EarthBound 64 is the tentative name for the third installment of the Mother series. Mother for the Famicom was never released in the US, but Mother 2 was released here as EarthBound for SNES. EarthBound was not a great success due to the bad graphics (even for its day) but those who picked up the game loved it and there is still a loyal following. The Mother series is very popular in Japan. Unlike other RPG's, Mother 1 and 2 were set in present day America, not a far off medieval land. At the end of EarthBound, Pokey escaped to some place where he was supposed to be safe. EarthBound 64 takes place in that world.

The game was originally going to be an N64DD game. But as the peripheral will probably not come out in the US (and maybe not Japan either) it was changed to a cartridge game. Like Zelda, it will be put on a 32MB cart, which is half of the DD disk it would have been on. Word has it that the soundtrack was cut (quality and quantity) to fit on to a medium of half the size, among other things. Many the originally touted features will probably be taken out or changed. It was supposed to be the first big DD game and would show off the features that only the DD could do. Unfortunately, this means that the game has to be changed considerably to work on the regular N64.

For instance, one example used was that one gamer could plant a tree and climb it to get up a cliff, but another gamer could go through the woods around it. The disk would be writable, so that tree could be written to the disk as if it was really in the game all along. Another feature was that if you turn on the game in the afternoon, it will be afternoon in the game; and if you turn it off at night, it will be night. I think that during the transition between DD and cartridge, the scope of the game has changed. They were planning to pick the game with tons of characters, but now they are saying there will be less than 100 (including NPC's). Each character, however, will have a lot of depth and not be some stereotype.

The game will have twelve chapters, and there will be a main character and tag alongs in each chapter. Some of the chapters will occur before, after, or even overlap other chapters to give you a look at what happens through another forest resident's point of view. The entire game will take ten game years to complete. At first they were planning to enable two player co-op but they had too many framerate problems so that was cut.

Most details on the battle system have been kept hush-hush. We know that it will be unique and that before each battle, you will have a little confrontation with the character. Most RPG's these days just have you fighting people for no reason, but here the turn based battles will be explained. After your conversation you'll go into the fight (or run). It will probably use menus but will also combine some strange concepts. One is that you will have to "play a song" with the control stick by stroking it like a guitar. If you play a good song then you will issue a big hit. The frequency of battles will be kept low to keep the game more focused on exploration.

Visually, EarthBound 64 is a lot like other N64 HAL games. The polygons are big and show seams. But the backgrounds look lush and textured (almost Rare quality :)). The music is said to be very good, if you trust Famitsu's musical taste.

One last note: the team promises that the game will take an experienced player 40 to 60 hours to beat. There is also a DD "Ura EarthBound" that might be released later if the DD comes out in Japan. The game would work like Ura Zelda and require EarthBound 64 to access. Here's hoping that it is released as a lock on cart in the US.

Gremmlin