I spend a lot of my time immersed in retro gaming channels and listening to what gets the retro gaming community feeling excited, and then ultimately getting distracted and excited myself in the process. It was during one of these sessions this morning that I came across a post from Nines on Twitter telling me something that I honestly wondered if I would ever see - the EarthBound Beginnings ROM Hack is finally finished and available to play.
'Hold up, EarthBound Beginnings? What's going on here?' I hear you ask. Well, it's been almost 20 years since this ROM hack project started remaking the original NES game Mother 1 into a 16-bit SNES title began, and it's finally come to fruition. The hack is for Earthbound itself, but it replaces the game with Mother with a SNES-esque glow-up.
For anyone wondering, Mother 1 was renamed as EarthBound Beginnings in 2015 when it released for the Wii U. It's all a little confusing, but this version of EarthBound Beginnings is Mother 1 in 16-bit as opposed to 8-bit.
The project has been in process since 2007 with three devs credited as being the brains behind it over the years - Tomato, Hacking Star, and Gabbls. Various other members of the community have also lent their skills to bring the project to life, and much like the recent TimeSplitters Rewind release, it's been a real labour of love.
Oh my god the Earthbound Beginnings/Mother 1 remake romhack is out. https://t.co/2SQbYZu6lu pic.twitter.com/X8ho10FUvA
— Nine Ten@TooManyGames (@nineten) June 14, 2026
The mock-up of the game artwork on the X post above looks amazing too. According to the official website for the ROM hack, it was designed by BigSharkZ, who has done a cracking job of capturing the essence of Nintendo's big-box obsession during the 90s. There are three big boxes that resonate with me over my childhood and my career in retro media - LylatWars, Super Metroid, and EarthBound. EarthBound is such an impressive, colourful box that it's the kind of thing you could just have up on display in your office, something I wish I had done with the big box version of Super Metroid that I used to own as a child...
So how do you play this remade version of EarthBound Beginnings? Well, the Earthbound Beginnings Remake website has all of the information and tools needed to either patch the hack onto your own legally acquired Earthbound ROM there and then or to download the patch to use your own patching tool. You can also download the box artwork from the website too!
