Written by Shigesato Itoi, published by Nintendo, and featuring game mechanics modeled on the Dragon Quest series, Mother is known for its sense of humor, originality, and parody.

The player uses weapons and psychic powers to fight hostile enemies, which include animated everyday objects, aliens and brainwashed people.

[4] EarthBound characters such as Mr. Saturn recur, and RPGamer wrote that Mother 3's final chapter is "full of blatant links" between the games of the series.

[10] In both final battles, Giygas is defeated through love and prayer instead of through a tour de force of weaponry, unlike the endings of other period games.

[10] Nadia Oxford wrote for IGN that nearly two decades later, EarthBound's final fight against Giygas continues to be "one of the most epic video game standoffs of all time" with noted emotional impact.

[11] This battle's dialogue was based on Itoi's recollections of a traumatic scene from the Shintoho film The Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty that he had accidentally seen in his childhood.

[10] Finally, Pokey begins as Ness's child neighbor who "cowers" and "refuses to fight" in EarthBound, but grows into a "vicious control freak with no regard for human life", Porky, by the end of the series' Mother 3.

[7] When Suzuki and Tanaka were unavailable to commit to Mother 3's soundtrack, Itoi chose Shogo Sakai for his experience with and understanding of the series.

[2] While visiting Nintendo for other work, celebrity copywriter Shigesato Itoi pitched to the company's lead designer, Shigeru Miyamoto, his idea for a role-playing game set in modern times.

The contemporary setting worked against role-playing genre norms, and while Miyamoto liked the idea, he was hesitant until Itoi could show full commitment to the project.

[18] Mother is a single-player role-playing video game[16] set in a "slightly offbeat", late 20th-century United States (as interpreted by Itoi).

The player fights in warehouses and laboratories instead of in dungeons and similar fantasy settings, and battles are fought with baseball bats and psychic abilities instead of swords and magic.

[25][26] To avoid confusion about the series' numbering, its English title was changed to EarthBound,[25] and was released on June 5, 1995, for the North American Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

[20] The Mother series titles are built on what Itoi considered "reckless wildness", where he would offer ideas that encouraged his staff to contribute new ways of portraying scenes in the video game medium.

[29] The game's writing was intentionally "quirky and goofy" in character,[25] and written in the Japanese kana script so as to give dialogue a conversational feel.

[30] By default, the player starts as a young boy named Ness,[31] who finds that the alien force Giygas (/ˈɡiːɡəs, ˈɡaɪɡəs/ GHEE-gəs, GHY-gəs)[32][33] has enveloped the world in hatred and consequently turned animals, humans, and objects into malicious creatures.

[29] While visiting the eight Sanctuaries where the melodies are held,[11] Ness meets three other kids named Paula, Jeff, and Poo—"a psychic girl, an eccentric inventor, and a ponytailed martial artist", respectively[29]—who join his party.

[11] Upon returning to Eagleland, he prepares to travel back in time to fight Giygas[35] in a battle known for its "feeling of isolation, ... incomprehensible attacks, ... buzzing static" and reliance on prayer.

[28] Examples of the game's humor include untraditional enemies such as "New Age Retro Hippie" and "Unassuming Local Guy", snide dialogue, frequent puns, and fourth wall-breaking.

[3] The game entered development hell[28] and struggled to find a firm release date[38] and in 2000,[28] despite its level of completion, was later cancelled altogether with the commercial failure of the 64DD.

[6] Along with his dog, a neophyte thief, and a princess, Lucas fulfills a prophecy of a "chosen one" pulling Needles from the Earth to wake a sleeping dragon and determine the fate of the world.

[6] Mother 3, much like its predecessors, is a single-player[42] role-playing video game played with two buttons: one for starting conversations and checking adjacent objects, and another for running.

[46] The game updates the turn-based[6] Dragon Quest-style battle system with a "rhythm-action mechanic", which lets the player take additional turns to attack the enemy by chaining together up to sixteen taps in time with the background music.

While reflecting on Mother 3's 2000 cancellation, Itoi recounted the great efforts the team made to tell small parts of the story, and felt this was a core theme in the series' development.

[52] Upon "little" response from Nintendo, they localized Mother 3 by themselves[52] and printed a "professional quality strategy guide" through Fangamer, a video game merchandising site that spun off from Starmen.net.

[59] In 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die, Christian Donlan wrote that the Mother series is a "massive RPG franchise" in Japan comparable to that of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, though it does not enjoy the same popularity in the West.

[8][7][65][66] USgamer's Jeremy Parish said that Mother's script was "as sharp as EarthBound's", but felt that the original's game mechanics were subpar, lacking the "rolling HP counter" and non-random encounters for which later entries in the series were known.

[28] Kotaku described EarthBound's 1995 American release as "a dud" and blamed the low sales on "a bizarre marketing campaign" and graphics "cartoonish" beyond the average taste of players.

[25] Multiple reviewers described the game as "original" or "unique"[20][68][69] and praised its script's range of emotions,[20][68] humor,[68][70][71] cheery and charming ambiance,[31][68] and "real world" setting, which was seen as an uncommon choice.

[4] The series has a legacy as both "one of Japan's most beloved" and the video game cognoscenti's "sacred cow", and is known for its long-lasting, resilient fan community.