Step into a Dimensional Slip: intermittent interludes in “MOTHER,” She Wrote’s journey – where Cat Blackard and Jessica Mudd speak with guests from a multitude of backgrounds and delve deeper into the themes, media, and fandom that make up the tapestry of the EarthBound experience.

The story of the MOTHER series in the United States is a wild one – filled with twists, turns, marketing mishaps, game cancellations, Internet movements, and at its heart: a generation of people brought together by a heartfelt work of art. These games have changed lives, and now that saga has been documented in EarthBound, USA a feature film documentary directed by Jazzy Benson.

In this episode, Jess and Cat are joined by Benson to discuss the film, she and her team’s incredible decade-long journey to create this amazing work of multimedia art, her formative fan film series: EarthBound Saga, and the ways that art, artists, and fans inform and inspire one another.

A conversation with Aaron Cargile: EarthBound, USA’s Archival Producer. Interview conducted by ThaneGaming, transcribed & reworked for Mother Forever. They talk copyright & fair use (in YouTube and in film), Fangamer, and the EarthBound fandom!

An interview asked by Remie_REM_Sleep, best known amongst the MOTHER community as the creator of the Ultimate Mother Iceberg on YouTube. In that video, one topic was the Mother Toy Theatre Production, a formerly unknown, nearly two hour long retelling of Mother/Earthbound Beginnings, the first game in the trilogy. What made this video especially intriguing was the unlikely storytelling medium through which it was told, paper theatre.

The videos creator, Tyler Banadyga, sent Remie an email shortly after reuploading the iceberg in July. From there, Remie asked about an interview, and a few months later, that’s exactly what happened.

Step into a Dimensional Slip: intermittent interludes in “MOTHER,” She Wrote’s journey – where Cat Blackard and Jessica Mudd speak with guests from a multitude of backgrounds and delve deeper into the themes, media, and fandom that make up the tapestry of the EarthBound experience.

The story of EarthBound is two-fold: the story within games and the story of their cultural impact – how they’ve shaped the world around them. In this Dimensional Slip, we’re examining the uncanny life of Kody NOKOLO, Webmaster of the fan site Mother Forever and Director at the game design studio, NOKOGODO. Theirs is a tale of how the MOTHER fandom expands and self-perpetuates across generations – while inspiring enthusiasts to create their own art, without boundaries. These games speak to their players – not just figuratively, but literally, and that’s become a reciprocal dialogue.

In this episode they discuss NOKOLO’s investigative origins in the modern MOTHER fandom, the phenomena of “MOTHERlike” games, the power of breaking the fourth wall, and how all these concepts are in conversation with their forthcoming game, GNOMONIC.

Take it from somebody who appreciates every single one, there’s nothing better than passionate fans. Gaming communities can run the gambit from welcoming to toxic, engaging to gatekeeping. Whenever people are around people, people will do people things.

The community surrounding Earthbound is unique in both its welcoming nature and wide variety of people involved. Over 30 years worth of fans populate sites like starmen.net and mother4ever.net. And they all have one thing in common: an overflowing love for an incredible series.

On this week’s episode A Gamer Looks At 40, Bill Tucker chats with three people representative of the community as a whole: a curator, a YouTube creator and a couple brought together by the power of an epic game franchise.

Have you seen MOTHER 3’s clay figures? …Actually, it didn’t have any! But if you thought it did, you might’ve thought of the work of Ruy, aka FlintofMother3! Ruy professionally sculpts and draws, like for his comic MACOATL. Hear how MOTHER and clay captivated him!

Lend an ear to Livvy94, ROM hacker and composer for SNES hacking projects! Learn about Livvy’s MOTHER history, experiences with PK Hack, and stories about composing for HS’s MOTHER Remake in the 2010s or creating hacks like MOTHER: Photographic Beginnings!

One of the most celebrated type of community projects in the MOTHER fandom has always been fanzines. If you aren’t familiar with what they are, a fanzine is a fan produced magazine featuring art and written work from a variety of artists over a shared cultural interest. Over the last two decades, there have been several for the MOTHER series, from the EarthBound Anthology to PK Zine. Most recently, a new one called “Your Name, Please!” was announced — the first one in nearly a whole decade! We wanted to take a closer look at how Your Name, Please! came to be, so we decided to bring the project’s leader, AYBT (previously helmed “YuGi-Oh!” fanzines “Sideline Stars” and “A Tie that Binds.”) Please check out their work, and enjoy the interview!

Rockin! Ferris and McThrillington have been hard at work composing and reimagining tracks for MOTHER Encore! Listen to how they discovered MOTHER, entered the community, and eventually started working on Encore and other projects like HYPERSOMINA!

Learn about Nyaasu’s journey in learning Japanese and familiarizing herself with the weird, yet endearing writing of Saori Kumi and her novelizations of MOTHER 1 and 2!

Need pixel art or a game? Better call Benichi, artist and programmer for MOTHER Encore and co-creator of MOTHER: ROOTS! Hear about how he’s recently gotten involved with the MOTHER community and all these fan projects!

Ever since MOTHER 3 released on the Game Boy Advance in 2006, fans have sought ways to lessen the soundtrack’s heavy audio compression. The earliest attempts at restoring the music date all the way back to 2012, with a user named Tanks providing basic MIDI conversions that were used in many YouTube uploads at the time. Most recently, we at Mother Forever uploaded our own rip of the soundtrack; but what the fans often seek are those lossless, studio quality versions only heard behind closed doors. Enter Irikachana – an aspiring composer and friend to many in the MOTHER community. Over the past couple of years, they have took it upon themselves to completely reconstruct the music of MOTHER 3 as it originally sounded. Echoes had the honor of sitting down with Irikachana and talking about the process behind creating these restorations.

Curiomatic (formerly “Smashified”) founder Omni Jacala spills the beans behind the making of the famous “MOTHER 3 Tribute” video! Learn about how he formed a talented team of artists to recreate many scenarios and elements from the game in 3D.

Mother: Cognitive Dissonance, the legendary MOTHER fan game, released in 2009 and has had a following within the MOTHER community ever since. It was directed by “Handish2000,” otherwise known as “Otherhand!” We reached out to Otherhand to find out more about his experiences with the MOTHER series, with the MOTHER community, and with the development of Mother: Cognitive Dissonance (CogDis for short)!

It’s a clash of the ages in this extra long and thoughtful interview with Reid Young, the original webmaster of Starmen.net who currently runs things at the gaming merchandise website Fangamer! This interview was from March 2020, but was posted later, in November 2020.

An interview with Echoes, lead writer for Mother Forever and an experienced researcher of EarthBound 64 and the Super Mario Bros. movie.

Following our interview with Shane Mesa, we were granted the gracious opportunity to speak with Jeffman, a veteran MOTHER community member who headed programming on the MOTHER 3 Fan Translation! Over the course of this interview, we discuss everything that led to the development of the fan translation itself; all the smiles and tears, as far back as Jeffman’s early days of learning programming while delving into the PK Hack community.