Mother 3+ Album
Elia Khensamphanh
The games' soundtracks have received primarily positive reviews, and the music itself has gone on to some popularity. Multiple piano sheet music books of pieces from the series have been produced, and the "Eight Melodies" song originally featured in Mother has been included in some Japanese music textbooks. Music from the series has been used in the Super Smash Bros. series of fighting games, has been played in orchestral game music concerts, and been remixed for websites such as OverClocked Remix.
Mother (マザー, Mazā), later re-released as EarthBound Beginnings, is a role-playing video game published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System video game console in 1989. The game's soundtrack was composed by Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka. Tanaka was a video game composer working for Nintendo who had previously composed for games such as Super Mario Land and Metroid, while Suzuki was a composer and musician for bands of many different genres.[1] The NES was only able to play three notes at a time, which Suzuki has noted greatly limited what he was able to produce, as he could not create some of the sounds he wanted.[2] Melodies and themes from some pieces from the soundtrack were reused in the other games in the series. "Pollyanna", "Snowman" and "Humoresque of a Little Dog" make an appearance in all three games.
Some of the music from the game was recorded as a studio album by Suzuki and Tanaka in collaboration with various artists, entitled Mother. The album was released by CBS/Sony on August 21, 1989. It consists of eleven tracks, seven of which are English vocal arrangements of songs from the game created by Suzuki, David Bedford, Takeshi Saitoh, and Michael Nyman. The lyrics to these arrangements were written by Linda Hennrick.[3] Each of the first ten tracks were performed by a different artist or group such as Catherine Warwick and St Paul's Cathedral Choir.[4] The pieces were recorded at eight different studios in England, and a final 16-minute capstone track, "The World of Mother", included most of the tracks from the game itself played back to back in their order of appearance in the game.[5] The album cover shows the word "MOTHER" in a shade of brown over a red background; the letter "O" of "MOTHER" is replaced by an image of planet Earth, also with a brownish tinge. The soundtrack was reissued on February 18, 2004, by Sony Music Direct with its tracks digitally remastered, a song from EarthBound entitled "Smiles and Tears" was added, and the track "The World of Mother" was replaced with a version that is six minutes longer.[6]
Despite being recorded in England, the album was only available in Japan, as the game was never released outside of the country until a Virtual Console release over 25 years later. Following a Kickstarter campaign, the American independent record label Ship to Shore PhonoCo worked with Sony Music to reissue the album on vinyl record in 2015.[7] Only 2,000 copies were pressed, though a limited run of CD albums was also produced.[5][7]
Slugmag's Gavin Sheehan gave a positive review to the soundtrack.[5] He noted the experimental style of the tracks, which he credited to the experimental style of the game itself as well as the relative newness of the genre of video game music at the time.[5] Reviewer Patrick Gann of RPGFan received the album well, saying that he enjoyed the variety of genres presented in it, though he noted that the lyrics were "trite and cheesy", though still "catchy". He also applauded the production value, calling it "incredible, especially for 1989".[4] Square Enix Music Online, in their review of the album, called it "a happy little gem with quirks and surprises". Unlike RPGFan they felt that the sound production quality was not as good as it could be, but they still felt that the pieces had "stood the test of time in terms of good music".[8]
In 2021, Mother Music Revisited was released for CD, streaming, and vinyl, containing new versions of ten tracks from the game, arranged by Suzuki, recorded with live instruments, and featuring vocals by Suzuki. The CD and vinyl albums were released on January 27, with streaming versions released a week later. A deluxe version of the cd album includes a second disc containing the original Famicom tracks from the game; this disc was also previously released on vinyl on December 25, 2019.[9][10]
In a Famitsu interview, Shigesato Itoi said that the amount of music that they fit into eight megabits of space, one-third of the total size of the game, would be enough to fill two Compact Discs if released as a full album. He ascribed the amount of music to the "disorderly", or broad, number of styles of music that were included by Tanaka and Suzuki. He also noted his belief that EarthBound was the first video game to include vibrato, or "string-bending", in its music, and described one of the differences between the music of EarthBound and Mother as that this game had more "jazzy" pieces.[15] Suzuki has estimated that he composed over 100 pieces of music for EarthBound, including pieces that did not make it into the game, and says that his favorite was the music played when the player rode a bicycle in the game, which he had actually composed before starting work on the game.[2] The "OK desu ka?" that plays after the player chooses the character's name was recorded without Itoi's knowledge by Hirokazu Tanaka, and also appeared in Mother 3.[16]
The soundtrack album for EarthBound was released by Sony Records in Japan on November 2, 1994. It was re-released a decade later on February 18, 2004, by Sony Music Direct. The album has 24 tracks, where many of these tracks are arrangements combining several pieces from the game into one piece. The final three tracks on the album consist of remixes of multiple tracks merged; for example, "Room Number (PSI MIX)" is a remixed version of several pieces of music played in different shops and hotels in the game combined into one song.[17] The album was released again in 2016 by Ship to Shore as a set of two vinyl LP records; originally released in four character-themed color options, there exist eight different colorways as of 2018. The album, named Mother 2, uses the same tracks and artwork as the original soundtrack release.[7][18]
Vincent Chorley, in his review of the album for RPGFan, praised the original game music, applauding it for "conveying emotion and atmosphere, and then playing around with this mental image". As for the album itself, however, he was disappointed in the way that it merged tracks together and kept tracks based on a single song short, saying that "many of the tracks are so short that they are impossible to enjoy in their entirety".[17] The vinyl release was praised by Jeremy Parish of USGamer for its sound quality and the soundtrack's "towering achievement in game music", but he felt that the music was not very "listenable" on its own, and that the album did not fit the LP format as well as an album originally produced for the format would have.[18]
Kyle Miller of RPGFan, in his review of the Mother 1+2 album, called it "a quality collection of uplifting, passionate songs". He preferred the Mother tracks to the EarthBound ones, as he felt that the second half of the album contained more "gimmick" tracks, but still called both halves "unique, fun, and well done overall".[20] In his review of the Mother 1+2 midi Piano Version album, he concluded that while "fans of midi piano music" would enjoy the album, that the soundtrack album was the superior of the two. His criticism was mainly based on the fact that, while the tracks were "well orchestrated pieces", "played masterfully", and retained the "quality of the compositions" of the originals, the "wacky instrumentation" of the original pieces did not translate to piano arrangements, causing the tunes to "lose some of the spirit that they are known for".[19]
Mother 3 is a role-playing video game published by Nintendo for the Game Boy Advance handheld game console in 2006. The music for the game was composed exclusively by Shogo Sakai, who had previously composed music for games such as Super Smash Bros. Melee and Kirby Air Ride. Series developer Shigesato Itoi stated that Sakai was given the position because he understood Mother 3 the most, given that he could not use Keiichi Suzuki or Hirokazu Tanaka, the composers for the first two games, as they were both busy with other projects. Itoi also said that given the massive number of songs in the game, over 250, he needed someone who had a lot of time to dedicate to the project and who could focus exclusively on it.[21]
"Love Theme", the main theme of Mother 3, was composed late in the game's development; earlier in development Itoi intended to use the "Pigmask Army" theme as the main theme of the game. During creation of an important scene in the game, however, Sakai was asked to create a song that would have a greater impact than the Pigmask theme; upon its creation it was chosen to be used as the main theme instead of the "Pigmask Army" song. Itoi claims that, given how quickly Sakai composed the song, that he had been "waiting for the order" to make a song like "Love Theme". Itoi requested that "Love Theme" be playable on a piano with only one finger, as the "Eight Melodies" theme from Mother had gained popularity and been played in elementary schools due to its simplicity.[21]
Kyle Miller of RPGFan gave a warm reception to Mother3+ in his review, saying that it "retains the same quirky, but thoughtful feel so well captured by the previous entries in the series" and was "a worthy addition to the Mother musical canon". He enjoyed that it included both songs that were new to Mother 3 and pieces originally from previous entries in the series. He felt that the weakest tracks on the album were those that used real-life instruments, while he named "Snowman" as the strongest.[22] Square Enix Music Online was not as pleased with the album; although the reviewer agreed with Miller on which tracks were the best and worst, they were very critical of the fact that the album contained "only nine or ten distinct themes from a pool of perhaps one hundred viable choices". They also disliked the fact that the pieces were "by design short and repetitive".[25] They instead recommended the Mother3i album, which, though "missing the iconic 'Love' theme and perennial series favorites like 'Pollyanna'", had "more engaging arrangements, less cloying sentimentality, and a wider variety of themes". They also noted the improved sound quality of the album over the original Game Boy Advance version.[26] Mother3+ reached position #24 on the Japanese Oricon charts, and stayed on the charts for three weeks.[27]
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