Earthbound and its age rating controversy

For over 30 years, the Mother series (known as Earthbound in countries other than Japan) has had a lot of controversy with whether it is a suitable game for kids to play. This discussion mostly started when "Earthbound" (known as Mother 2 in Japan) was released in countries other than Japan in 1994. The first game in the series (Mother 1) was not released in other countries apart from Japan until 2014 when it orignally released in Japan in 1989. The reason Mother 1 did not release in other countries in 1989 was not due to controversy but instead just marketing and financial issues as well as the fact the SNES was releasing very soon so it would be a waste of time to release a NES game at this time. However when the sequel came around (Mother 2/Earthbound) it was released in other countries. With this release came a lot of controversy. First of all not many people even played the game due to the weird marketing which stated "This game stinks!" and was sold with scratch and sniff cards. The whole marketing revolved around being gross and stinky, which put a lot of people off the game when in reality this theme was barely present in the game itself apart from a few enemies being gross. This gross marketing theme did make a lot of sense for this era since a lot of toys and shows at the time were trying to be gross and disgusting since thats what young boys would find funny and entertaining like the 'Garbage Pail Kids' cards being one example of gross humour.

The game itself was changed a lot in the english version compared to the Japan version. Some changes being very clear and resonable while others being quite obscure. One weird change was an item being called a 'Pencil Rocket' in Japan and a 'Bottle Rocket' in the english version. A big change in the English version is that a location in the Japan version which was orignally a bar but changed to a Cafe in the english version. This makes a lot of sense since the game would be rated a higher age if it featured alcohol. There is also a scene near the start of the game where two of the main characters friends are punished by their father. The three characters go upstairs which is off screen which is then followed by a sound effect which sounds similar to a smack which obvisouly meant to indicate the father beating his kids.

A big topic that is usually brought up when discussing censorship in Eartbound is the cultists. These characters paint everything blue which is apart of their cult. These characters resemble a certain cult which is very inappropriate for a childrens game. In the english version the sprite was slight changed to remove the "HH" (which stood for happy happy) and add a white fur ball to make it look more like a hat rather than a mask.

Another big difference is a scene where the main character Ness has a dream. The issue is that in the dream you play as Ness in a weird, goofy land. However the problem is that in the dream Ness is presented with losing all of his clothes (apart from his hat for some reason). This is a very big issue since you are playing as a naked young boy. In Japan this isn't seen as such a big deal however. Since their culture has very different views towards this. Typically in Japanese games and anime, when in a dream the character loses their clothes. The way the english version changed this is by having Ness wear his pajamas, which makes sense since he fell asleep.

When first released in the US, the game was rated Kids to Adults. Then in 2007 when being put on the Wii Virtual console, it was rate as E for everyone. The most recent version of Earthbound was rated T for Teens on the Wii U Virtual console.