Earthbound Beginnings: Difference between revisions
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* [[Big Damn Heroes]]: After a robot nearly defeats the party (and severely injures {{spoiler|Teddy}}), Lloyd shows up and destroys it. With a ''tank''.
* [[Black Bead Eyes]]: As in all of the ''MOTHER'' games, though here it can come across as mere technical pragmatism as opposed to a deliberate stylistic choice.
* [[Bowdlerise]]: The English translation got quite a few changes as a result of Nintendo's censorship policies at the time. Infamously, blood was edited out of sprites and cigars and knives were removed from the battle sprites of the Crow and Teddy. Crosses and religious text were removed. Holy Loly Mountain had a [[Dub Name Change]] to Mt. Itoi, probably half because of the religious reference and half because, [[Woolseyism|well]], it is a major [[Difficulty Spike]] as well as [[The Very Definitely Final Dungeon]]
** It should be noted that Itoi was quite involved in the localization of this game and every [[Bowdlerise|Bowdlerization]] and [[Woolseyism]] that occurred had to have his approval.
* [[Girl of My Dreams|Boy of My Dreams]]: Ana fell in love with Ninten when she started seeing him in her dreams.
* [[Chekhov's Gun]]: There's a war veteran with a tank in Yucca Desert. If you do a sidequest, you get to ride it, and he warns you to be careful with it because it's his most prized possession. [[Trope Telegraphing|Inevitably]], it breaks, and when you get to Ellay you have to pay him to replace it. Also, in a sidequest that you can do later, Lloyd gets a [[Big Damn Heroes]] moment with a tank. What other tank could he possibly get access to? If you do both those sidequests, in order, it's [[Chekhov's Boomerang]].
* [[Cherubic Choir]]: The vocal version of [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrtM4onLQ1I The Eight Melodies]. Also used in the 1989 Japanese [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQUN7QAnMp0 commercial.]
* [[Clap Your Hands If You Believe]]: {{spoiler|Giygas is defeated by singing Queen Mary's Lullabye to him, similar to how he's defeated in ''[[EarthBound]]''
* [[Cute Bruiser]]: Pippi may not have the typical personality of this trope, but she has the same level up growths as Teddy. Shame you can't keep her for long.
* [[Damsel in Distress]]: [[Overly Narrow Superlative|Probably]] the only RPG in existence in which you have to rescue [[Lawyer-Friendly Cameo|Pippi Longstocking]] from zombie gangsters.
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{{quote|'''Doctor (if you don't have enough money for his services)''': Fine, die all on your own. I'll phone a mortician.}}
* [[Dummied Out]]: There is an item called Time Machine in the game's code, as well as an IC-chip. Poison Needle and Stone of Origin were also items that poisoned and stoned the enemy, but in the final game they are just enemy attacks.
** IC-Chip may possibly have been the item Memory Chip which can be found in ''Mother 1+2'' only which is obtained after
* [[Dungeon Crawling]]: Duncan's Factory is an annoying large version of this that you are required to go in to continue the plot and if you're lucky enough to find the right room a second Franklin Badge can be found.
* [[Dungeon Town]]: Spookane/Halloween, unlike other towns where enemy encounters stop upon entering they can still happen even after entering the town limits.
* [[Eagle Land]]: Although explicitly taking place in America, (which Itoi later denied in an interview concerning the sequel's use of this trope) it clearly follows the trope, and is the predecessor to the [[Trope Namer]].
* [[Early-Bird Cameo]]: ...sort of. The music that plays on the character naming screen? It's used as part of the vocal version of "Eight Melodies", the song that {{spoiler|you spend the game collecting, and use to defeat Giygas}}.
* {{spoiler|[[Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas|Even Bad Aliens Love Their Mamas]]: It's Giygas's memories of his adoptive human mother, Maria, that end up defeating him
* [[Everything's Better with Monkeys]]: A singing monkey gives you a part of the [[McGuffin]]. Later, you get to go in a cave full of monkeys. A majority of them lie to you.
* [[Everything's Better with Penguins]]: In the beginning of the game, there is a zoo with a penguin pen. Later in the game, you go in a cave full of monkeys (mentioned above) and there is a secret room with a single lost penguin in it. In addition, Ninten's favorite animal is said to be the penguin, which is [[All There in the Manual]].
* [[Everything's Deader with Zombies]]: Zombie mooks pop up time to time. In the early graveyard section of the game and in Rosemary Manor.
* [[Everything's Worse with Bears]]: The bear, polar bear and grizzly bear enemies. The latter can kill you in one hit.
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* [[Everything Trying to Kill You]]: Your first three enemies are two desk lamps and a doll. It just gets better from there.
* [[Forced Level Grinding]]: The [[Perfectly Cromulent Word|grindiest]] game in the whole series.
* [[Galactic Conqueror]]:
* [[Ghost Town]]: The town Spookane/Halloween after it became infested with monsters and ghosts.
* [[Girlish Pigtails]]: Ana has these.
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* [[Haunted House]]: Rosemary Manor
* [[Heroic Albino]]: Lloyd, who, despite being 11 years old, has white hair. It is also noteworthy to mention that albinos have poor eyesight, and Loid wears glasses.
* [[Hopeless Boss Fight]]: The three R7-robots. The first two can be destroyed only by a tank (and, with a tank, the first one is hopeless for R7037) but, as you are tankless then, R7038 will destroy your party (along with your strongest character - permanently). But Lloyd destroys it - with a tank. {{spoiler|1=When you fight R7038XX, even your new giant robot buddy deals only about 50 points of damage, and only when the robot explodes does R7038XX die. Fortunately, it doesn't try to attack you, it only attacks EVE. So you win, but for EVE, it was hopeless
* [[Improbable Weapon User]]: Similar to the sequel, almost nobody uses a real weapon. Teddy, who can use a knife, a sword, and eventually a [[Katanas Are Just Better|katana]], is the exception.
* [[Inn Security]]: In Spookane/Halloween.
* [[Instant Awesome, Just Add Mecha]]: EVE.
* [[Interspecies Romance]]: One of the monkeys in the Monkey Cave flirts with Ana.
* [[It's All Upstairs From Here]]: The final battle is at the peak of Mt. Itoi.
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{{quote|'''Scientist''': "Oops! It's gone into orbit. A success... sort of."}}
* [[Katanas Are Just Better]]: The Katana is Teddy's [[Infinity+1 Sword]]. It's better than the Sword.
* [[Killed Off for Real]]: {{spoiler|EVE. For players of the original Famicom version, Teddy also does this, but later versions of the game make it clear that Teddy lives
* [[Level Grinding]]: The player is forced to do this after recruiting Lloyd and Ana. They come at a low level, and so one naturally goes to Magicant to train them.
* [[Lost in Translation]]: {{spoiler|After Loid has his [[Big Damn Heroes]] moment in the tank while Ninten, Ana and Teddy were getting their butts handed to them by R7038, due to how his speech was translated, it seems as if Loid accidently shot Teddy, and that it's actually his fault that Teddy is criticly injured. Turns out that, as shown by the more accurately translated ''Mother 1+2'' [[Fan Translation]], Loid was supposed to instead say that he was too late
{{quote|'''Loid ([[EarthBound]] Zero Translation)''': "Shoot! I missed!"
'''Loid (Mother 1+2 Fan Translation)''': "Oh no! I'm too late!"
* [[Luke, I Am Your Father]]: {{spoiler|Queen Mary is actually Ninten's great-grandmother Maria, who was sealed into Magicant (with her memories removed) after Giygas seemingly killed her
* [[MacGuffin]]: The Eight Melodies.
* [[Magical Mystery Doors]]: Rosemary Manor.
* [[Market-Based Title]]: ''Earthbound Beginnings'' in the long-overdue English release.
* [[The Maze]]: There are a quite few.
* [[Mental World]]: {{spoiler|Actually Maria's, not Ninten's
* [[Minimalistic Cover Art]]
* [[Moment Killer]]: Right after Ninten and Ana confess their love for each other, Teddy barges in the room and asks the pair why they are blushing. To be fair he does apologize for interrupting but did so because he was hearing odd noises outside, [[It Got Worse|and then a giant robot attacks them]], severely injuring/killing Teddy. Real moodkiller there.
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* [[Never Say "Die"]]: Similar to the sequel, enemies "become quiet", "don't move anymore", etc. [[Justified Trope]] because you're not using real weapons (for the most part) and you're fighting possessed animals and humans, as well as supernatural beings.
* [[Nintendo Hard]]: Lots and lots of [[Random Encounters]], generally unbalanced enemies, a huge proliferation of [[One-Hit Kill]] moves, and too much [[Forced Level Grinding]] make this the hardest game in the whole series. Itoi even admitted to completely skipping over balancing it out because by the end, everyone was so tired.
* [[No Ending]]: The original release ended with
* [[Nostalgic Music Box]]: The ending tune starts and ends with a music box rendition of the Eight Melodies.
* [[Not Drawn to Scale]]: If the surrounding panorama is to be believed, the rooftop of Twinkle Elementary is some 100 stories off the ground - [[Fridge Brilliance|then again, maybe that's just what it looks like to Ninten...]]
* [[Ominous Music Box Tune]]: The first of the 8 Melodies is a music box hidden in Ninten's sister's formerly possessed naked baby doll.
* [[Outside the Box Tactic]]: In a convention to be continued throughout the series, the [[Final Boss]] {{spoiler|Giegue}} cannot be defeated by ordinary methods. You must {{spoiler|sing Queen Mary's song eleven times to subdue him
* [[Palette Swap]]: As an early RPG, nearly everywhere. Some palette swaps at least slightly modify the sprites by overlaying new graphics to make them seem different, like adding a collar to the wolf to make it a stray dog.
* [[Parental Abandonment]]:
** Teddy is an orphan, and Ninten's father doesn't appear until the ending. And only in the unreleased English version and the [[Compilation Rerelease]].
** Also, all the parents of Youngtown being abducted by the aliens.
** Also
*** However, in the novel adaption, his father is said to be in the swamp because he is looking for a special plant to cure a fatal illness Lloyd's mother has, and that appears to be another reason Lloyd joins Ninten.
* [[Poltergeist]]: At the start of the game, one of these attack your house.
* [[The Power of Love]]/[[The Power of Rock]]:
** {{spoiler|Singing Maria's lullaby to Giygas is what defeats him. And it doesn't just defeat him: in ''[[EarthBound]]'', it is found that it drove him absolutely insane
** After reading a bit of description, it seems there's a bit more to it than that.
* [[Random Encounters]]: Good ''grief'', there's a lot of them!
** The world of ''MOTHER'' is massive and quite fun to explore... but the beauty is ruined by those random encounters.
** This gets less aggravating once you get access to Magicant (and more importantly, Repel Rings which prevent fights against weaker enemies).
* [[Recurring Riff]]: Several, including "Pollyanna (I Believe In You)", the battle theme for the [[New Age Retro Hippie]], and "Eight Melodies (Queen Mary's Lullabye)", occur frequently and are used in the later games.
* [[Red Shirt]]: The Flying Man.
* [[Revised Ending]]: The 1989 version's ending featured Giegue flying off, the player's party turning to face them, and the credits rolling behind them. This left ''many'' plot threads unresolved and made for a rather abrupt ending, so during production of the 1990 localization, Nintendo of America understandably replaced the fourth wall-breaking credits sequence with a [[Where Are They Now? Epilogue|"Where Are They Now?" Epilogue]] that resolves all of these subplots. Though despite the game's non-linear nature, it makes the assumption that the player went along what is commonly considered the default/canon route. This new ending also features a cast roll call, a new credits sequence with a remix of the airplane theme and a little bit of Youngtown's at the end (the original song plays during the epilogue & roll call), and a [[Sequel Hook]] courtesy of Ninten's dad.
* [[Rewatch Bonus]]: When you get to Merrysville Elementary's roof, you may take note of what appears to be a volcano in the distance. You may not think much of this at first, but afterwards, you'll instantly recognize it as Mt. Itoi, the [[Very Definitely Final Dungeon]] of the game.
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* [[Spell My Name with an "S"]]:
** Roid/Loid/Lloyd. The first was the official Romanization in Japan, the prototype used the second, and ''[[Super Smash Bros.]] Brawl'' uses the third.
** Also shown by
* [[Spinning Out of Here]]: The teleport spell is executed by having the character move around while accelerating rapidly before zooming off; because colliding with anything stops the teleport, the better the player is at moving in a small circle, the more places he or she can teleport from.
* [[Standard Status Effects]]: Subverted at one point, as Ninten has asthma and exhaust from Killer Tractor Trailers can render him unable to act unless someone uses an inhaler on him.
* [[Start of Darkness]]: {{spoiler|Giygas
* [[Stuff Blowing Up]]: One of the first things that Loid does after joining your party is blow up the science lab.
* [[Sudden Downer Ending]]: Terrifying, emotional final bosses are a staple of the series. Though this is pretty much considered the lightest of them all.
* [[Taking You with Me]]:
* [[Tank Goodness]]: A rental. Lloyd shows up in another tank to defeat the second R-series robot.
* [[A Taste of Power]]: The game does this ''twice'', both at the end of the game. Once with
* [[Theme Naming]]: Pretty much every location is named after a holiday. [[Woolseyism]] changed these names because the translator thought they were silly names. When Tomato was doing the fan translation of the ''MOTHER 1+2'' version, he agreed with the sentiment but kept the holiday-themed names anyway.
* [[Thriving Ghost Town]]: Averted. This game's towns are the biggest in the whole series, and seem to extend past the cluster of houses into the vast rural areas. Most of the houses' doors are locked, however, preventing the [[Kleptomaniac Hero]] (or a thief) from getting in.
* [[Took a Level in Badass]]: You first find Lloyd in a trash can hiding from bullies. Later, he shows up in a tank to destroy a giant robot that your party could not hope to defeat otherwise.
* [[Two-Part Trilogy]]: Aside from PSI and
* [[Updated Rerelease]]: The English version, and consequently ''[[Compilation Rerelease|MOTHER 1+2]]''. Only the latter was actually released.
* [[Video Game Cruelty Potential]]: Dear god, the Flying Men. Seeing the cemetery next to their former home is just heartbreaking when you realize that if you hadn't come along they would still be alive.
* [[Wackyland]]: Former [[Trope Namer]], though the sequel's Magicant is most likely what was envisioned when it was named.
** Though technically they're not the same place; in this game it was {{spoiler|a manifestation of Maria's mind trying to regain her memories
* [[Weapons Grade Vocabulary]]: Enemies can "attack" with Threatening Words and Swear Words, both of which decrease someone's Fight stat. Your party can get some words of their own to "attack" with, but they do nothing.
* {{spoiler|[[We Can Rule Together]]: Giegue gives Ninten alone a chance to board his mothership.}}
* [[We Named the Monkey "Jack"]]: [[Mrs. Robinson|Mrs. Rosemary]] renames her son [[Zelda II: The Adventure of Link|Buggerror]] after Ninten. Evidently, she likes his namesake better than her own son.
* [[Westminster Chimes]]: The basis for the background music of Twinkle Elementary.
* [[White Magician Girl]]: Ana, the only completely straight example in the series (Paula has a similar personality but absolutely no healing powers, and Kumatora is a straight-up [[Black Magician Girl]]).
* [[Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds]]:
* [[You Cannot Grasp the True Form]]:
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{{quote|''No crying until the end.''}}
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