FEUDY

Yes, perhaps you're overdue for a great-clown appointment to perk you right up. Also been thinking a lot lately about the merits of the particular hyper-fixation we all happened to land on, how its themes & subtext resonate especially powerfully today; shared 2 threads here on my main profile.

Relating my foggy memory of the community's history on a Discord last week reminded me, my intent to "catch up again in another 10 years or so" as you left for the desert ended up getting pushed back a full extra decade now, simply had a more important promise to keep during the big 2016 gathering.

Been looping some Paper Mario synth-rock tracks myself. Y'know, since drifting away from the old community, one of my main side-projects has been scheming up how to apply game design & play therapy principles to some kind of constitutional reform / truth-and-reconciliation process.

Last year's "Secrets of MOTHER2" book isn't digitally available yet but still sold on JP Amazon, took extensive notes when I reviewed my copy with a translator app. Many different iterations of the final battle. Ness originally conceived as the last psychic across timespace to avoid assassination.

I used to be SMNET's resident essayist & phantom-investor; ever since the 'Secrets' came out I've been delving deep into just how much of Itoi's life experiences informed the series. Was assuring an audience on Discord just a bit ago, even now MOTHER still reflects back some pretty timeless lessons.

Truly all "Like a Shadow-Picture Lantern" - that tune at the end of M3 as one world ends yet again & something new begins.

...and a page in the official guidebook that Clyde translated for his book, suggests that M2's main villain's frantic obsession with the artificial-wisdom of his personal prediction machine, is part of what's frying his brain, perhaps obstructing any inward-examination that might've saved him.

Twoson has little lessons for judging the fundamentals of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, contrasting "Apple" Kid, a passionate if slobby engineer like Wozniak, to a Bill Gates stand-in that's all about appearances & pushing features no one asked for.

... and yet, on the sidelines of M2/EB, missiles & bombs & shit are still getting sold to kids, spread across the globe by renegade mercenaries, problem never fully goes away. Before Kuwait ended M2's first draft even had a literal "desert storm" military operation scenario instead of the cult.

The end of the Cold War also happened right between games. M1's corrupt-business-magnate scenario was more concerned with 'proliferation of advanced weaponry', before 'real estate / economic bubble crashes' seemed to become a more salient existential concern...

West coast & NYC real estate markets get touched on throughout the game. Fourside seems to pose, even if "Tokyo's landlord" & then-richest man was a modest nice enough old guy, that power might corrupt anyone into an 80s-era Trump, obsessed with gold offices & tallest buildings.

Japan's labor/student movements suffered a generational setback after those 1960s protests. One of the writers that inspired them, Takaaki Yoshimoto, later became a lifelong friend & role model to Itoi, both feeling the movement was failed by its leaders' elitism. As the Stoic Club's tone suggests.

MOTHER2's earliest drafts were being written just as Japan's economic bubble was popping, another Gulf war was heating up, and as the Rodney King protests & police crackdowns were making international news. Last one surely jogged some youthful memories for Itoi.

I used to be SMNET's resident essayist & phantom-investor; ever since the 'Secrets' came out I've been delving deep into just how much of Itoi's life experiences informed the series. Was assuring an audience on Discord just a bit ago, even now MOTHER still reflects back some pretty timeless lessons.

...It is so chock-full of fun overambitious ideas that I can imagine someone like Reid entertaining his kids with it as a live improvised story-book; then switching it around as a trial-by-error team management lecture to his staff. Felt like a trip-sitter while I re-formatted it all.

...BTW, since our last exchange, I've engaged the new generation of MOTHER fan communities on Discord, and dusted off 20 pages of my summary-transcriptions of Itoi/M2 dev materials. Just weighing how/where to best 'drop' it this month. Simple wall-of-plaintext, can share in advance if you'd like.

Of course, the anime's a ~500 hour commitment now ... so, 'Artur' of 'Library of Ohara' (on Twitter & his own site) would be a pro-follow, a superfan of our own ilk who had life profoundly changed by his fandom participation. Does weekly chapter analyses & re-posts top-tier animation from new eps.

I was just thinking, I oughta tell Clyde that one of his first big-time commissions is GEARing up to be one of the only modern dense epic narratives likely to actually stick-the-landing, no big concern about premature death-of-author, or sidetracking like GRRM. You'll eventually recognize my avatar.

Just registered as signore_giovanni, was going to check out SMNET’s server later but most will prob only recall me as an urban legend, open to anywhere else you feel hosts a critical mass of highly engaged fans. Also the Itoi novel @ Anna’s is just an unevenly scanned library copy, could do better.

So that's most of what's been up the last 5 years or so. Happy hunting. Been putting off my own series writeup for a long time but I imagine this fount of nostalgia's close to running dry by now Maybe I'll at least start a factoid dump on my account later as a writing challenge.

Anyway, "Kenisu's Magicant" blogspot hosts his nearly-complete translation of the original MOTHER ENCYCLOPEDIA. "NyaasuNoBouken" fully translated all 3 M1&2 novels. NOKOGODO's MotherForever is still up with interviews. And TheCuttingRoomFloor has a thorough chrolological compilation of EB64 assets.

Oh, and I only recently realized the Fourside scenario was evoking the richest man in the world at the time of development - the mostly modest founder of Tokyo real estate empire 'MORI Building' - with 'MOnotoRI Building'. With Porky & his dad representing the more Trump-like NYC side of that world.

Also in the M2 guide, a scenario designer mentioned loving Ultima; presumably how we got dungeon designer BURIKKU RODO as a stand-in for Richard Garriott's Lord British / RODO BURITISSHU. And based on the team's software preferences, "Apple" Kid probably = Steve Wozniak, and Orange Kid = Bill Gates.

The official M2 guide suggested there was supposed to be more lore involving other Eagleland 'natives' besides Little Tree. And an early screenshot showed the Tenda / GUMI tribe as just literal Pygmies / piGUMIs ... M2's prolonged development probably just naturally sanded off stereotyping content.

That family supposedly only ever found a GOLD STATUE of the shogun ... and in a promotion for 1101's Mani Mani replica, Itoi mentioned its name and the way Moonsiders chant it just comes from untranslatable aboriginal lyrics he recalled from a schoolbook compilation of international childrens songs.

I noticed in there that Lier X Agerate / HORANDO got renamed after historical figures in the Tokugawa treasure hunt that Itoi did his famed miniseries on. First for the Mizuno family that owns the land, then after the sketchy KURANDO that actually convinced them to invest in the hunt 100+ years ago.

In those files every minor NPC with an event flag got distinguished by mostly-random character names from Twin Peaks. ~20 characters have a paragraph of lore to help the localization team/s with characterization; like how Belch would be on a promotion track if he wasn't just too disgusting to Gyiyg.

Mato did his 2021 'forensic analysis' article about uploads of a floppy disk Lindblom worked with right after narrowly avoiding the 1995 Tokyo subway attacks - 'EarthBound SNES Source Code Scripting Files' on Internet Archive, the files can be dropped into Chrome to easily search & translate.

The connection between 'alien designers' Giger & Gyiyg, and Lassie's cowardly neighbor Porky, came from Itoi & Marcus Lindblom's dialogue earlier this year. Posted on the SMNET main page, coordinated & translated by Chewy - her 'yomuka.wordpress' site still has interviews about Itoi's early career.

... and Itoi's solo novel 'Family Fall Out' (uploaded on Annas-Archive / untranslated) published between M1&2 has a sadistic throwaway chapter in the middle, "Misfortune of the Kanabunbun / drone beetle", that makes BunBuun / BuzzBuzz's fate less of a non-sequitor.