The Mother series has, famously, not had an easy journey to the West. For many years, Earthbound, also known as Mother 2, was the only game in the franchise the be released outside of Japan, and Mother 3 has still not received an official English localization.

While Earthbound did release less than a year after Mother 2, it was years before the series developed the cult following it still enjoys to this day. Along the way, many mysteries and rumors have popped up that are befitting of the offbeat series. In honor of EarthBound's 25th anniversary, let's look back at some of the interesting events surrounding the series.

RELATED: L.A Noire: Last Gen's Most Ambitious Game Also Had Its Toughest Development

Earth Bound: Prototype

In 1989, Mother released in Japan for the Famicom, becoming a critical and commercial success. Nintendo soon started work on a localization for the West, hoping to recreate this success abroad even though RPGs weren't very popular outside of Japan at the time. The game was renamed Earth Bound by Nintendo of America and even had a guidebook based on a key item in-game.

As the game neared release, a major problem arose: the SNES. The console was set to release in the U.S. the same year as Earth Bound, and Nintendo worried the game wouldn't sell enough copies to cover the costs or porting it. After being teased in gaming magazines, Earth Bound was shelved, but it wouldn't be the last anyone heard of it.

In 1998 a film producer sold a mysterious prototype cart with a sticker that read, “Title: Earth Bound.” to a game collector for $125. The buyer was later contacted by a member of Demiforce, a group of ROM translators who were struggling to work on a Mother translation. After negotiations, the group was able to borrow the prototype, copy the ROM and begin working on a fan-translation of the game after side-stepping anti-piracy measures that crashed the game. The completed ROM was distributed online as EarthBound 0, allowing fans to play the game in English for the first time.

Related: 5 Nintendo Franchises That Deserve a Comeback

The idea of someone just happening to have a prototype cart for this canceled and long-desired game sounds like an urban legend, but it's actually true. Localization Producer and English Script Writer for the NES version of EarthBound Phil Sandhop has confirmed that he recognized his work and the details of the cart as consistent with Nintendo of America prototypes from that time. It's still unknown how the prototype was originally acquired. Sandhop has said there were six to twelve prototypes total, six of which have surfaced.

EarthBound's Redemption

Mother 2 did just as well as its predecessor in Japan, and Nintendo once again decided to bring the series to the West. Nintendo of America tried to appeal to the 90s obsession with grossness with a weird advertising campaign that included ads saying, “This game stinks!” and gross smelling scratch-and-sniffs in Nintendo Power.

Related: Dr. Mario World Is Nintendo's Weirdest Mobile Game

When EarthBound finally released in 1995, it was more expensive than the average game thanks to abnormally large packaging complete with a strategy guide. Combined with EarthBound's quirkiness and poor reviews, the game was a massive failure. It faded into obscurity until early 2000s when fan websites were able to spread word of the hidden SNES gem. This is when the series' popularity began to rise, and fans began asking for more Mother games.

In 2005, during the reveal of the Wii and the Virtual Console, then-Nintendo President Satoru Iwata (who was part of the game's development) mentioned EarthBound in the presentation. This got fan's hopes up for a re-release, though this was not to be.

However, when the Virtual Console came to the Wii U, Mother 2 was re-released as a Japan-exclusive. This prompted fans to flood Miiverse with messages and images asking for EarthBound's return. The fan-campaign was successful, and in 2013, EarthBound came to the Virtual Console in the West. Two years later, the first Mother game was released worldwide as EarthBound Beginnings for the Virtual Console, marking the first time the game was officially available outside of Japan.

Related: The Biggest Video Games Coming in June 2020

EarthBound 64 and the Blue Disk Saga

EarthBound 64 was originally in-development for the later scrapped Super Famicom-CD ROM before moving to the fabled Nintendo 64DD. In 1996 at Nintendo Space World, a Japanese video game trade show, a video of the game was unveiled, revealing impressive graphics, new characters and that it would be an N64DD exclusive. It was also covered in Nintendo Power, making it seem like the series was getting another shot at a Western audience.

Following development delays, the game eventually transitioned to a cartridge, and a demo was available to try at Space World 1999. It didn't go over well, as it reportedly had bad controls and too many cut scenes for a 10-minute demo. The project took so long that the GameCube was on the horizon, and EarthBound 64 was cancelled all together.

RELATED: 5 Video Game Sequels Better Than The Originals

In 2004, a member of the popular EarthBound site Starmen.net received an email from an unknown source claiming they had four 64DD development disks labelled "M3-KM-0." It's speculated that this stood for Mother 3 and Kyoto Microcomputer, who produced some N64 development hardware. The site's staff pooled money together to negotiate a purchase, but lost contact with the disks' owner.

In 2006, information about the disks resurfaced in a post from a new user, Corey, who claimed he wasn't sure if they contained EarthBound 64 but said that they had been sold to him. Most forum members were, skeptical but one of the site's founders gave him a chance. Later in the day, Corey posted images of four blue cartridges with the same labels as before. At the time, there was no way to boot them and no emulator for N64 DD, but it was possible to boot up the disks with a certain type of ROM.

A year later, Corey obtained the required hardware and managed to boot up two of the four disks. Sadly, neither turned out to be the legendary EarthBound 64. Of the two working disks, one was Sim City 64 and the other was Mario Artist, another game shown off at Space World 1999. Two years later, Corey was able to get the others to work only to find they were both copies of Doshin the Giant. The actual cartridges of the N64 game shown at Space World never surfaced and are likely still in storage somewhere with Nintendo.

Related: Perfect Dark Turns 20: A Look Back at the Nintendo 64's Best Shooter

MOTHER 3 Resurrected

Mother 3 key art featuring the logo on a red background.

After the death of EarthBound 64, Itoi still wanted to make a third Mother game, which Shigeru Miyamoto suggested he develop for the GameBoy Advance. Initially, Itoi was against it because he wanted to make an ambitiously big game, but EarthBound 64's failure made him realized it didn't need to be big to make a statement.

Itoi's N64 project was transformed into Mother 3, which released for the GBA in Japan in 2006. The series' third installment, 11 years in the making, was resurrected. It only came out in Japan, but dedicated fans quickly put together a working translated ROM for people from all over the world to play. Though 14 years later there still hasn't been an official Western release, Mother fans have convinced Nintendo to port these games before, so perhaps one day they will recreate that success.

KEEP READING: Chrono Trigger: A Forgotten Classic That Needs to Return