The following is a sort of history behind Kyoko Watanabe's and my
discovery of the game MOTHER which might be of some interest. A review
of the game will be posted separately.

*** MOTHER (Nintendo/Shigesato Itoi) Released 7/27/89. 6500 yen.
3M ROM + 64K RAM

In the very first issue of Famicom Tsushin I purchased last summer,
the game that immediately caught my eye due to its beautiful graphics
was MOTHER. I would later find out that the "producer" of the game
was Shigeru Miyamoto, who was also responsible for the SMB and Zelda
series, among others, which were my favorite games. I would later
find out that famous copywriter Shigesato Itoi wrote the scenario and
designed the game; Itoi also turned out to write lyrics with Akiko
Yano, my favorite musical artist. So the game already seemed too good
to be true.

Later by accident I found an episode of "Konya wa saiko" ("What a
Fantastic Night!") that aired right around the release date of the
game, and it happened Itoi was the guest. They did a skit based on
the game that although silly was excellent, and gave an even stronger
feeling that the game would be great. We also got to hear music from
the game for the first time; in particular some of the background
music had been made into a particularly excellent pop song
("Pollyanna"). I later bought the CD "soundtrack" for the game, and
found out much of the music was written as pop songs by Keiichi
Suzuki, a member of the group Moonriders and an excellent composer.
This was a real album, not background music, and I've listened to it
more than anything else over the past few months.

So, like SMB3, I had very high expectations for this game long before
being able to play it. And like SMB3, MOTHER far exceeded those
expectations. I don't think Kyoko expected so much of the game. She
left for Japan earlier than I did, bought a Twin Famicom and searched
for MOTHER. It turned out to be fairly difficult to find so she ended
up getting it for full price (about $45) at a department store. This
game is worth much more than that, but it turned out the cartrigdge
she got was defective: the battery backup supposedly can save 3 games
but it almost always erases the third game and sometimes erases the
second one (especially if no third game is saved). I found out about
this the hard way by having my game erased, but fortunately this
happened pretty early. Kyoko called Nintendo and they said they'd
replace it, but by that time we both had saved games and didn't want
to start over, so we never returned it.

So Kyoko, not expecting much, was completely overwhelmed by the game
when she first played. She couldn't believe how good it was and
conveyed her enthusiasm by mail. She also sent me a video tape of the
first few scenes so I could see how amazing it was as well. Finally I
too went to Japan and got to play. What can I say, it was incredible.
I got to keep the Famicom over the summer and for the first several
weeks my free time was devoted to MOTHER; I was sleeping 4 hours a
night but hardly cared. But then eventually I got stuck. Strangely
enough I wasn't stuck because I couldn't figure out what to do next; I
was stuck because there was too much to do! In particular, too much
Japanese to read, and this was fairly tough Japanese--quite idiomatic
with some people speaking in dialects. I had already finished
Makaitoushi SAGA (Final Fantasy Legend) with no trouble with the
Japanese (and Kyoko, who had the Gameboy for the summer, still hasn't
finished SAGA) but this was a bit too hard. I was scared I would miss
something important (and even unimportant things are a big part of the
mood of the game) and so stopped playing.

Kyoko returned to the US sooner than I and took the Famicom and games
back with her. Since I was ahead in MOTHER I decided to ask her if
she wanted to play together starting from her saved game. But when I
returned she had already passed me and had nearly reached the end of
the game! It turned out she had done nothing but play MOTHER for two
weeks, over 10 hours a day (I asked if it was really 20 hours, and she
said "just once"). So we started from my saved game instead, with her
helping me with the Japanese and trying not to give too much away.
Unfortunately shortly thereafter the defective cartridge erased her
saved game, but I was almost up to her spot anyway.

When I reached the spot she had been stuck at it seemed that it was
about the end of the game, but I got stuck there too. For days we
agonized over this trying out various things to no effect. It was
reminsicent of when we couldn't find a magic container in Link and I
even had dreams about that. I called Nintendo's counselors to solve
that problem, but we couldn't do that in this case. The only
possibility seemed to be to ask people in the group fj.sys.famicom on
junet. A friend in Japan posted the article for us, and many people
ended up responding. It turned out our problem was quite stupid so we
were really embarrassed, but it was nice to hear from so many people.

A friend visited recently, and we wanted to show him several Famicom
games, but he never got past MOTHER. He ended up playing until 3am
(and probably would have continued if we hadn't suggested it was
getting late), started again at 9:30 am, and ended up staying 2 hours
later than planned. For us it was exciting even watching the
beginning again, especially through someone else's eyes. He'll be
back to continue soon, and we're thinking of playing again ourselves.
It's that kind of game. And we are eagerly waiting for the sequel....

It's a quiet little life with no problems between | John Leo
the stove that smokes and the ever-open window that | l...@theory.lcs.mit.edu
looks out on a landscape becomming daily less |
coherent...But what am I saying? And to whom?...
All questions not worth asking from now on. (Alain Robbe-Grillet)