EarthBound fandom

The 1994 video game EarthBound is known for its cult following and fan community. Multiple video game journalists have written about the dedication of the game's fans in producing fan art and lobbying Nintendo for further releases in the series. The company has been largely unresponsive to their efforts. Prominent fansites include Starmen.net and EarthBound Central. The former was started in 1999 and became the definitive community website. Their members organized petitions and campaigns to bring English-localized games from the Mother series to North America. One such effort included a full-color, 270-page EarthBound Anthology as a demonstration of consumer demand for further releases. After nearly a decade, EarthBound was rereleased for the Wii U Virtual Console in 2013, whereupon it became a bestseller.

The fandom also spun-out other enterprises. When Nintendo did not release a localized version of Mother 3, fans organized their own fan translation. The video game merchandising business Fangamer grew out of the Starmen.net community, and sells video game-related items online. A full-length documentary on Starmen.net and the fan community, EarthBound, USA, is in production. While series creator, Shigesato Itoi has stated that he is finished with the series, a fan-created sequel, Mother 4, is in development.

EarthBound is known for having a cult following, which developed over time well after its release. Colin Campbell of Polygon wrote that "few gaming communities are as passionate and active" as EarthBound's, and 1UP.com's Bob Mackey wrote that no game was as poised to have a cult following.Wired described the amount of EarthBound "fan art, videos, and tributes on fan sites like EarthBound Central or Starmen.net" as mountainous. IGN's Lucas M. Thomas wrote in 2006 that EarthBound's "persistent", "ambitious", and "religiously dedicated collective of hardcore fans" would be among the first groups to influence Nintendo's decision-making through their purchasing power on Virtual Console.The Verge cited the two-year fan translation of Mother 3 as proof of the fanbase's dedication, and Nintendo president Satoru Iwata credited the community response on their online Miiverse social platform as leading to EarthBound's eventual rerelease on their Virtual Console platform.

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Wikipedia