Mother: 25th Anniversary Edition aims to make Mother much more enjoyable for both Earthbound fans and those playing it for the first time.

All enemy graphics, NPC sprites and tiles are be redrawn from scratch to be more faithful to the clay models. The goofy enemies are goofier and the creepy enemies are creepier. A shiny new font and title screen was added, too!

The overworld has been tweaked to be much less bleak and repetitive, so it’s harder to get lost. There is more scenery, areas are more colorful and confusing areas like Duncan’s factory have been simplified. On the other hand, tiny areas like the graveyard and Crystal Cavern have been lengthened.

There are also a lot of changes under the hood. Enemies will yield slightly more exp and the encounter rate has been readjusted. The “Dangerous Foe” battle theme is used less often and party members will be met at a higher level. DragonDePlatino’s goal in creating this hack was to create a game easier than the original but still very challenging.

And last but not least, this hack uses Tomato’s official Mother 1 + 2 translation, adapted for the NES. Over 1400 lines of text have been altered to create connections with the rest of the series, improve clarity and shorten reading time. This hack will also feature much quicker battle text courtesy of vince94. Battles progress almost twice as quickly!

Comparison Screenshots hide spoiler













FAQ (For Annoying Questions) hide spoiler

What ROM is this? This is “Earthbound (USA) (Proto)”. It’s the very first dump, untouched by Demiforce and without the “Zero” in the title. It’s CRC32 file hash is F5EF5002. But why not M1+2? The NES version’s so clunky! But the screen’s a higher resolution and most of the songs from the NES version sound much better! Here’s a comparison of the Hippy Battle theme if you don’t believe me:

NES Version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEmxnPT6-LM

GBA Version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_BEEYn7tek

And trust me, Mother 1 has a fantastic soundtrack so you’d be missing out! What tools did you use? Sprites: ASEprite v1.0.1

Tiles: YY-CHR

Palettes: NES Palette Editor / FCEUX

Overworld: BBHack v1.0

Text and stats: n42’s EB0 Text Editor / Tiny Hexer

Town Map: NES Screen Tool v2.0 Will you be using Mother or Earthbound Zero content? As far as censorship goes, I will not be following either’s example. As stated earlier, I’ll be following the game’s official art. This means some enemies will still have blood, but BB Boss will not have his knife. I will be keeping all religious references, though. As for town names, the ones from the Japanese version will be used since it’s what Mr. Itoi wanted. Finally, Giygas’s name is still Giegue (pronounced Gheeg), because it helps differentiate the character’s NES and SNES appearances.