Claus being 17 after the skip would also make more sense as to why he was referred to as the “Masked Man”, since he’d be older. You wouldn’t really call a 13-year-old a man; they’re still a boy at that point. I guess it’s also easier to see an adult commanding an army rather than a child still in the midst of puberty.
That's true, I do think they also called him The Masked Man in order to give his identity some secrecy though. If they had called him The Masked Boy or something along those lines in the final game, it would've been immediately more obvious he's probably Claus. Of course there's already some pretty obvious foreshadowing as-is but The Masked Man is a more vague title that makes it a little less obvious from the getgo
It would would also make sense if they built this human robot with a arm cannon, steal armor and the ability to throw lighting bolts in 10 years rather than 3.
Porky recruiting a brainwashed kid to be a prominent member of his army feels in-character for him. Porky is an old man with the mind of a preteen boy, after all. He altered the wildlife of the Nowhere Islands purely so they'd "look cooler".
I didn't think Flint's bald reveal was tonally out-of-place at the end, I didn't think of it as a joke. My first thought was yours, that it shows how battered and beaten Flint has become - hair loss is very serious to most men and if you joked about it in front of Flint he would probably knock you out.
Flint's baldness reveal is also a revelation about his emotional state and journey coming to an end. He finally has his hat removed, which he hasn't taken off since losing his wife and child. It's almost like he was refusing to accept that the world had moved on, keeping the same image to force things to stay as they were. When his hat is removed, it shows that he finally accepts what happened and that his son is no more.
@@ChargeQM I like this idea better than the other one because we have no idea if flint has hair before the timeskip to begin with so the “change” would really mean nothing if he wasn’t shown having hair before the timeskip.
For New Porky City, I feel that the 3 year gap kinda made sense since the whole game seems to poke fun at how rushed and superficial everything is. The idea that Porky had everyone rush to build things and that causing a lot of things being left unfinished or looking fake, while Porky still tries to make people believe that his city is this huge magnificent man-made monument to himself makes sense, at least to me.
I agree...It fits the message really well. But for everything else, I like the idea of the 10 year timeskip better because: Having Tazmily village and It’s culture slowly morph into something completely different over the span of decade rather than just 3 years seems more fathomable to me, and makes the whole thing feel way more sinister and calculative in my eyes. three years just seemed like such a short time for the people to be manipulated into accepting all those changes With 10 years they could’ve added a lot more interesting elements to it, instead of just using the love boxes and lighting strikes as the main reasoning. Throw a frog in boiling water and it will hop out, heat the water slowly and the frog will stay in the pot...that sorta thing I also think it would’ve hit harder to have a longer timeskip. Not only is Lucas pretty much an adult now, but everything around him has changed so much that It’s barely recognizable...what happened during those 10 years? I think they could’ve done the 10 year skip, but still have new pork city be something Porky just made on the fly
I think it's possible initially The Nowhere Islands slowly turns into New Pork Island, something evidenced by mention of New Pork Island within some unused text in GBA Mother 3. Perhaps, over time, the once natural island is transformed into an amalgamation of Porky's memories and obsession with the past, rather than just the city located in an unknown part of the Nowhere Islands like it the final game. Or maybe New Pork was located on an entirely different island which the villagers traveled to. Hard to say
The more EB64 I see, the more I wish it was moved to GameCube. Even if it didn’t work on GameCube, they would of been able to move it to the Wii. It could of worked. What a shame.
Interesting how Lucas' face changing actually makes it look like he's grown stronger during the time skip, like they imply in the GBA version. (I dunno, it makes him look more mature.)
I feel that New Pork City was most likely already built (or was almost completed) prior to the Pigmasks invading Tazmily and that nobody knew of it since it was located on a separate island that was inaccessible. This point can be further proven with how during Chapter 3 you ride around in a secret passageway that had its entrance hidden with a tombstone so that nobody would stumble upon it. Something else that I noticed is that during Duster's flashback at the end of Chapter 4 you can see that one of the first things that he had done after losing his memory was joining the DCMC, meaning that most of the buildings outside of the general area of Tazmily Village were likely built beforehand and nobody noticed them since the village was mostly isloated (I mean there used to be a tunnel east of Tazmily that was blocked off with a roadblock as well as a wire gate before the modernization). So I could see Porky being on the Nowhere Islands for quite a while planning everything out before starting it all on that fateful night...
Fassad mentions how he believes lightning will soon strike the villagers without Happy Boxes long before we even see Thunder Tower. This doesn’t directly confirm anything, but it’s implied that the tower had already been constructed before the timeskip. Locria can be found as soon as Chapter 1, and since he’s already under the new alias of Fassad, the transition from “Magypsy to traitor” had already taken place. He’s a high-ranking officer of the army as well, and since the Pigmasks invade so early into the game, I’d imagine that his position was already established before Lucas’ story even starts. Things like this don’t just happen within a couple days.
New Pork City was built directly on top of the ruins of an older civilization that had lived there before. The people of the White Ship wanted nothing to do with the old world, so they settled on the opposite end of the island. Those run-down apartments, sewers, and everything that isn't flashy and shiny was already there. Porky just had his people build on top of it all.
As for Thunder Tower, they already had the plans in place for building the tower. Not only that, but the building doesn't have a lot of floor space really, ballooning out at the top but staying fairly thin underneath. If they had a ton of workers and no regard for safety, they could have built the tower in a few months!
Although if it WAS a young Kumatora, it would make some sense if she would only appear alongside a Magypsy sprite, like holding their hand or hiding behind them.
I'm glad you made a video exploring more of that particular iceberg entry. It's fun seeing the older 64 character designs. I kinda like Flint's and Lucas' 64 designs more than the final. But overall the final designs for everyone are excellent.
Great video. Your points are spot on and I've been sold on this theory for a long time. I think another point that could be made is that the village and villagers changing over time was really where the original concept of the game came from, and using the N64DD hardware it would've been much easier for them to show more concrete changes over time.
Also Kumatora is clearly a child when you first meet her, but old enough to work at an adults only club in the span of 3 years? A 10 year skip makes more sense…
@@ChargeQM Yeah. Apparently, Kumatora was originally supposed to look like a hottie, but as much as I wish we could play a complete version of Earthbound 64, we should consider ourselves lucky that we got a 2D version called "Mother 3" and an unofficial fan translation of it.
Seeing the town change gradually over 10 years could have been pretty effective. There could be more villagers not wanting to change things, but every few years we see more and more of them give in to the modernizing. We could watch the whole general vibe change, where the majority of the town at first doesn't want to embrace change so those who do it earlier are ostracized. Then as more and more people become modern, the shaming gets flipped onto the few who are still holding onto the old ways. Also in the final game everyone just up and leaves for New Pork City. Maybe during the 10 years we can also see New Pork getting built, and then later on people beginning to abandon Tazmily to go live there. It could be the younger people mostly moving there leaving Tazmily to become a dying town with mostly an aged population left. All legit criticisms of things that happen in Capitalist societies. I wonder if that had to do with Flint getting reduced role in the final game. Maybe Flint would have been the main character for longer, and then as the years go on age starts to catch up with him. Meanwhile Lucas is getting older and stronger. Then eventually Flint has to stay home and can only communicate with Lucas by telephone.
The fact Duster became a really good bass player in such a short time seems a bit unrealistic too! That’s the first thing I thought when you started explaining your theory.
An important thing to note is that the Itoh quote says _"with the actual game play picking up during key events in that time period."_ There wasn't going to be one time skip.
Oh wow, I never even noticed that, great observation. That interview was one from 1997 so maybe with the chapters count being cut down by 2000 from twelve to nine, that meant the time skip was even simplified back during the N64 days 🤔 who knows
Late to this conversation, but the White Ship that transported the Tazmily people to their new home may have been a space ship. The setting of Mother 3 could be a planet that's not necessarily Earth. If that's the case, perhaps this planet completes it's cycle around its Sun much slower than Earth does. If that's the case, 3 years on this planet could be the equivalent of 10 years on Earth
Would also fit with why everything feels slightly off compared to the first two MOTHER games. This one feels more disconnected than the others, more fantastical in a sense.
Something that clicked in my head while watching the M364 iceberg video back when it was released, in chapter 4 if you go around and talk to NPCs a few of them tell Lucas to get a job and stuff like that, hell, getting a part-time job is mandatory to progress the story, this kind of plot would fit 17 years old Lucas better than 10 years old (assuming the initial ages are still the same in both versions)
4:10 tbh i never saw this moment as comedic or something like this, to me it just felt like we were for this first time seeing Flint in his most vulnerable and defeated state
I’d say Wess is a very complex character, he tries to help and protect his community, but can only do so much as an old man. I wouldn’t chalk up him not going to find Duster as selfishness, I think it was just out of his hands.
Claus being 17 after the skip would also make more sense as to why he was referred to as the “Masked Man”, since he’d be older. You wouldn’t really call a 13-year-old a man; they’re still a boy at that point. I guess it’s also easier to see an adult commanding an army rather than a child still in the midst of puberty.
That's true, I do think they also called him The Masked Man in order to give his identity some secrecy though. If they had called him The Masked Boy or something along those lines in the final game, it would've been immediately more obvious he's probably Claus. Of course there's already some pretty obvious foreshadowing as-is but The Masked Man is a more vague title that makes it a little less obvious from the getgo
@@doglikedude I don’t doubt that for a minute. “Masked Boy” doesn’t really roll of the tongue quiet as nicely, either.
It would would also make sense if they built this human robot with a arm cannon, steal armor and the ability to throw lighting bolts in 10 years rather than 3.
Porky recruiting a brainwashed kid to be a prominent member of his army feels in-character for him. Porky is an old man with the mind of a preteen boy, after all. He altered the wildlife of the Nowhere Islands purely so they'd "look cooler".
I didn't think Flint's bald reveal was tonally out-of-place at the end, I didn't think of it as a joke. My first thought was yours, that it shows how battered and beaten Flint has become - hair loss is very serious to most men and if you joked about it in front of Flint he would probably knock you out.
Flint's baldness reveal is also a revelation about his emotional state and journey coming to an end. He finally has his hat removed, which he hasn't taken off since losing his wife and child. It's almost like he was refusing to accept that the world had moved on, keeping the same image to force things to stay as they were. When his hat is removed, it shows that he finally accepts what happened and that his son is no more.
@@ChargeQM I like this idea better than the other one because we have no idea if flint has hair before the timeskip to begin with so the “change” would really mean nothing if he wasn’t shown having hair before the timeskip.
@@ChargeQMHe's also showing vulnerability by taking his hat off until that point, he was a stereotypically rough-and-tough cowboy father.
For New Porky City, I feel that the 3 year gap kinda made sense since the whole game seems to poke fun at how rushed and superficial everything is.
The idea that Porky had everyone rush to build things and that causing a lot of things being left unfinished or looking fake,
while Porky still tries to make people believe that his city is this huge magnificent man-made monument to himself makes sense, at least to me.
I agree...It fits the message really well.
But for everything else, I like the idea of the 10 year timeskip better because:
Having Tazmily village and It’s culture slowly morph into something completely different over the span of decade rather than just 3 years seems more fathomable to me, and makes the whole thing feel way more sinister and calculative in my eyes.
three years just seemed like such a short time for the people to be manipulated into accepting all those changes
With 10 years they could’ve added a lot more interesting elements to it, instead of just using the love boxes and lighting strikes as the main reasoning.
Throw a frog in boiling water and it will hop out, heat the water slowly and the frog will stay in the pot...that sorta thing
I also think it would’ve hit harder to have a longer timeskip. Not only is Lucas pretty much an adult now, but everything around him has changed so much that It’s barely recognizable...what happened during those 10 years?
I think they could’ve done the 10 year skip, but still have new pork city be something Porky just made on the fly
@@fartinator1 yeah, I agree. Some things would be more reasonable, that's why I only mentioned New Porky City.
@@AkayAkamay Didn’t mean to come off as if I was arguing with you, I just kinda started writing and forgot to stop lmao sorry about that
@@fartinator1 it's alright
I think it's possible initially The Nowhere Islands slowly turns into New Pork Island, something evidenced by mention of New Pork Island within some unused text in GBA Mother 3. Perhaps, over time, the once natural island is transformed into an amalgamation of Porky's memories and obsession with the past, rather than just the city located in an unknown part of the Nowhere Islands like it the final game. Or maybe New Pork was located on an entirely different island which the villagers traveled to. Hard to say
64 lucas looks like he wants to beat me up and wears nike shoes.
God, this just wants me to see MOTHER 3 N64 get leaked more and more.
The more EB64 I see, the more I wish it was moved to GameCube. Even if it didn’t work on GameCube, they would of been able to move it to the Wii. It could of worked. What a shame.
Interesting how Lucas' face changing actually makes it look like he's grown stronger during the time skip, like they imply in the GBA version. (I dunno, it makes him look more mature.)
I feel that New Pork City was most likely already built (or was almost completed) prior to the Pigmasks invading Tazmily and that nobody knew of it since it was located on a separate island that was inaccessible. This point can be further proven with how during Chapter 3 you ride around in a secret passageway that had its entrance hidden with a tombstone so that nobody would stumble upon it. Something else that I noticed is that during Duster's flashback at the end of Chapter 4 you can see that one of the first things that he had done after losing his memory was joining the DCMC, meaning that most of the buildings outside of the general area of Tazmily Village were likely built beforehand and nobody noticed them since the village was mostly isloated (I mean there used to be a tunnel east of Tazmily that was blocked off with a roadblock as well as a wire gate before the modernization). So I could see Porky being on the Nowhere Islands for quite a while planning everything out before starting it all on that fateful night...
Fassad mentions how he believes lightning will soon strike the villagers without Happy Boxes long before we even see Thunder Tower. This doesn’t directly confirm anything, but it’s implied that the tower had already been constructed before the timeskip. Locria can be found as soon as Chapter 1, and since he’s already under the new alias of Fassad, the transition from “Magypsy to traitor” had already taken place. He’s a high-ranking officer of the army as well, and since the Pigmasks invade so early into the game, I’d imagine that his position was already established before Lucas’ story even starts. Things like this don’t just happen within a couple days.
@@cowboyluigi5275 Exactly, there's no way that this stuff could've happened instantly
New Pork City was built directly on top of the ruins of an older civilization that had lived there before. The people of the White Ship wanted nothing to do with the old world, so they settled on the opposite end of the island. Those run-down apartments, sewers, and everything that isn't flashy and shiny was already there. Porky just had his people build on top of it all.
As for Thunder Tower, they already had the plans in place for building the tower. Not only that, but the building doesn't have a lot of floor space really, ballooning out at the top but staying fairly thin underneath. If they had a ton of workers and no regard for safety, they could have built the tower in a few months!
@@ChargeQM how did I not know about this? Is this canonical? Or just a idea?
The "Younger Kumatora" is an early Magypsy, several other early of them exist in the other Magypsy graphic banks
Although if it WAS a young Kumatora, it would make some sense if she would only appear alongside a Magypsy sprite, like holding their hand or hiding behind them.
There's also a possibility that Kumatora was a Magypsy at one point
it honestly explains why kumatora looks like she is older than duster
I'm glad you made a video exploring more of that particular iceberg entry. It's fun seeing the older 64 character designs. I kinda like Flint's and Lucas' 64 designs more than the final. But overall the final designs for everyone are excellent.
Please keep making these earthbound 64 videos! They're so interesting and there really isn't that much coverage earthbound 64 out there right now
A realistic and detailed passage of time certainly appears to have been a key motive in the original concept or Mother 3
Great video. Your points are spot on and I've been sold on this theory for a long time. I think another point that could be made is that the village and villagers changing over time was really where the original concept of the game came from, and using the N64DD hardware it would've been much easier for them to show more concrete changes over time.
*father of the year 2006*
Yes, the guy who reminded us that "moron" is an existent word in the English vocabulary.
Also Kumatora is clearly a child when you first meet her, but old enough to work at an adults only club in the span of 3 years? A 10 year skip makes more sense…
7:46 64 Kumatora looks way different compared to GBA Kumatora
If I had to guess, that might be her flippant nature in its early stages, intentionally dressing in a way that makes people not know how to react.
@@ChargeQM Yeah. Apparently, Kumatora was originally supposed to look like a hottie, but as much as I wish we could play a complete version of Earthbound 64, we should consider ourselves lucky that we got a 2D version called "Mother 3" and an unofficial fan translation of it.
The final game played up her tomboy aspects.
Seeing the town change gradually over 10 years could have been pretty effective. There could be more villagers not wanting to change things, but every few years we see more and more of them give in to the modernizing. We could watch the whole general vibe change, where the majority of the town at first doesn't want to embrace change so those who do it earlier are ostracized. Then as more and more people become modern, the shaming gets flipped onto the few who are still holding onto the old ways.
Also in the final game everyone just up and leaves for New Pork City. Maybe during the 10 years we can also see New Pork getting built, and then later on people beginning to abandon Tazmily to go live there. It could be the younger people mostly moving there leaving Tazmily to become a dying town with mostly an aged population left. All legit criticisms of things that happen in Capitalist societies.
I wonder if that had to do with Flint getting reduced role in the final game. Maybe Flint would have been the main character for longer, and then as the years go on age starts to catch up with him. Meanwhile Lucas is getting older and stronger. Then eventually Flint has to stay home and can only communicate with Lucas by telephone.
The fact Duster became a really good bass player in such a short time seems a bit unrealistic too! That’s the first thing I thought when you started explaining your theory.
Perhaps he is just that talented. Duster is a man of many skills and surprises.
3 Years is not THAT short, but yeah
Great job on this vid man, made for a really fun watch this evening!!! 👍
An important thing to note is that the Itoh quote says _"with the actual game play picking up during key events in that time period."_ There wasn't going to be one time skip.
Oh wow, I never even noticed that, great observation. That interview was one from 1997 so maybe with the chapters count being cut down by 2000 from twelve to nine, that meant the time skip was even simplified back during the N64 days 🤔 who knows
@@DaEgg123
Kumatora 64 IS HOT
MISS N64 RPG GAME 😢
Late to this conversation, but the White Ship that transported the Tazmily people to their new home may have been a space ship. The setting of Mother 3 could be a planet that's not necessarily Earth. If that's the case, perhaps this planet completes it's cycle around its Sun much slower than Earth does. If that's the case, 3 years on this planet could be the equivalent of 10 years on Earth
Would also fit with why everything feels slightly off compared to the first two MOTHER games. This one feels more disconnected than the others, more fantastical in a sense.
Lucas looks about 13
Something that clicked in my head while watching the M364 iceberg video back when it was released, in chapter 4 if you go around and talk to NPCs a few of them tell Lucas to get a job and stuff like that, hell, getting a part-time job is mandatory to progress the story, this kind of plot would fit 17 years old Lucas better than 10 years old (assuming the initial ages are still the same in both versions)
That bug gif lol also nice video
4:10 tbh i never saw this moment as comedic or something like this, to me it just felt like we were for this first time seeing Flint in his most vulnerable and defeated state
real bugsnax moment
This was interesting
I Needed more EB64 in my life, thank you
MORE CONTENT MORE CONTENT
jonathan what’s that one spongebob episode where he goes tututututu
Pretty sure it’s in Fear of a Krabby Patty
@@DaEgg123 wrong answer man it’s “I had an accident”
Lore of EarthBound 64/N64 MOTHER 3 theory: The original timeskip Momentum 100
Hey can you talk about sony copyrighte
nice video! but i'm going to keep drawing off-model kumatora fanart to spite you
TELL HIM
3:02 isn’t Wes’s selfish
I’d say Wess is a very complex character, he tries to help and protect his community, but can only do so much as an old man. I wouldn’t chalk up him not going to find Duster as selfishness, I think it was just out of his hands.
@@DaEgg123
LUCAS IS 17 💀💀💀
Noice