Jiggy37 said:
I'm personally hoping Lucas forces NOA's hand, and that if Mother 3 comes out in any form in the US it gets the "Fire Emblem effect."
I would love for that to happen. Nintendo seems biased against the Mother series because the one game that came out here sold poorly.
(Warning: rant incoming. Bail out now!)
Earthbound was a victim of the time it was released in. RPGs had yet to become a popular genre, outside of maybe Squaresoft's efforts. The simplistic graphics, which have a substantial amount of charm in their own right (almost like the Wind Waker's graphics), didn't appeal to an audience that had just been wowed by Donkey Kong Country. The game was misunderstood by a large portion of the audience, considering it to be a childish game consisting of nothing but fart jokes and not considering the substance the game had.
And your marketing didn't help matters, Nintendo. What the hell was that?
This game stinks? You advertised your game with pictures of Master Barf and
scratch 'n sniff stickers? Okay, I'll admit, the stickers are a cool novelty item (that I have!) now. But they were a terrible way to advertise the game then. You didn't necessarily have to treat the game as a serious epic, because that's not what Earthbound is. But there were better ways to do it. Market it as a satirical portrait of the RPG genre. Play up the concept of kids being the heroes. But Nintendo tried to advertise it as an Earthworm Jim-esque game without any of the randomness and surreality that made Earthworm Jim successful.
And just because it didn't sell to your expectations, it doesn't mean you shouldn't put out the sequel and the GBA ports. Believe it or not, Nintendo, the video game audience
has changed. Look at the quirky, previously Japan-only stuff being released on your DS now, Nintendo. Take Phoenix Wright. Would that have done well on the SNES? Probably not. Hell, look at Atlus, publishing the kind of stuff that the Japanese used to get exclusively. Atlus has proven there
is a market for Japanese novelties.
And you've got a built-in audience. People actually know who Ness is and they'll soon know the name of Lucas. People are going to want to see the roots of these characters. When the Ice Climbers were put into Melee, you started shoving their game down our throats with a Classic NES Series and a Virtual Console release. When Marth and Roy got in, you gave us the Fire Emblem games, despite that
never having left Japanese shores previously. You've not only got a cadre of hardcore Earthbound who would
love to see the cliffhanger at the end of Earthbound resolved, but potentially thousands of new fans who would pick up the game if only to play the game that Ness and Lucas came from. RPGs are, in fact, popular now. Mother is the closest thing to a traditional RPG you've made yourselves; after all, it builds right on the house that Dragon Quest built. And look, Nintendo! Dragon Quest, which previously got only
sporadic North American releases, is now quite
popular! Square-Enix took the chance to give Dragon Quest VIII a proper, professional localization and it sold quite well! Well enough to warrant the release of all kinds of spin-offs we wouldn't normally get! Maybe if you did a proper translation of Mother 3, you could get that kind of success yourselves! Play up the Smash Bros. angle if you have to! You released stuff like Drill Dozer! Why not give Mother 3 a chance?! You've never given the Mother series a fair chance! You actually translated the first game, but didn't release it because the NES was essentially dead. That didn't stop you from publishing Mega Man VI for Capcom, did it? Then you saddled Mother 2 with the crappiest marketing campaign imaginable. And now you won't give Mother another chance. That was nineteen-freaking-ninety five Nintendo. Mother is an excellent series and
deserves another shot at the North American market!
...Wow. Sorry about that rant, I just get annoyed when I see a series like Mother, which I consider a series of some of the finest games ever made (and my own personal favourite) get shafted by Nintendo of America. I literally hammered that out in five minutes of frothing indignation. >_>
...Incidentally, does anybody know what kind of numbers Earthbound actually sold? For all the anecdotes I've read of Earthbound's crappy sales, I've never seen some actual numbers.