April 14
The date: April 14. That anxious day before tax day, the day the Titanic hit an iceberg and sunk into the history books. The day the Earthbound community both stood still, and exploded. Fathoms of new users flooded Starmen.net's message forums, including myself. I've been an Earthbound fan for a while now, and have been a regular visitor to Starmen.net for a while as well, but no gaming news this huge has ever reached me, at least not about Earthbound. This was huge.
I arrived home at about 4:00. I called my friend casually, and discovered that our hog pen at his farm needed cleaning. So, I drove over to his place, and cleaned it for about 20 minutes(without checking the computer first, of course). I arrived home at approximately 5:18. After signing on to AOL(and showering of course, those pens smell awful), I surfed over to Starmen.net. The recent reports from the likes of GamesAreFun.com and Quiter already had me pumped for Earthbound, but nothing had me pumped more than our favorite Earthbound site. The words "Mother 1 + 2 to GBA?! Plus Mother 3?!" will forever stick in my mind. The site's awesome coverage of the whole thing, the commercial downloads, the translated commercial, and the realization that my GBA will never be as good as a Game Boy Player, and that I must buy one, were all huge and sudden. Sometime later, a white page with strong, milestone-ish words popped up at Starmen.net. A link to Shigetsato Itoi's site(great reading I'm sure...if you can read Japanese), and a link to an official Mother 1 + 2 site stared back at me. As I opened new browser windows for both, I was ready to yell "DING!" We had confirmation that the news on our hands was not a hoax, that our favorite games were being reborn in Japan as early as June 20th on Nintendo's best-selling system, and that a brand new game would show it's face sometime later. Huge. Now, I don't know if everybody has fully realized what has just happened in the Earthbound community. The game that we've all longed for, wished for, *cough*PETITIONED*cough* for has finally been announced! I think the lack of realization is due to the fact that everything has happened at once. A commercial, an announcement from Itoi, a new official Japanese site, lots of website announcements, all within a day, and even no formal announcement from the Big N itself. We're all still reeling from the sudden news, great news. It's upon us, guys and gals.
Now, with the promise of an anthology of Earthbound/Mother games in Japan and most likely over here in the U.S., we can all both breathe a sigh of relief and shout for joy at the same time. The future of Earthbound is upon us, and it's certainly a bright one.
-EB 4 GBA
The date: April 14. That anxious day before tax day, the day the Titanic hit an iceberg and sunk into the history books. The day the Earthbound community both stood still, and exploded. Fathoms of new users flooded Starmen.net's message forums, including myself. I've been an Earthbound fan for a while now, and have been a regular visitor to Starmen.net for a while as well, but no gaming news this huge has ever reached me, at least not about Earthbound. This was huge.
I arrived home at about 4:00. I called my friend casually, and discovered that our hog pen at his farm needed cleaning. So, I drove over to his place, and cleaned it for about 20 minutes(without checking the computer first, of course). I arrived home at approximately 5:18. After signing on to AOL(and showering of course, those pens smell awful), I surfed over to Starmen.net. The recent reports from the likes of GamesAreFun.com and Quiter already had me pumped for Earthbound, but nothing had me pumped more than our favorite Earthbound site. The words "Mother 1 + 2 to GBA?! Plus Mother 3?!" will forever stick in my mind. The site's awesome coverage of the whole thing, the commercial downloads, the translated commercial, and the realization that my GBA will never be as good as a Game Boy Player, and that I must buy one, were all huge and sudden. Sometime later, a white page with strong, milestone-ish words popped up at Starmen.net. A link to Shigetsato Itoi's site(great reading I'm sure...if you can read Japanese), and a link to an official Mother 1 + 2 site stared back at me. As I opened new browser windows for both, I was ready to yell "DING!" We had confirmation that the news on our hands was not a hoax, that our favorite games were being reborn in Japan as early as June 20th on Nintendo's best-selling system, and that a brand new game would show it's face sometime later. Huge. Now, I don't know if everybody has fully realized what has just happened in the Earthbound community. The game that we've all longed for, wished for, *cough*PETITIONED*cough* for has finally been announced! I think the lack of realization is due to the fact that everything has happened at once. A commercial, an announcement from Itoi, a new official Japanese site, lots of website announcements, all within a day, and even no formal announcement from the Big N itself. We're all still reeling from the sudden news, great news. It's upon us, guys and gals.
Now, with the promise of an anthology of Earthbound/Mother games in Japan and most likely over here in the U.S., we can all both breathe a sigh of relief and shout for joy at the same time. The future of Earthbound is upon us, and it's certainly a bright one.
-EB 4 GBA