Nevertheless, an unreleased cartridge found its way into the world. MOTHER was localized and set for US release in 1989, but factors such as timing–the impending release of the SNES made the NES something of a lame duck–and cost–the disappointing reception of JRPGs like Dragon Warrior abroad, compared with their smashing success in Japan–convinced Nintendo not to ship the game. Technically, this was my second play-through. Before recounting what I learned, though, I have a further confession. Hence the significance of finally playing the original. So much for my professional and personal indebtedness to the gift that is the MOTHER series.

If I can point a few more toward the promise of games to enrich lives, over against the charges of games’ alleged noxious impacts, I’ll try. Playing and talking about games has been a bright point of connection for many people amid the wrack and ruin of the present. Inviting more people to engage critically with games, trying together to explain the hold games have on us, is my Trout-flavored Yogurt. To remedy that, besides publishing podcasts and essays online, I teach a Video Game Studies class around EarthBound Beginnings at the public high school where I work. Not many players have noted its resonances with Shakespeare and Proust, beyond better-acknowledged references to The Beatles or Kurt Vonnegut. I’ve dedicated untold hours to the playful study of the 1994 SNES sequel, EarthBound. To say I’m biased is like saying people in big cities are fond of Strawberry Tofu.

Anyone interested in video games, relational life-lines, and the vagaries of time and taste should do the same. Decades later, as EarthBound Beginnings, it officially released on the Wii U and Switch virtual consoles, and at the prompting of an old friend, two years after becoming a father myself, I finally played it. MOTHER came out for the Famicom in 1989, two years after I was born.

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