| September 11, 2000 |
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To Whom It May Concern:
Mother 3, known to hundreds of thousands of eager fans as EarthBound 64, was recently cancelled. To many fans of EarthBound, this came as an extremely disappointing end to a wait of over four years. Months before the cancellation was announced, we, the leaders of the EarthBound fan website Starmen.Net (www.Starmen.Net), began a petition for Mother 3 / EarthBound 64. We anticipated possible problems with persuading Nintendo to bring an English translation of Mother 3 to the states. In the back of our minds we always knew the possibility of a cancellation was lurking. It recently came true. This petition is our final shot at helping Nintendo to understand what its gamers want, not what the statistics of a graph show. We are petitioning because, of course, we desire to have Mother 3 / EB64 more than any other game. Even though the game has apparently been cancelled as a possible Nintendo 64 RPG, speculation and rumors hold that there is a possibility of a Gamecube port. Although our voice may be small contrasted with that of Nintendo officials and directors, we strongly urge Nintendo to consider this option. As common sense dictates, it would be a terrible waste of time, money, and talent to have a game that was in planning/development for over 4 years cancelled near its completion. This petition was an ambitious project, and it took massive amounts of work and money to carry out. The petition itself ran for 3-4 months and, in the end, reached its goal of 10,000 signatures. Michael Veroni and the staff at Tendo Box (www.tendobox.com) proved to be instrumental in the long, difficult process of gathering signatures. Each one of these 10,013 signatures has been read over and checked by one of the staff members at Starmen.Net to prevent the occurrence of duplicate signatures or overly inappropriate messages. In doing this, Starmen.Net has produced a final product of high quality and even higher integrity. We hope that Nintendo, itself being a company of high standards, will understand that this is not a document to be taken lightly. It is our fervent hope that Nintendo of Japan and Nintendo of America will understand that the 10,013 individuals who signed this petition are representative of only a very small percentage of the hundreds of thousands who have been waiting for Mother 3 or EarthBound 64. The main source of attention was from websites and word-of-mouth; the biggest publicity it received was a mention on IGN64 (www.ign64.com) and in the letters section of Tips and Tricks gaming magazine. These two examples can serve to show that even the 10,000+ signatures garnered were a miniscule portion of what could have been, had this petition gained wider recognition. On a personal note: My name is Reid Young. I am 17 years old, and I have run Starmen.Net (formerly known as EarthBound.Net) for well over 2 years now. The petition that you hold in your hands now is the product of innumerable hours of work and hundreds of dollars generated by donations from visitors to Starmen.Net. I plead with all of my heart that you will not let this incredible effort go to waste. Not only my time and money, but the time and money of many others has been poured into this. Please make this your consideration as you skim through some of the 700 pages of this petition. Very Sincerely,
Reid Young |