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The Mother series – better known as EarthBound in the west – is one of those franchises that benefits from a massive amount of attention from the Nintendo fanbase, despite the fact that the company has done relatively little to encourage such devotion over the years.

Sure, Mother 2 was localised as EarthBound on the SNES back in the '90s, but Nintendo declined to bring its Game Boy Advance sequel to the west, and only quite recently (well, 2015) released EarthBound Beginnings, the first Mother game, on the Wii U Virtual Console.

That version of the game was actually intended for release way back in 1991, but was cancelled and eventually turned up online thanks to the discovery of a prototype cartridge. By the time the prototype was found, EarthBound on the SNES had already gripped countless players, so it's easy to understand why it became something of a video gaming legend.

Now, a new documentary called Mother to Earth is aiming to shed some light on this prototype, why it was cancelled, how it got into the wild and how fans have been keeping the game alive over the years – right up until Nintendo's unexpected release on the Virtual Console 25 years after it was supposed to be released.

The makers of the film spoke to the people who worked on the localisation way back in the '90s, as well as the dedicated fans, collectors and historians who have poured hours of their time into documenting this unusual release and preserving its backstory for future generations.

If you want to learn even more about the film, then head over to the official site here.