Published on: 11/02/2022

EarthBound, EarthBound Beginnings now available on Nintendo Switch

EarthBound and EarthBound Beginnings are now available on Nintendo Switch online membership.

Both games were made available on February 9, 2022 during Nintendo Direct broadcast. The video game’s creator, Shigesato Itoi, teased fans in his tweet about both games making their way to Nintendo’s online subscription service.

“7 a.m. is amazing. It may be snowing.” Shigesato tweeted on February 9, roughly translated.

Fans gathered on Shigesato’s tweet and had made speculations about the two games being made available on Nintendo. Which the news came out to be true.

After the game’s announcement, Shigesato shared a video of his excitement on Twitter saying that after all these years, the two titles are coming to Switch.

EarthBound, EarthBound Beginnings’ history

EarthBound and EarthBound Beginnings were first released in Japan. EarthBound Beginnings, then known as Mother, was released in 1989 for the original NES and the game’s successor EarthBound or Mother 2 was released for SNES in 1994/1995.

Fast forward to 2013-2016, the two titles were released for Wii U Virtual Console and Nintendo 3DS within the years of release window. The last time fans got to see both series on Nintendo consoles is with the previous Wii U generation.

However, the last game of the series titled, Mother 3 which was released on Game Boy Advance never made its way to Western markets.

Both EarthBound and EarthBound Beginnings have attracted many and are beloved by fans. As for the story, both games are quite similar. The two titles tell a story of a young boy each on their journey to the world collecting eight melodies to save the planet from an evil race of mind-controlling aliens and other supernatural threats with psychic power. They encountered friends in the middle of their journey.

Both games on Nintendo Switch Online

Along with EarthBound, EarthBound Beginnings is made available on Nintendo online store and these titles will not be available for purchase alone but through a Virtual Console store only but still exclusively playable through Nintendo Switch Online.

The Nintendo Switch Online is Nintendo’s subscription service similar to PlayStation Plus and Xbox Live Gold where players will be allowed to play online games and access to a library of many retro titles. The newest titles to Nintendo’s online subscription being added so far are EarthBound and EarthBound Beginnings.

While the news might be good news for some, most fans are instead looking forward to the release of another installment to the series, hence making it a trilogy at least for Western markets. Hence some fans are a bit disappointed the last installment seems to have not made its way to modern consoles.

What makes the series interesting, however, are the authentic twist of Japanese story-telling and sense of humor in video games. In addition to heavy American twists which inspired the series.

Both games are RPG games heavily inspired by Western culture, American pop culture that is. Cultists of the game might see a close resemblance to culture hits like the Goonies and ET: The Extra Terrestrial in both games. As not only the story, but its own game style that got others into playing the game.