If I can point a few more toward the promise of games to enrich lives, over against the charges of games’ alleged noxious impacts, I’ll try. Playing and talking about games has been a bright point of connection for many people amid the wrack and ruin of the present. Inviting more people to engage critically with games, trying together to explain the hold games have on us, is my Trout-flavored Yogurt. To remedy that, besides publishing podcasts and essays online, I teach a Video Game Studies class around EarthBound Beginnings at the public high school where I work. Not many players have noted its resonances with Shakespeare and Proust, beyond better-acknowledged references to The Beatles or Kurt Vonnegut.

I’ve dedicated untold hours to the playful study of the 1994 SNES sequel, EarthBound. To say I’m biased is like saying people in big cities are fond of Strawberry Tofu. Anyone interested in video games, relational life-lines, and the vagaries of time and taste should do the same. Decades later, as EarthBound Beginnings, it officially released on the Wii U and Switch virtual consoles, and at the prompting of an old friend, two years after becoming a father myself, I finally played it. For convenient viewing, most of the images I’ve gathered can be seen on the following 1 pages.MOTHER came out for the Famicom in 1989, two years after I was born. I’m sharing these resources with the public, as I’m sure others will find them useful in someway, sometime. This page features some of the raw, uncurated data and files I’ve assembled for Legends of Localization purposes.

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