Nintendo is really starting to show some love to its nearly forgotten EarthBound franchise. The publisher recently released the Super Nintendo classic on the Wii U’s eShop store for $10. Now, Nintendo is launching the Onett Times news portal on the Wii U Miiverse. The publisher will post all of its EarthBound news and information on the Onett Times page.
For its first post, Nintendo posted a link to a digitized version of the EarthBound Player’s Guide strategy book that first debuted alongside the Super Nintendo game in 1995. The book is available online on Nintendo’s website through this link. You can flip through it using a web browser, but the company optimized the viewing experience for the Wii U GamePad.
This means players can quickly access all the information they need while playing through one of the biggest cult-classics of all time.
Of course, with the launch of the Onett Times, EarthBound fans — which are known for their dedication to the game — have already flooded the first post with dozens of questions about a new game.
In 2006, Nintendo released an EarthBound sequel, known as Mother 3, exclusively in Japan for the Game Boy Advance. Fans have long petitioned Nintendo to localize and release the game in North America. An EarthBound fan known as Tomato has translated the game and released it as a ROM patch that gamers can download and play on emulators. He has offered to give it to Nintendo for free.
We’ve reached out to Nintendo to find out what kind of EarthBound news players can expect. We also asked Nintendo how well EarthBound is doing on the Wii U and whether a translation is back on the table. We will update this story with its response.