>Miyamoto lets a writer/actor with no video game development experience pitch and develop a Dragon Quest clone set in contemporary Americana, published by Nintendo
>sells decently
>makes a sequel for the Super Nintendo
>sells well in its home country but flops in the US, high price and questionable marketing generally blamed, not even released in Europe
>gets a small publicity boost from Ness being included in Smash Bros for the N64 and some press around another game in development for the N64, later started over and released for the GBA
>years later
>recognized as one of the best in its genre, cited as an influence on numerous indie RPGs and even outside the medium of video games in things like animation and manga/comics

Has any other video game ever received as much of a late boost in prestige and acclaim as Mother/Earthbound?
Not even something like a critical re-evaluation like Kane & Lynch Dog Days got. Maybe King's Field for having some indie copycats and being primordial Dark Souls? Live a Live?

>>716515273 (OP)
I wonder if in another hypothetical universe where Earthbound succeeded in the west, if the Mother series overall would've perhaps become a Nintendo mainstay franchise or not. Maybe not since Itoi has no interest in making a new game now and also Mother 3's development hell, but its fun to think about

earthbound is a good game, so I assume its sequel is too. Haven’t played the first though

>>716517074
It'd depend on just how well it sold. Itoi likely would have ditched no matter what since it seemed like he only cared about telling the story he wanted to tell and didn't want to be locked down to video games If it was really successful Nintendo probably would have handed the series off to someone else. Fire Emblem stuck around despite Kaga jumping ship for example.

>>716517074
Itoi co-owns the IP
He's fine with merchandising given what his company is doing these days with Mother but he doesn't want a new game outright and you wouldn't want a new Mother game without him anyways

>>716517514
>Fire Emblem stuck around despite Kaga jumping ship for example.
Kaga never co-owned the series though
Intelligent Systems co-owns it but never the man himself
Nintendo could want a Mother 4 but Itoi could easily cockblock one from happening and besides, Mother IS Itoi

>>716517074
Maybe not Mother specifically but if they had a dedicated team I could see them being a JRPG team doing similar games without the Mother branding, especially since it would be a while before a Nintendo-acquired Monolith would get off the ground with Xenoblade.

>>716517548
That is true. I do wonder if remakes of the existing game would still be out of the question or not though...

>>716518161 (me)
*games
typo

>>716518161
It largely depends on who would make it
Creatures and Brownie Brown wouldn't do it now
The former does Pokemon spin-offs and the latter is now 1-Up doing support work for EPD
That leaves HAL who may or may not have any hands to spare unless they could find someone else

Not quite as delayed as Earthbound but there was basically a decade between the first big immersive sims like System Shock and Deus Ex and then the late 00s/early 10s ones like Bioshock and Deus Ex Human Resources

>>716515273 (OP)
>questionable marketing generally blamed
I was around for the marketing of EarthBound and I can confirm it was terrible and made me dismiss and avoid the game. When I finally played it many years later I enjoyed it a lot. I wish that I had played it when I was younger.

The 90s got really fucking stupid with gross out humor for kids. Scratch and sniff advertisements with vomit and rotten garbage to sell your funny kids vs. aliens RPG? Whoever thought that up should be forcefed vomit and trash. Now THAT would be funny.

Dwarf Fortress. No other city builder comes close. No other city builder dares to try.

>>716517475
Mother 3 is good but it’s also way different tonally.

>>716520768
Kids liked Ren and Stimpy and Double Dare so that means advertising with disgusting shit was the way to go.

>>716521047
Idk at this point Rimworld comes pretty close. Sure Dwarf Fort has a Z axis but with the latest expac actually exploring the giant world that the game generates is actually possible in Rimworld, unlike the very barebones shit in DF outside adventure mode.

I thought it was fun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1elaXi44bQ

>>716517074
If Itoi made Mother 3 exactly the same with the literal transexual fairies buttfucking the young Lucas, then I doubt NoA would have ever released Mother 3 no matter how popular Earthbound theoretically could have done.

That said, in the timeline whee Kamala had won this last election, and more of that degenerate gay sshit was pushed on us by the media as a result, then I bet Mother 3 would have released unedited and with all homosexual implications intact within these next four years.

Street Fighter 3, it went from a flop to being one of the classics of the genre and most played retro fighters.

>>716515273 (OP)
Here you go. Literally every single RPG that wants to have good writing, as well as a few games outside the genre, cite this one as a major source of influence.