Earlier this month, a Twitter user named @realZen64 spent $357 on an auction to acquire a Nintendo company report from 1998. The report, which can now be found online, contains fascinating details on what was going on inside Nintendo at the time. A quick once-over via machine translation mentions things like the Nintendo Power rewritable flash memory cartridge, the Nintendo 64 DD, and other briefly-mentioned projects. However, the most interesting piece comes from the CD filled with video game footage. Among the footage of more well-known games is a half-minute clip of unseen footage from EarthBound 64, the game that would go on to be known as MOTHER 3.
Most people who've seen footage of EarthBound 64 likely know it from some old IGN footage or a brief showroom glimpse at Spaceworld 1996. However, this company report CD has provided 25 seconds of previously unseen footage for the game. The footage is limited to 240p and has no sound to it, but it's still a huge find for fans of the EarthBound/MOTHER series. Not to mention that some of the sequences seen in the footage look pretty impressive for what would have been a Nintendo 64 title. While the holy grail of a trade show demo still eludes us, you can see the new footage below.
For those not versed in Japanese, Twitter user @blameitonrobot provided a quick translation of some of the text seen in the trailer. Most of the text comes from the brief snippet of combat seen near the end of the footage. Some fans may notice how in this EarthBound 64 footage, Flint, the father of main protagonist Lucas, can use PSI/magic. In his final rendition, he lacked PSI but instead had four skills he could use to raise his stats, hit every enemy, or deliver an inaccurate hit guaranteed to be a SMAAAAAAASH if it connected.
MOTHER 3 wound up releasing on the GBA as a Japanese-exclusive game in 2006, and would get an unofficial fan translation in October 2008. Meanwhile, you can see what else was in the company report CD, including trailers and mention of their Japan-only rewritable Super Famicom cartridges, here.
