When you think of Nintendo, do you think of Mario, Zelda, Metroid or Donkey Kong? Perhaps you think of the notoriously bad games Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Dragon's Lair or Fester's Quest? I don't. I think of Mother, not my mother, but the game series which some of you might know as Earthbound. In fact, Earthbound is perhaps the only one of Nintendo's many games that has resonated with me and left a lasting effect, long after its completion.

A bit of back story; the game's creator Shigesato Itoi was inspired by an "accidental" viewing of the Japanese horror film 'Kenpei to Barabara Shibijin' which translates as 'The Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty.' More specifically, he mistook the murder scene in the film for a rape. These are horror games, cleverly disguised as whimsical RPGs, filtered through the eyes of a child...and oh man is the music flippin' weird. In a good way, of course!

The Composers of Mother and Mother2 (Earthbound) are Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka. Tanaka is a prevalent figure, as far as music and Nintendo go. He played a role in designing and coding the NES and GameBoy audio hardware and has worked on some of Nintendo's big franchises such as Metroid, Kid Icarus and Donkey Kong. The sound of Mario's footsteps and jumps in 1981's Donkey Kong? That was Hirokazu Tanaka. From the start he seemed quite ambitious in his sound design and consistently pushed the envelope of Nintendo's hardware.

"With older games, you'd have only one sound effect, used over and over but if you listen to the sound of Mario walking, there are subtle variations. Before, there was only one sound per action but by using the curve on a charge discharge capacitor,I tried to change the sound according to the timing of his steps". -Hirokazu Tanaka @ RBMA Tokyo Lecture, 2014

Many people, such as Superpowerless, Pixelh8 and 8 Bit Weapon still use custom GameBoys to create 'chiptune' music, so Hirokazu Tanaka may be the biggest pioneer of a whole genre of music that has been around for years and will probably be around for many more.

Keiichi Suzuki on the other hand is best known, at least in Japan, as the singer of the rock band Moonriders. The band have been going since the early seventies and have had pretty regular album releases since then. They have some fairly interesting songs and some pretty bland ones too...and check out this crazy tentacle microphone stand! Other than Moonriders, Suzuki has mainly focussed on film scores, his last video game was 'Real Sound: Kaze No Regret'  an audiobook style adventure for the SEGA Saturn which was ported to Dreamcast in 1999.

Mother - NES - 1989

To say that the NES was capable of producing only 3 sounds at once, I think the composers did a brilliant job with this first game in the series. Unlike a lot of composers at the time who were creating more whimsical tunes for games, Tanaka and Suzuki were interested in recreating certain musical genres within the limitations of the NES hardware. A perfect example of this is the jazzy 'Battle With A Flippant Foe.' I feel the composers could not have gotten a closer representation of wire brushes shuffling across a snare drum on the NES.

Mother sticks to the main staple of all great JRPG soundtracks; great melodies that never get old, even when they've looped a hundred times over. 'Pollyanna (I Believe In You)' is probably the most iconic of these tracks and makes a return in Mother 2 and 3. 'Eerie Building' fittingly marks the run up to the first encounter with a Starman, part of Giygas's alien invasion force. The bizarre timing of the high-pitched drone mixed with the slow plodding of the bass, reach Silent Hill-levels of disconcerting, as is the mish mash of major, minor, then dissonant harmonies in 'Factory theme.'

The Mother soundtrack was recorded and arranged as a studio album and released by Sony. The album featured vocal arrangements created by various people all of whom are pretty much unknowns in the music industry, with the exception of Michael Nyman, the minimalist composer known for his multi-platinum soundtrack to the film The Piano. Though the album is musically sound, with some surprisingly good production on par with many of the 80s era bands of the time, it is let down by Linda Hennrick's insanely cheesy lyrics. It makes the album hard to listen to at times and in the end I much prefer listening to the original instrumentals, they have a bit more character to them.

Maybe now you have figured it out

That's what bein' a friend is about

When you need someone Who feels the way you do

Won't you think about me

Someone who can pick up you When you are blue

Don't you ever doubt me I'll be there some way, somehow

That's what bein' friends is about

Earthbound - SNES - 1994

The audio experience in Earthbound gets interesting right off the bat, the meteorite crash scene is one of my favourite game openings and the sound has a lot to do with that. It's hard to gauge whether what you're hearing is part of the soundtrack or something the characters themselves are hearing as they explore the crash site. This carries through to other areas of the game including some of the dungeons and caves, filled with creatures corrupted by the evil of this alien invasion force. Often the visuals go hand in hand with the sound, such as the psychedelic backgrounds of the battle screens or within Moonside, the psychic illusion town created by the Evil Mani Mani statue.

The jump to 16 bit was obviously great for such an ambitious musical team, the Nintendo S-SMP, designed by Ken Kutaragi of SONY, was now 8-channel as opposed to 5. For a start, this led to more experimentation like in 'Caverns Of Winters' which uses a sine wave with a gentle reverb curve alongside a theremin, perhaps to represent the sound of a Starman clanking through a cavern. Tanaka and Suzuki could also continue to create more stylistic tracks such as the Bossa Nova 'Fourside' and Beach Boys inspired 'Summers' through more accurate representations of instruments, especially percussion.

Suzuki has said he wrote over 100 pieces for Earthbound, a lot of which did not end up in the final product, which took up 8 megabits of the 24 megabit cartridge. The size of the soundtrack was a big contributor to the games eventual transfer to a 12 megabit, then finally 24 megabit cartridge, there was no way the entire game could fit on the originally intended 8 bit cartridge.

As with Mother, Suzuki would first compose on a synthesizer before handing over to Tanaka and the other programmers to create the sounds through the SNES hardware. Another album entitled 'Mother 1+2' was released on the SONY label in 2003 alongside Mother and Earthbound's ports to the Gameboy Advance. This album contains fantastic arrangements by Kimitaka Matsumae (Jade Cocoon) Koji Kondo (Mario/Zelda) and Tomoko Kataoka. (Make 10) I'd say this is the definitive Mother album, with its beautiful use of music box on 'Mother Earth' and 'Eight Melodies' complimenting their melodies perfectly. Its quirky culmination of brass and acoustic guitar counter melodies at the end of 'Onett's Theme' ...and I couldn't think of a better use for the kazoo than playing the main melody in 'Saturn Valley's Theme.' It's everything an arranged album should be and I'm glad they scrapped the vocals this time around.

Mother 3 - Gameboy Advance - 2006

Tanaka & Suzuki could not return for Mother 3 due to their work on other projects, so Shigesato Itoi gave the composer position to Shogo Sakai. The game remains Sakai's biggest undertaking in composition due to his leaning towards sound design and the fact that the game contains 276 audio tracks, an insane number for a Gameboy Advance title. More recently, Sakai has composed the music for Kirby and the Rainbow Curse which is the only other title in which he is credited as the sole composer.

The arranged albums for Mother 3 (Mother 3i & Mother 3+) both released on Itunes, are a bit disappointing. The instrumentation is nowhere near as gripping as Mother 1+2, it goes for a more epic, fully orchestrated feel which falls flat due to lacklustre production. The Black Mages released their first set of Final Fantasy arrangements in 2003, so by this time there really was no excuse for some of the midi instruments, especially the drums, used in these albums.

Each of the games in the series have some kind of musical theme running through their storylines and (in the case of Mother 3) gameplay. In Mother 1 & 2, the character must collect melodies hidden around the game world, these magical melodies both drive the story forward and act as the power required to defeat the main antagonist, Giygas. The character Ness has an affinity for 'Rockin' as this is one of the default options when the player is asked to pick their favourite thing at the beginning of Earthbound. In Mother 3 the developers added a timekeeping element to the battle system, players can now attack up to 16 times, as long as they time their button presses with the beat of the music. Many of the bosses in Mother 3 have unique rhythms which must be matched in order to execute multiple attacks and these rhythms can be heard more clearly after putting them under a sleep status effect.

This tying of music and gameplay is one of the main aspects which make Mother 3 match the greatness of Earthbound. Occasionally, the compositions live up to the strong visions the original composers had for the series, again with stylised tracks like the Tango 'And El Mariachi' and bizarre experiments in sound design and odd timing like 'Blip-Blip High Score'. Overall though, if we're talking of the soundtrack alone, I'd have to say Mother 3 has the weakest and most forgettable soundtrack of the 3 games. The songs loop more frequently and the military style motif from 'Piggy Guys' is severely over-used.

Mother 4 - Pc, Mac, Linux - ???

Mother 4 is a fan made project which has been fully supported by the original Mother developers. The team is making the game out of their own pocket and giving it away for free. I'm looking forward to covering this game more once it's released but for now I'll just leave you with the link to their official website which has some preview music by composers Shane Mesa and Dani Person. (Update: Check out our interview with Shane and Dani below)

The Mother series is everything Nintendo could and should be. The creative minds behind it were visionaries and the composers and sound designers had a massive influence on the tone, story and even the gameplay of the series. I cannot wait to see if the Mother 4 team can revive the series and at the same time, show Nintendo that people do actually want another Mother, that would be swell!

Be sure to keep an eye out for more Mother 4 news and check out this brilliant interview with Hirokazu Tanaka. The highlight of the interview being when he explains that, in the early days, Nintendo wasn't interested in sales figures or appealing to the west...what Nintendo did, was make great games...You're right Reggie, Nintendo has transformed...

(Disclosure: This article was originally created for Gamesnosh.com)