Earthbound 64 footage unearthed

It’s been a good year for leaks. First we got that Dinosaur Planet ROM leak, and now we have this. This time, it’s not a full playable ROM, but it’s still an interesting development: a 20-second clip of leaked Earthbound 64 footage, the game that would later be released for the GBA as Mother 3.

The video seems to be some kind of demo that they played in the Spaceworld 1997 event (a trade show where they release new games to the press) rather than a fully-fledged trailer.

Zen64 also uploaded a bunch of other things from the show, including footage from other demos like Star Fox 64 (Lylat Wars), Star Wars, Wave Race, etc, a promotional magazine and a bunch of dodgy executables that probably only work on old Japanese versions of Windows.

It’s ain’t much, but it’s an honest bit of footage. At first glance, it does look a lot like another video from 2006 by IGN but with a few new scenes. This video is only 25 seconds long, has no audio and has the resolution of a Game Boy Camera but it does show a few things.

For instance, the battle scene at the end shows Flint using Psi. However in Mother 3, he doesn’t know how to use it. On top of that,he seems to be much more of a playable character from how prominent he is in the cutscenes.

Mother 3 could have been the entry in the series to cement it as a staple in Nintendo’s lineup, but given that it was released later and only in Japan made Ness and pals be relegated to just being characters in the Smash Bros series. The N64 era was a time for franchises to reinvent themselves, not to fizzle away. Most cancellations (this included) could be tallied up to the 64DD being a failure though. Developing a game for it and then having to change platforms halfway through must have been disheartening for the development team.

At least we have this bit of Earthbound 64 footage to quench our thirst for what once could have been.