One of the Nintendo Wii's most memorable notifications was added to the console thanks to the beloved JRPG series, EarthBound/Mother. Anyone who played the motion-sensing console for one too many hours received the reminder to take a break from gaming to socialize or go outside. The 2006 console was marketed as an innovative way to get consumers to stay active while playing their favorite games. Encouraging users to hit pause to get some fresh air aligns with the Wii's branding, but Nintendo's choice to include it stemmed from EarthBound.
Company executives have revealed that Nintendo repurposed the message from the original EarthBound release. The father of the game's protagonist, Ness, would urge players to take a break after they had been playing for two or more hours. That small detail in the 1995 JRPG was eventually baked into the DNA of one of Nintendo's most recognizable consoles of all time.
The English translation of Ask Iwata - a collection of interviews with Nintendo's late Global President Satoru Iwata - revealed that the notification would have never made it into the Wii were in not for Earthbound. The mechanic used to keep track of players' game-time was first implemented in the JRPG, which Iwata and his team transferred over to the Wii's user experience. Here's the full quote:
If you play EarthBound for long enough, the game is set up so that the father character will call you up and say, 'Don't you think it would be a good idea if you took a break?' This is a concept that we carried over to the Wii. Without the precedent of these calls from dad every two hours, the Wii feature that keeps track of your total hours of game-play would not exist.
EarthBound's Influence On The Nintendo Wii
Previously, Earthbound designer Shigesato Itoi, and Nintendo executive, Yasuhiro Nagata, discussed this design choice with Iwata in a 2011 interview featured in the Japanese magazine Brutus. The back-and-forth was translated by EarthBound Central and revealed that Iwata was actually not in favor of the feature, which he refers to as "Two-hour Dad," at first. He said he was "dumbfounded" when he first heard mention of the idea because he believed it would break players' immersion in the JRPG.
Iwata eventually came around to the idea and revealed it was Itoi's idea to turn EarthBound's "Two-hour Dad" into a Nintendo Wii notification. This unexpected turn of events shows that seemingly insignificant addition to games today could go on to make waves in the industry farther down the line.
Source: EarthBound Central, Ask Iwata