The Earthbound Beginnings Remake is brilliant
A true labor of fan love makes for a really enjoyable experience.
June 25, 2026
Earthbound Beginnings is a "remake" of Mother 1 in the Mother 2 (known in the west as Earthbound). A link to download the patch is here, you will need a legally obtained Earthbound ROM to patch and play it.
I am a huge Mother / Earthbound fan. I was 11 when Earthbound came out. Between the Nintendo Power coverage and the alluring giant box sitting on store shelves I had to have it. As a budding RPG fan Earthbound was a whole new experience. The story wasn't high fantasy, instead in a fictional world much like our own. It wasn't until many years later did I truly understand the process of how Earthbound and Mr Itoi's Mother series came to be. The game came with scratch and sniff cards!
To this day, Earthbound remains my favorite game of all time. I was obsessed. At the time, Mother 1 didn't exist in English. Playing a fan translation some time after launch it never truly had the same impact on me as it would for someone playing it in its era. The game felt clunky, without the polish of a contemporary NES Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy game.
Having said that, the story of Mother 1 was captivating and worth the (at times) genuine slog through some of the games dungeons. It was even quite non-linear, something that really didn't exist in RPGs of the era, and wasn't present in Earthbound. But it was still quite hard to recommend it to folks who weren't familiar with the series and weren't really interested in the lore. Most people would bounce off at the first difficulty spike, or lost in a dungeon just getting bored to tears in an absurd number of random encounters.
People have since released patches to make the game easier, and the rise of the Internet and walk-through guides have genuinely made it a lot less of a slog to get through. Nintendo themselves would go on to release an eventual English version many many years down the line, realizing the series had a western fan base.
Now in 2026 a group of dedicated fans have spent an incredible amount of time remaking Mother 1 inside of Earthbound, and it is absolutely a work of art. Sprites and music look and sound like they fit in the world. Many mods and fan patches homage an art style well, but often lack the quality of the original. This genuinely feels like Nintendo / APE could have released this as a first party product in its day, its very polished.
Random encounters have been replaced with Earthbound's field enemies at sane levels. It really splits the difference between Earthbound's easy to moderate difficulty and OG Mother 1's moderate to punishing difficulty. You may have to grind at times, but its not over the top. The story is properly presented and is very well localized. So much love has gone in to making this game.
Mother 1 isn't a long game. I finished my playthrough of the Earthbound Beginnings remake in a week of pretty modest game time. If you have a legally obtained copy of Earthbound and want to experience or re-experience the story that started the series it is absolutely worth your time. Make sure you grab at least 1.1 (I hit a nasty bug in 1.0 but the patch was out within the first week thankfully), and it looks like 1.2 is coming soon.
I cannot recommend this enough, and I am very grateful to the folks who spent years bringing this project to life.