I've been reading the bitmap books guide to jrpgs for the last year or so. Just pick it up here and there and read a few more entries. I was reading the entry on Mother 1/Earthbound Beginnings last night and it got me to look into it more.
I've played Earthbound/Mother 3, and I tried playing Mother 1 when it came to Wii U VC but the game was incredibly dated gameplay and not fun and I gave up. So I was reading up on the various versions. The original NES, the Wii U VC/Switch VC which is the same but with a run button, the GBA version that's rebalanced for the better with the easy ring but has shit sound, the 25th anniversary romhack which is a middleground retuning between the original and GBA but with homemade ugly sprites. And various romhacks to play the original NES version with the easy ring and various tweaks. It's super complicated and there's no real definitive version.
However, the most interesting thing I got out of reading and watching vids of all that when I couldn't sleep last night, was I'd always heard people bitch about how GBA has terrible sound, but I never really noticed it until now. Goddamn, the NES tunes from Mother 1 on GBA sound absolutely atrocious. I guess this is why people never liked the GBA FF4/5/6 even though otherwise they were pretty definitive versions until the new Pixel Remasters. Man, how was the sound on GBA so horrible.
It's too bad because if the sound wasn't horrid, I'd give Mother 1 another shot with the GBA version. I still kinda want to try to play through it for the dialogue/story stuff and music and completionist side, but I think maybe I'd end up playing the original NES with a rom hack that includes the easy ring and a few tweaks. The 25th Anniversary rom hack sprites look whack and some people dislike the balance changes they did.
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