Shigesato Itoi, the man that you are. How do you just get it?
When I decided I was going to play MOTHER—the prequel to the much more famous SNES title Earthbound—last week, I honestly didn’t know anything about it other than the names of some of the main characters, the fact that its villain returns (albeit in an extremely abstract capacity) in Earthbound, and that there’s a lot, and I mean a lot, of random encounters. Apparently, its asinine encounter rate is one of the primary reasons the game is touted as more difficult than its sequels, and that one should be prepared to have less than a great time navigating what can best be described as a very… 1980s-style difficulty scaling. None of that deterred me, though; I’d recently gone through an extremely potent Shin Megami Tensei phase, and the level of grinding in that series will arm you with patience that not even a saint can match if you’re willing to see each through to the end—at least from my experience it does. There are a lot more variables than an outrageous encounter rate in those games…
The first thing I noticed upon stepping foot outside post-magic lamp attack (yes, really) is that for such a peaceful, verdant area, there are quite a lot of things that immediately want you dead. Dogs, birds, random possessed farmers named Wally—there’s an overwhelming amount of enemies for the beginning of an RPG. For example, while running around the first dirt road of the game, there was a point where nearly every step I’d encounter an enemy, and you are most certainly not yet part of the beefed-up psychic-master rocket-wielder power squad that you’ll end up joining if you stick with the game. I had to resign myself to fighting rats in the basement for around an hour just to give myself a safe cushion. Not the most fun thing ever, I know. If I were the protagonist’s age, I might’ve torn my eyeballs out by rat five.
Ohhhh. So that’s where they went!
As I finally ventured out into the world and began to explore, I realized that MOTHER is a game that distills America down to its most basic attributes: big cities, interesting (and quirky) people, and a whole lotta land. You’re basically thrown into the wilderness with not much direction after you figure out you’ve got psychic-freaking-powers—albeit the hints you do receive aren’t very hard to decipher. If you’re ever lost, just check your map for the tiny black dots in your general vicinity. There’s not much else that’ll sidetrack you out there, besides the, y’know, giant expanse of forests and fields that surrounds every town, which is another thing about MOTHER that I found strangely immersive; despite how simple and repetitive many of its environments are, that same simplicity creates a childlike sense of adventure that turns what would normally be dated, sluggish areas into catalysts for the imagination. Wandering through these vast, open spaces, which had virtually nothing of interest, made me feel like I was a kid again, letting my imagination run wild as my friends and I explored random forests and walked up and over hills all day. The game’s environment forces you to fill in the blanks—anything could be out there waiting for you, whether it be a strong enemy waiting to test your chops, or a secret area you’d never find otherwise. It’s an alluring feeling, one that kept me wandering much longer than I would’ve if the game were jam-packed with sidequests and more modernly detailed environments. The NES’s ability to truly immerse a player might pale in comparison to the hardware that modern games are built on, but much like a kid would, sometimes all you need is a bit of whimsy.
Not that there aren’t areas that are straight out of a fairytale, though; Magicant—virtually a hub world where you can rest and gear up as many times as you need—is aesthetically straight out of left field with its pink clouded ground, spiraly ice-cream-like protrusions, and townsfolk dressed like mages that immediately make you feel like you’re playing Final Fantasy. It wouldn’t be a MOTHER game without a place that makes you feel like you’re suddenly on acid. It’s nice to know how that trend started!
Y’know, this game is really diagonal for some reason. Isometric-esque. Mathematical. This is not relevant at all. ANYWAY.
The game’s focus on keeping things grounded through a childlike lens only intensifies this feeling; spreading bread crumbs as a trail to follow, buying baseball bats and bottle rockets as weapons, withdrawing money from an ATM to buy burgers—it’s all a perfect, nostalgic depiction of what a kid would think to do while tasked with saving a great big world. Sure, the sights and sounds might not be the most glamorous, and the stakes might not be as traditionally epic, but the heart sure is there. You even get to go to the Zoo! It might be overrun with killer animals being mind-controlled by a chrome-suited alien, but it’s the Zoo!
Even your friends don’t talk very much throughout the game, yet their characterizations are all too familiar: bullied nerd, the female love interest, and the jock. Now you’d think that this means they’re one-note, bland characters that only serve to play into stereotypes of the 1980s, but think about how this game presents itself; it’s asking you to fill in the blanks by exploring. The emotions of its ending are only amplified if you view them as the culmination of all those battles, each mortifying defeat, each area traversed, each city and town rescued from the clutches of an evil, intangible force that threatened the livelihoods of not only you and your friends, but the lives of everyone you’ve met along the way. When all is said and done—when you’ve pieced together the forgotten melodies and punctured through the steel coating Gigue’s yearnful heart—you get to see all the lives you’ve touched in a short but sweet epilogue. The game makes a point to let you know that none of the relationships you made were simple steps towards an end goal, but meaningful bonds that can’t be expressed through words alone. It’s up to you to care—to fill in each and every moment you spend with your friends along the journey with laughter, fear, triumph, and love. If you do, then I think you’ll truly understand the reason why even though MOTHER isn’t really the gold standard of NES RPGs, it’s still so highly lauded. Oh, and I know I didn’t really talk in-depth about the gameplay, so here are my super-duper quick thoughts on it: It’s literally like every other RPG of the era. It’s simple as hell and oddly addicting if you just love mashing A like I do. Just don’t give yourself finger cramps grinding enemies in the depths of Magicant, alright?!
Honestly, I don’t know if I can replay this game. Not because I didn’t like it (the last few paragraphs would look insane if that were true), but because I have a hard time coming back to experiences that move me as MOTHER did. Just the simplicity of its message of love triumphing over evil is enough to melt me into a pile of slime at the simple thought of traversing MOTHER’s America again. It’s as if the game is already a memory from the distant past—the kind that pulls you by the heart and fills you with that aching, melancholic desire to be innocent, devoid of worry.
Wouldn’t you love to save the world with your friends? I feel like we all wanted to back then, to the tune of our favorite song.
All maps in this post were sourced from Starmen.net.
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