The original localization script files for EarthBound have been discovered, revealing secrets about the game and its development. EarthBound is widely regarded as one of the best RPGs of all time, as well as being one of the strangest and funniest games on the Super Nintendo.
The past few years have seen a number of private files relating to Nintendo games being released online. Many of these were the result of the Nintendo Gigaleak, which saw early versions of games like Pokémon Red and Green, Pokémon Gold and Silver, Super Mario World, Yoshi's Island, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time leak online. The one franchise that has been noticeably absent from these leaks is EarthBound/Mother, especially as many fans hoped that a build of the canceled Mother 3/EarthBound 64 would make its way online.
A group called the Video Game History Foundation, which hopes to preserve as much information as possible about the development of important video games, made the recent discovery. The group was given a floppy disk by Marcus Lindblom, who worked on the English script for EarthBound. The Video Game History Foundation managed to recover the files on the disk, which have been poured over by Clyde Mandelin, who worked on the English fan translation for Mother 3.
The files contain a number of secrets about EarthBound. These include mechanics and scenes that were cut during development, such as receiving the Poo vision during a massage, instead of eating a cake. A cut combat ability called Mantra meant enemies wouldn't target Poo as much. There was also a major change to the final scene, as the party may have needed to sing along to the Sound Stone in order to defeat Gigyas, in what would have been a reference to the original EarthBound Beginnings/Mother. The biggest revelation in the script is that the narrator during the coffee/tea relaxation scenes is meant to be EarthBound creator Shigesato Itoi himself, who is showing his appreciation to the player.
It's amazing to think that secrets about a game as old as EarthBound are still being discovered by fans. People still adore this game, even after all of these years, and Nintendo might be able to create even more EarthBound/Mother fans if it would release the games on Nintendo Switch Online. For now, though, fans will have to rely on nostalgia and more discoveries like these to keep old-school games like EarthBound.
Source: Video Game History Foundation