Topic: I just found Earthbound!

LINK79: I got an answer for you at least on the first third of your question. Mother 1, which should have been Earthbound never made it but was fully intended to be unlike the dog and pony string along cruel show that was Mother 3 on GBA. Back in late 1989 and into 1990 Nintendo (NOA) began on working on bringing over Mother to the United States and finalized it in Sept of 1990. They put a full team behind the game and ultimately they had the entire game translated, tested, and completed. It was so far completed they even made up tentative box art, paperwork, and an advertising campaign for it, but something went terribly wrong. Bean counting morons. Thinking the SNES would appear (due to the announcement of the Super Famicom in 1990) right around the corner, they decided to drop the project. Nintendo Power magazine in an issue had a couple images and a few paragraphs on it, coincidentally enough the same page also had SIM CITY for the NES too (later saved, upgraded a/v a bit and made a SNES launch game.) Sadly it got waxed and locked away for a very long time.

Now I'm not sure where the truth and falseness of it comes into it, but the story goes someone working at NOA stole a finalized copy of the game, and somehow it got into a position of being sold online for a piddly price of $125. Some people, a group, learned of this and did a lot of snooping and digging, after reports of the sale on a newsgroup. They found out who had it, and after a bunch of negotiating got the thing for $400 to copy it and ultimately it was put online (don't ask won't tell where) though initially it didn't work well as it had copy protection when it wasn't on a real cart but well you know how people online are so that was fixed too and that was a little over 12 years ago. Man I feel old as far as internet goes as I knew the guy who ran the team on irc back then.

If you want a ton of details there's a website call 'The Lost Levels' you can google, then go into articles and search for earthbound as it has a 2 page piece on it with pictures and junk, and page 2 has a chat with a former NOA employee who worked on localization of games and he did earthbound and it explains all the details very nicely.

It's a shame, too. Earthbound and Mother 3 are my favorite games, by far, but Mother 1 really stands out on its platform. It was miles ahead of other NES JRPGs. Earthbound fans complain how absurdly hard it can be, but it's actually got quite a gentle difficulty curve compared to its contemporaries, and its a lot more accessible, especially with the run button that NOA added.

Like Metroid, the series was constantly held back by bad timing, always finishing up toward the end of the console's life span, so the games tend to be advanced for their generation, but at the same time overshadowed by the upcoming next generation.

Exactly, it's basically the same, except with music integration, which makes the fun level go up 100%