In other games, this refers to being able to learn a spell or special technique after an enemy uses it. EarthBound had nothing like this at all, but here’s a demo of the new learning system in action:

Unearthed looks to be full of big changes like this, so I can’t wait!

If you wanna keep up with the project more closely, you can follow it on the forum thread here!

A couple years ago I released a program that randomizes and jumbles up the content in EarthBound so fans can play the game in entirely new ways (see here.)

People find it so much fun that now there’s a content randomizer for EarthBound Zero too, courtesy of BBGangZombie!

This program can randomly change a bunch of stuff in the NES EarthBound Zero ROM. For example, it will change enemies around and even give them new colors, names, and more!

Sometimes it REALLY makes enemies crazy!

It can also randomize NPC sprites and player sprites:

Item names and item boxes are randomized too:

There’s even a “Monkey Mode”, which will turn the heroes into a party of monkeys!

There’s more to this EarthBound Zero randomizer than just the above, so for more info and to download the latest version of the program, check here!

I’ve been streaming a bunch of randomized EarthBound, so I think I’ll probably stream some randomized EarthBound Zero sometime too – if you’re interested, my channel is here. Actually, if anyone streams or does some YouTube videos of this EB Zero randomizer stuff, let me know so I can check it out!

It’s October, which means it’s time for Starmen.Net’s annual Halloween fun! This year’s event is called “EarthBound Hacktoberfest” and is brimming with spooky fun!

Poe and I were asked to host the first night of the festivities, so tonight we’ll be streaming lots of randomized EarthBound hacks, having lots of fun, and having lots of laughs. I hope you’ll join us if you can!

Join us or die! Can you do any less?

You can watch the fun on our Twitch channel here or on Starmen.Net’s Twitch channel here tonight at 8:00 PM whatever time zone Arizona is in right now.

If you like spooky EarthBound fan events (especially ones that have prizes!) or if you want to get a better look at some of the best and weirdest EarthBound hacks out there, Hacktoberfest is for you!

DragonDePlatino has released a new ROM hack for EarthBound Zero that changes the game in many neat, interesting ways!

Mother: 25th Anniversary Edition aims to make Mother much more enjoyable for both Earthbound fans and those playing it for the first time.

All enemy graphics, NPC sprites and tiles are be redrawn from scratch to be more faithful to the clay models. The goofy enemies are goofier and the creepy enemies are creepier. A shiny new font and title screen was added, too!

The overworld has been tweaked to be much less bleak and repetitive, so it’s harder to get lost. There is more scenery, areas are more colorful and confusing areas like Duncan’s factory have been simplified. On the other hand, tiny areas like the graveyard and Crystal Cavern have been lengthened.

There are also a lot of changes under the hood. Enemies will yield slightly more exp and the encounter rate has been readjusted. The “Dangerous Foe” battle theme is used less often and party members will be met at a higher level. DragonDePlatino’s goal in creating this hack was to create a game easier than the original but still very challenging.

And last but not least, this hack uses Tomato’s official Mother 1 + 2 translation, adapted for the NES. Over 1400 lines of text have been altered to create connections with the rest of the series, improve clarity and shorten reading time. This hack will also feature much quicker battle text courtesy of vince94. Battles progress almost twice as quickly!

You can find the ROM patch here!

The creator of the impressive Hyperbound EarthBound hack has been working diligently on one of the biggest EarthBound hacks ever, called Unearthed. It’s a little bit different from your standard EarthBound hack, though:

Unearthed is centered around a fairly simple plot – one that draws influences from Labyrinth, Cave Story, Fraggle Rock and many other sources. Through a series of unlikely events, Mitchell (our protagonist) is thrust into an underground world in search of his younger brother Chase. There he encounters strange creatures and exotic locations, and gets caught up in the trials and tribulations of this newly discovered realm.

Unearthed hit a milestone the other day – all 140 new enemies have been implemented and added to the hack. You can see a little bit of them in this recent video:

If you’re interested and would like to keep up with the project, follow the creator’s Twitter account here!

A very common question I’ve had over the last year or two – especially within the last few months – is, “I’ve found this version of EarthBound called ‘EarthBound Uncut’ on eBay. Is it an official release? What’s the deal?”

It’s true – EarthBound Uncut cartridges have suddenly sprung up everywhere and in a bunch of different forms! Here’s a look at a few:

As you can probably guess, these aren’t official cartridges – they’re bootleg reproduction cartridges. It’s common for repro cart makers to take others’ ROM hacks and put them onto cartridges, which is what’s happened here.

As far as I can tell, EarthBound Uncut is based on this old EarthBound ROM hack that a fan made based on my EarthBound localization comparison. I’m not even sure my comparison was complete back then, so I don’t even know how “complete” this uncut patch is. There are LOTS of hacks that are meant to uncensor EarthBound, though, so I might be wrong. If anyone has more info, let me know.

Anyway, for those who are curious or who might ask in the future, hopefully this info will help!

I shared this during the last EarthBound Central live stream, but it’s awesome enough that I want to share it here on the site too!

Basically, the EarthBound Zero / MOTHER 1 remake hack for the EarthBound ROM is making significant progress, and vince94 recently did a custom version of Pollyanna for the hack, using EarthBound’s music engine. It turned out amazing:

Download audio file (Pollyanna.mp3)
(Download MP3)

This is too good! I bow to you, vince94!

EDIT: The basic arrangement was inspired by a remix by Nelward Music on YouTube, which you can check out here!

About four years ago I posted about why I translated the MOTHER 1 side of MOTHER 1+2 but not the MOTHER 2 side – basically, MOTHER 2 and EarthBound have a really messy text system that would’ve taken me forever to untangle.

Jeffman’s been plugging away at the problem for the past few years, though, and finally things are looking up!

If you recall, I did a basic menu translation for the MOTHER 2 half of MOTHER 1+2, which means the text looked and sounded like this:

But here’s how things are looking with Jeff’s new work:

As you can see, it’s starting to look just like EarthBound!

But Jeff needs help, though. Lots of help. He needs people to go through every line of the MOTHER 2 script, untangle things, and then replace the text with EarthBound’s text in EarthBound’s format. There’s a LOT of text, so that’s where fans come in.

Jeff’s made a nice little program to make things understandable. Here’s an example:

If you’re interested in helping Jeff out with his MOTHER 2 translation hack, head here! You can also check out the project’s github here!

Chaos Rush recently posted on the Romhacking.Net forums about a color restoration patch for the MOTHER 1 side of MOTHER 1+2 on the GBA:

As some of you may know, a lot of GBA games have brightened, washed out colors in order to make it easier to see on an unlit GBA. This is a patch for *Mother 1+2* for GBA that restores the colors back to what they were on NES (just the Mother 1 side of the ROM, I have not bothered with the Mother 2 side and don’t have any plans to)

…except I’ve made several patches. Because there are no true NES colors because of the way it handles colors. To my knowledge, NES games don’t have any palette data, they just have ‘color assignments’ choosing from the NES’s 64 different color ‘slots’. But the way these colors appear can be different from one TV to another, whether it’s between NTSC and PAL, or RF/AV cables… so really there are no ‘true’ NES palettes. Which is why I made two patches, one patch using a supposedly ‘accurate’ NES palette I found on a NES dev forum, and another patch using the palette that Nintendo uses for NES Virtual Console games on Wii & Wii U (credit to SuperrSonic and Daxtsu from GBAtemp for ripping the VC palette).

When they ported Mother 1 to the GBA, they adapted the NES 64 color limit to it, and came up with their own unique color palette that was clearly optimized for the original model GBA and nothing else. Unfortunately that palette they used makes trees look neon-green on backlit displays.

There’s a lot more to read about this patch, so if you’d like to learn more or want to download the latest patch, head over here!

Last night was Monday, which meant a new edition of EarthBound Central Live!

We did a lot last night, we talked about recent EarthBound news -including Satoru Iwata’s passing, we shared e-mails and submissions from EarthBound Central viewers, and we played more of my new creation: Twitch vs. EarthBound!

We also held a Q&A session during Twitch vs. EarthBound, but there were so many questions that I can’t list them all here or I’ll be an old man skeleton by the time I’m done. But here’s a handy-dandy list of highlights of last night’s stream!

Recent News

• Stream Start
• Recap of last week’s EarthBound news

E-mails from Readers / Viewers (e-mail backlog count: 837)

• Thank you!
• A fake article about Itoi and me
• Mother in top 14 list for games that need to be remade
• Mr. Saturn is Kilroy
• Buy Somethin’ Will Ya kazoo cover
• Japanese story
• Pokey looks like stuff
• Ness in knockoff app
• Yoshi’s New Island and Twinkle Elementary music
• IlliosBound, help wanted
• Music made using EarthBound’s sounds
• The possible truth behind Ness’ dad

Game Time!

• Twitch vs. EarthBound begins!

Q&A and Discussion

• Q&A begins, lasts for the rest of the stream!

Wrapping Up

• Fan Art roundup #1
• Fan Art roundup #2
• End Credits

If you missed out on last night’s stream but would like to be at future ones, here are some links that’ll send you in the right direction!

• My Twitch channel – the live shows will happen here
• My YouTube channel – if you miss a show, I’ll post it here later on!
• PoematoCX.com – more info on our streams and the stuff we do
• My personal Twitter – I’ll tweet when we’re about to go live
• The EB Central Twitter – I’ll also retweet it from here if it’s EB Central related

I plan to continue improving Twitch vs. EarthBound, and we’ll be playing it even during non-EB Central Live streams, so if you’d like to be a part of it in the future, be sure to stop by and follow on whatever thing you follow people on. I’ll post more about Twitch vs. EB in a future update, so if you don’t know what it is, don’t worry

See you next game!

A 100% translation of EarthBound into Italian has been completed! You can download it and read more about it here:

• Get the XDelta (not IPS) patch here
• Read about the project here

And here are some screenshots:

And here’s a video!

Congratulations to Vecna and everyone involved in making this translation happen!

A few years back I wanted to learn the C# language and how to make Windows programs. So I taught myself by making a program that randomizes a lot of the elements in EarthBound to create the EarthBound Reshuffler!

Since then, many other programmers have wanted to know how the reshuffler works. I’ve received many requests for the source code, but I could never find the latest version. Until now!

So if you’d like to take a peek under the hood and see how everything is duct-taped together, here you go:

• EarthBound Reshuffler source code

An EarthBound fan named Rydel recently used my source code of an earlier, outdated Reshuffler build to make a new, customized version – you can find out more about it here. It has some features that my latest release doesn’t have, like randomized shops, randomized map palettes, and more. Check it out!

And if you happen to use my source code for your own project, let me know if you create anything cool! I’d like to see how my wacky program evolves in the hands of others

Editing/hacking EarthBound’s music has always been a tough, tedious chore. Usually it involves plugging in lots of numbers, data, and other complicated stuff that takes beyond the grasp of most people.

But the situation has improved and now EarthBound music hacking is a little easier thanks to a bunch of new updates from EarthBound hacker BlueStone, including support for MIDI instruments!

For more info and download links, see here.

It seems like EarthBound hacking tools have really been leveling up a lot lately, it’s an exciting time!

H.S recently shared some new screenshots from the Mother 1 remake hack that uses the EarthBound ROM as its base:

There have actually been lots of other developments since the last time I posted about the project, so check the big project thread here for anything you might’ve missed!

There are multiple debug menus hidden in EarthBound, and the big one that lets you do all sorts of cool stuff has always been full of gibberish:

In actuality, this gibberish is just Japanese text, written phonetically in English, with most vowels removed. My interest in this weird menu is actually what led me to join the EarthBound community back in 1998, so it’s always been something I enjoy messing around with. And now you can too, even if you don’t know a lick of Japanese!

Thanks to vince94, there’s now a translation patch for this debug menu, which you can get here!

If you want to access this debug menu, I made a code a few years back that turns the ATM card into a debug menu item. Check it out here!

Last Monday we held another EarthBound Central Live, but if you missed it, don’t worry! The archive is up on YouTube now:

We covered a ton of different topics and then played four different games. Here’s a basic list of the highlights, but check out the whole thing for lots more!

• News Recap
• EarthBound for Sale
• Interview
• MOTHER Action Figures
• Big MOTHER 3 Campaign + Look at MOTHER 3 Miiverse
• buyearthbound Code
• Ness on Apple Music
• Undertale?
• MOTHER 3 card game
• PK Radio
• EarthBound Beginnings Super Mario Maker Level
• EarthBound-themed Mario Maker Level
• Yume Nikki + MOTHER 3 crossover remix
• MOTHER 3 translation cart
• Return of Touhou Mother
• Threed 8-Bit Remix
• Fun EarthBound Anecdote, from reidman
• Kickstarter with EarthBound-inspired Graphics

After all that, we played four different games!

• Camp Fangamer PK Hack Panel’s special surprise hack!
• EarthBoundKart – a hack of Mario Kart
• Castle MOTHER – a Japanese hack of a Famicom game
• Shigesato Itoi’s Bass Fishing for Super Famicom

We really need to learn how to play the bass fishing game, so I recently bought a boxed copy to help us out. Hopefully it’ll get here soon!

Anyway, if you missed out on the live stream but would like to attend future ones, here are some links that’ll send you in the right direction!

• My Twitch channel – the live shows will happen here
• My YouTube channel – if you miss a show, I’ll post it here later on!
• PoematoCX.com – more info on our streams and the stuff we do
• My personal Twitter – I’ll tweet when we’re about to go live
• The EB Central Twitter – I’ll also retweet it from here if it’s EB Central related