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Mother (ใใถใผ Mazฤ), 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. 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 wa
Mother (ใใถใผ Mazฤ), 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. 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. 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. Each of the first ten tracks were performed by a different artist or group such as Catherine Warwick and St Paul's Cathedral Choir. 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. 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.
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. Only 2,000 copies were pressed, though a limited run of CD albums was also produced.
Slugmag's Gavin Sheehan wrote: "This soundtrack is gorgeous, at least for the time it was created in."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. 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". Square Enix Music Online, in their review of the album, called it "a happy little gem with quirks and surprises". Though unlike RPGFan they felt that the sound production quality was not as good as it could be, they still felt that the pieces had "stood the test of time in terms of good music".
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Release date: 21 August 1989
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