Miura was unsure of what to change the statues to, so he left it completely up to Lindblom. In Japan, octopuses and sea-life are held as culturally significant however, they do not hold the same significance overseas, so this needed to be changed. One situation involved the kokeshi statues in the game (blocking the player’s path) that resemble octopuses.

The main thought process for the team was to re-contextualize these references into something more appropriate for American audiences. When it came to cultural references, Lindblom was guided by translator Masayuki Miura, who gave him advice when it came to localization. The removal of religious references and alcohol was a priority for EarthBound in order to meet Nintendo of America’s policies and standards otherwise, Lindblom was given the opportunity to be as “ strange” with the writing as he wanted. The localization process of MOTHER 2 was headed by Marcus Lindblom, whose main goal in the project was staying true to Itoi’s writing without sacrificing too much of his original intentions through censorship. Marcus Lindblom, the man behind EarthBound’s localization. The game was reprogrammed entirely under Iwata’s supervision at HAL in only three months, refining elements along the way to prepare the game for shipment in the summer. In Itoi’s own words, Satoru Iwata “single-handedly delivered the game to completion”. Development of the game was an intense struggle, nearly being canceled after five years of work until Satoru Iwata joined the team in the spring of 1994. The game was originally envisioned on an 8-megabit cartridge, but gradually moved its way on to a 24-megabit cartridge due to the memory needed to store the game’s many sound files and graphics. Unlike the last game, MOTHER 2 was written in the hiragana alphabet as opposed to katakana to allow a clearer image of spoken words. Many of the initial concepts and ideas proposed by Itoi were far too ambitious for the Super Famicom, one such idea being the main party traveling to outer space. with additional programming done at HAL Laboratories. The game was mainly developed by Itoi’s company APE Inc.

The MOTHER 2 and EarthBound boxes, the EarthBound box being much larger it came with an official Player’s Guide, compared to MOTHER 2′s box which did not!

Download authentic earthbound cartridge