Earthbound Beginnings/YMMV

Accidental Innuendo: When you call your dad to save your progress, he drops this little zinger.

Just like your Mom, you never want to stop.

All There Is to Know About "The Crying Game": Giegue is one of the most memorable characters of this game due to his surreal boss fight that requires outside-the-box tactics to beat, his surprisingly complex and tragic characterization, and being the original form of Giygas, the terrifying Eldritch Abomination final boss of Earthbound. However, you don't even know that he exists until the very end of the game where you help get rid of Queen Mary's amnesia and she reveals just who is behind all the weird phenomena happening during Ninten's adventure. But thanks to this game not seeing a proper US release until late in the Wii U's life cycle, many players who were either put off by this game's more archaic presentation or didn't want to play it via emulation simply read up a plot/character summary and learned the twist that way.
Alternate Character Interpretation: Thanks to the game's backstory being one big, fat Ambiguous Situation, it's possible to read those involved in all sorts of different ways.
- George. Was he a malicious idiot who doomed the Earth and humanity at large to be destroyed because he stole forbidden knowledge? Or was he a genuine hero who did what he had to do to stop genocidal aliens from destroying everything he cared about? Considering all the work he did to ensure that his descendants would be ready for Giegue's invasion, he'd either still be a hero going by the latter interpretation, or The Atoner if you go by the former.
- Building off the above, how malicious were the alien race that Giegue belonged to? Were they evil and planning to destroy the Earth to start with, or were they responding to a potential threat to their existence to the point of overkill?
- Once you meet Giegue and hear his side of the story, it's hard to tell if he's telling the truth about George, or if he's a victim of a Self-Serving Memory given the serious mommy and daddy issues that he suffers from.
Awesome Music: Plenty, but see The Power of Rock for more...
Demonic Spiders: Everything on Mt. Itoi. EVERYTHING. You've got Grizzly Bears that are likely to outspeed even Teddy and maul you to death with hard-hitting combo attacks, Juana and the Borgs with their powerful PSI attacks, Gargoyles and their insta-kill Stone of Origin... even with Teddy and EVE by your side, it's often better to use 4th-D Slip to skip enemy encounters here entirely.
- Rosemary's House has its fair share of annoying enemies as well, but the suits of knight armor (simply called Armor) are the worst. They hit ridiculously hard and take a ton of damage both from physical and PSI attacks before going down. One's bad enough, but if you run into two at the same time? You're probably screwed.
- If you run into a Bomber in Duncan's factory? For the love of god, kill it before it can attack. While it might hit you with a ridiculously wimpy attack, it's just as likely to use an explosion that does a ton of damage to Ninten and Loid, potentially killing them both outright.
Disappointing Last Level: Honestly, you could rename the trope Mt. Itoi Syndrome and get the same effect. Because there wasn't enough time to playtest this area, the enemies are ridiculously overpowered and will squash Ninten and friends into paste unless you run the second a fight begins, or grind like hell before visiting this place. Even with all sorts of Game Breakers by your side like PK Freeze Gamma, PK Beam Gamma, and Teddy/EVE, all it takes is one stray killing blow to severely cripple your party.
Epileptic Trees: Like its successors, a magnet for these, especially concerning Giegue. The backstory is more implied than spelled out, leaving plenty of room for interpretation. Same thing with most of the setting, like Duncan's Factory.
Game Breaker: As Nintendo Hard as this game is, you've got your fair share of tools that can tip the odds in your favor.
- Magicant is a rare example where an entire world can be considered a game-breaker. Once you get access to this place and kill the Fish for its Onyx Hook, you've got easy access to free healing, easily-accessed item storage, the best armor in the game, and a safe place to level grind once Loid and Ana join your party. While you'll need plenty of money to take advantage of the armor, no worries: the free healing and frequent enemy encounters allow you to accumulate the necessary funds surprisingly fast since you aren't constantly having to dip into your savings and drop hundreds of dollars for free healing/PP recovery.
- PK Freeze Gamma. While not quite an HP to One attack, it does put the health of any enemy hit by it into the critical range where it takes just one hit to kill them (usually). Before Paula gets access to PK Beam Gamma, the combination of her using this attack + Loid targeting the enemy hit by it is a nice way to instantly take problematic enemies out of the fight.
- PK Beam Gamma, however, is an instant kill to a surprising amount of enemies. While there are some who resist it, they're a lot less common than you'd expect.
Goddamned Bats: Plenty of these, too, especially since you can't skip low-level encounters like you can in the sequels.
Heartwarming in Hindsight/Hilarious in Hindsight: Shigesato Itoi was known to smoke a lot. The Crow smoked in the original release, but after the unreleased English version Bowdlerised that, the change was also in MOTHER 1+2. Near the time MOTHER 1+2 was released, Itoi quit smoking.
It Was His Sled: Like the sequel, the Final Boss is the most well known part of the game despite that fact that he seems to be intended to be a Walking Spoiler in the original.
Jerkass Woobie: Giegue loved Maria very much, but was forced to lead the Earth invasion by his people for vengeance on George for stealing their PSI information. He killed her in attempt to get rid of his deep feelings of love for her, but that doesn't work.
Player Punch: Giegue begs you repeatedly to stop when you fight him and start singing the Lullaby.
Polished Port: The MOTHER 1 part of MOTHER 1+2 is much more accurate of a port (and even received some updates) than the lower-quality MOTHER 2 side of it was. Despite this, it was MOTHER 2 that was the focus of the game's commercials.
Sacred Cow: The only one in the series to avert this, due to Early Installment Weirdness.
Scrappy Mechanic:
- Death. While it's a given that you don't want your party members to die in an RPG, there's no item that can revive a fallen party member or a PSI technique that can do the same. You either haul them allllllll the way back to the nearest city's hospital or use the Onyx Hook to teleport back to Magicant, heal them there, and then trudge alllllll the way back to wherever it was they died in the first place so you can pick up back where you left off.
- Talking to certain NPC's in Merrysville, Reindeer, and Snowman will cause Ninten to catch a cold. His health will slowly drain as long as he's sick, and the only way to cure it is through either visiting a hospital and losing a big chunk of money, or by finding a hidden NPC who gives you Mouthwash, which is the only item that cures it.
Sequel Displacement: Despite being the first Mother game, it's the most obscure. Notice how Ness, Lucas, and various references to their games are in the Super Smash Bros. series, but all this game gets is some music (most of which are used in all three games, or at least EarthBound) and a few stickers in Brawl. This game would, however, get some love come the fourth Smash Bros. game, where it's this game's version of Magicant that made it in as a stage.
That One Boss: The game has only a handful of bosses, but the Dragon in Magicant stands out for his powerful normal attacks and devastating PSI. Even with a PSI-Block from Ana, it's still a very challenging fight. Beating him boils down to hoping that he doesn't kill Ana before she can buff your defenses, and that he doesn't get any random critical hits with his physical attacks.
- While you can hold off on fighting him until later, it's recommended that you kill the Fish in Magicant as soon as you can since he guards the Onyx Hook, which instantly transports you to Magicant and makes things a lot easier on you going forward. However, killing him as soon as you can is hard to do, seeing as how you have a one-man party of Ninten, and the Fish hits ridiculously hard.
That One Level: Mt. Itoi. Duncan Factory to some due to its massive size.
Woolseyism: Many of the (Itoi-approved) changes Nintendo of America made in the unreleased American version, including the run button and an epilogue, were added to the game in Mother 1+2, a GBA port of this game and EarthBound.