Mother's Brother?
While everyone who comes to starmen.net knows about EarthBound, not as many know about its predecessor, EarthBound Zero, or Mother in Japan. The game Earth Bound, which was to be released for the NES in late 1991, was cut from the release list even after a prototype copy had been created. Lately, many mysteries about Mother / Earth Bound have been answered. However, why was it cancelled after so much progress had been made? The two reasons that are generally believed are that Nintendo thought an RPG wouldn't sell well that season, and that the graphics didn't match the par of the SNES. There was another game with similarities released for NES near the beginning of the year, though. The game was nearly a brother to Mother. (No, its name wasn't 'Uncle'. You know Nintendo has more sense than that!) The name of this game was Startropics.
Certainly you must have heard me spouting off about this game before. Here's a brief idea of the plot: You're Mike Jones, a high-school kid visiting his famous archeologist uncle for the summer in an archepeligo. When you arrive, however, the islanders tell you that he has disappeared. Worse yet, the chief of the village tells you that your uncle was abducted by aliens! What do you do now? Call the Coast Guard? Hide in a cave? Not in a Nintendo game. You're going to look for you uncle, with only a yo-yo as your weapon! And so, you begin a search across several islands, fighting your way through caves full of monsters, to find uncle Steve Jones. The game's genre is that of an adventure, borrowing elements from The Legend of Zelda. So you're a kid looking for a lost relative, traveling the world (or at least a part of it), and the game is set in present-day. What did Mother have that this game didn't?
Seriously, the two games have numerous similarities. Mother is an RPG, Startropics is an adventure. They're not the same genre, but they're both classified under 'epics'. Both are in the modern world, with kids as the heroes. (Granted, Mike is older than Ninten.) Both have evil aliens as the main enemies. (Think Giegue and Zoda would ever work together?) Heavens, in Mother you're looking for great-grandmother Maria's melodies, and in Startropics you're searching for your lost uncle! (GASP! Maybe it really should've been named Uncle.) Was Earth Bound really that different, that it should be cancelled? That might have even been the reason for it - Nintendo decided that the two games were too alike to come out in the same year. Or maybe it was just because Earth Bound's later release date gave Nintendo time to be worried about its comparison to the SNES, whereas Startropics was released before they began to worry about that.
After all the comparison and contrast, Startropics' epic gaming experience serves as a shadow as to what Earth Bound would have been. What is this game's role in Earth Bound's cancellation, if any? Will we have to be content with Startropics since Nintendo has no prospects of releasing Earth Bound in the future? Those are my thoughts for now...
While everyone who comes to starmen.net knows about EarthBound, not as many know about its predecessor, EarthBound Zero, or Mother in Japan. The game Earth Bound, which was to be released for the NES in late 1991, was cut from the release list even after a prototype copy had been created. Lately, many mysteries about Mother / Earth Bound have been answered. However, why was it cancelled after so much progress had been made? The two reasons that are generally believed are that Nintendo thought an RPG wouldn't sell well that season, and that the graphics didn't match the par of the SNES. There was another game with similarities released for NES near the beginning of the year, though. The game was nearly a brother to Mother. (No, its name wasn't 'Uncle'. You know Nintendo has more sense than that!) The name of this game was Startropics.
Certainly you must have heard me spouting off about this game before. Here's a brief idea of the plot: You're Mike Jones, a high-school kid visiting his famous archeologist uncle for the summer in an archepeligo. When you arrive, however, the islanders tell you that he has disappeared. Worse yet, the chief of the village tells you that your uncle was abducted by aliens! What do you do now? Call the Coast Guard? Hide in a cave? Not in a Nintendo game. You're going to look for you uncle, with only a yo-yo as your weapon! And so, you begin a search across several islands, fighting your way through caves full of monsters, to find uncle Steve Jones. The game's genre is that of an adventure, borrowing elements from The Legend of Zelda. So you're a kid looking for a lost relative, traveling the world (or at least a part of it), and the game is set in present-day. What did Mother have that this game didn't?
Seriously, the two games have numerous similarities. Mother is an RPG, Startropics is an adventure. They're not the same genre, but they're both classified under 'epics'. Both are in the modern world, with kids as the heroes. (Granted, Mike is older than Ninten.) Both have evil aliens as the main enemies. (Think Giegue and Zoda would ever work together?) Heavens, in Mother you're looking for great-grandmother Maria's melodies, and in Startropics you're searching for your lost uncle! (GASP! Maybe it really should've been named Uncle.) Was Earth Bound really that different, that it should be cancelled? That might have even been the reason for it - Nintendo decided that the two games were too alike to come out in the same year. Or maybe it was just because Earth Bound's later release date gave Nintendo time to be worried about its comparison to the SNES, whereas Startropics was released before they began to worry about that.
After all the comparison and contrast, Startropics' epic gaming experience serves as a shadow as to what Earth Bound would have been. What is this game's role in Earth Bound's cancellation, if any? Will we have to be content with Startropics since Nintendo has no prospects of releasing Earth Bound in the future? Those are my thoughts for now...
