[1] The game follows a young American boy named Ninten as he uses his great-grandfather's studies on psychic powers to put an end to the paranormal phenomena spiraling the country into disarray.

Modeled after the gameplay of the Dragon Quest series, Mother subverted its fantasy genre contemporaries by being set in an offbeat parody of the late 20th-century United States.

As such, throughout the game, players use medication and hospitals to restore their health, utilize baseball bats and toy guns to fight enemies, and encounter aliens, robots, possessed objects, and brainwashed animals and humans.

Mother sold around 400,000 copies upon its release, where it was praised for its similarities to the Dragon Quest series and its simultaneous parody of the genre's tropes, though its high difficulty level and balance issues polarized critics.

Mother is a single-player, role-playing video game[2] set in a "slightly offbeat", late 20th-century United States as interpreted by Japanese author Shigesato Itoi.

Instead of swords, assault weapons, and magic, the player uses baseball bats, toy guns, frying pans, knives, and inherent psychic abilities.

[3] On their turn, the player selects between options to fight, guard, check enemy attributes, run away, use items, or use offensive, defensive, or healing psychic powers.

If every character becomes unconscious, the game transitions to a blank screen, where it asks the player if they want to continue; an affirmative response brings Ninten, conscious, back to the last save point, with half the money on his person at the time of his defeat.

After Ninten fends it off, his father tells him that his great grandfather studied psychic powers, and asks him to investigate crises occurring across America.

Finding the parts of Queen Mary's song, Ninten is harassed at a live house in the town of Ellay[i] by a gang leader named Teddy.

Upon recalling the song, she tells Ninten the story of an alien named Giygas[l] (called Giegue in-game due to the official release being an English prototype with no updates to the script being made) that she had raised and had loved as her own child.

Giygas swears they will meet again and flies off in the mother ship; an epilogue showing what happened to all of the characters post-journey and a follow-up credits sequence.

[6] Having no prior experience in the gaming industry, Itoi hoped a company would produce his idea for him;[8][12] after he publicly defended video games on a late-night talk show, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi became interested in his work and ordered project manager Yoshio Sakamoto to invite Itoi to work on advertising for Nakayama Miho no Tokimeki High School for the Famicom Disk System.

He thought the setting would be unique for its incongruence with role-playing genre norms, as daily life lacked the pretense for magic powers and they could not simply give the child characters firearms as weapons.

[17][15][12] Itoi pondered how to make his game something that would impress people;[16] afterwards, he would receive a phone call from Miyamoto, stating that he had found a development team for the project.

[20] It was also inspired by his own life, in which his mother was absent in his childhood due to his parents' divorce; he had forbidden himself from thinking of her, and "finally found the opportunity to shout that word I had forbade myself from saying: 'mother.

[27] Suzuki considered the game's American atmosphere to be easy to write for, and found it fun to circumvent the Famicom's audio restrictions to produce sounds that had not been attempted before.

[33] In accordance with Nintendo of America's content policies, all religious iconography, blood, breast nipples, cigarettes,[o] and references to violence and alcohol were removed.

[25][39] Plans finalized for Earth Bound included an English release of the Mother album soundtrack, along with an 80-page instruction manual styled after a diary belonging to George, which would end on a ripped page after taking the player halfway through the game.

[40][3] Earth Bound's cancellation has since been attributed to Nintendo of America's marketing division deeming the game unprofitable, due to the lack of market interest in the RPG genre, the cost of Earth Bound's added cartridge size and supplementary materials making it difficult to promote and manufacture, and the game's planned release being late into the NES's life cycle in light of the impending US release of the Super NES.

They began working closer with Nintendo of America and the other subsidiaries to produce artwork for games that would be appropriately received anywhere in the world and not need localization".

[7][51][52] For Mother's release, it was backed by an advertising campaign highlighting Itoi's involvement as a celebrity, including a promotional video where he urged potential players to not rush through the game.

[53] It also revolved around a live-action television commercial, where child actors portraying Ninten, Ana, and Lloyd destroy a giant robot with psychic attacks before setting off for Mt.

[3] He noted that Mother, like many Japanese role-playing games, emulated the Dragon Quest style: the windowed interface, first-person perspective in combat, and graphics, but differed in its contemporary setting and non-fantasy story.

Parish commented that Atlus's 1987 Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei was similarly set in the modern day, though it devolved into science fiction and fantasy in ways Mother did not.

[3] Cassandra Ramos of RPGamer praised the game's graphics and music, and considered it among the console's best, with "rich, ... nicely detailed" visuals, Peanuts-style characters, and "simple but effective" audio.

[3] Rose Colored Gaming, a company that made custom reproductions of the NES cartridge, noted that the Japanese release's was more challenging than the unreleased English localization.

[63] RPGamer's Ramos similarly found balance issues, with a high number of battles, difficult enemies, reliance on grinding, and some oversized levels.

[34] The documentary focuses on the road to Mother's localization and eventual release as EarthBound Beginnings in North America, and includes interviews with key people behind the process, as well as notable figures within the gaming community.

[33] While Mother 3 was converted to 2D graphics, its premise and scenario remained intact from its Nintendo 64 incarnation; it released to critical and commercial acclaim in Japan in 2006.