The collection process was a long one. A year is a long time to collect signatures and push the petition on other websites, and you can bet that the staff and I got sick of it quickly. But hey, it builds character. Or experience points.

So, Makkun is totally the coolest guy ever. If you read some of the other aftermath documents you'll find that he did us a huge favor, but on top of that he went and collected TONS of Japanese signatures for the petition. This is the fourth of the 6 pages he scanned and sent to me. I must say, the comments are rather interesting :)

Many people (myself included) couldn't help but take screenshots at each interesting stopping point during the petition's run; people sent me shots of 1,000, 10,013 (the number we got for the EB64 Petition), 1,337, 10,000, 11,111, 13,337, 15,000, 20,000, and 29,000 (who took that one?) among others. In the end, though, this was the one everyone was waiting for.

This screenshot is close to our hearts because it represents two things; one, the support of what used to be the largest and most unstoppably awesome gaming site on the internet. Two, a time before said gaming site fell into a McDonalds McDeep Frier. It was still good of our old acquaintance Matt Cassamasina to post it for us ;)

The folks over at Slashdot Games were a little late on the uptake, but it was exciting to have some news posted about us on there regardless. We actually were posted on there again (once again for the petition) not too long ago, and I have a feeling we'll be up there a few more times to come, too. Now, if we can make our way to the main Slashdot site, THEN...

Of course we got mentioned at tons of prestigious gaming sites (like 8-Bit Theater and Penny Arcade), so these screenshots aren't a representative sample, but you get the idea. Much shorter than the collection process, but equally stressful, was...

So, after I printed out the petition (didn't get any cool undercover pictures of that, sorry folks), it was time for copying/sorting/stacking. Luckily, Meeellla was there to help me with the process of copying each of the handwritten sheets 4 times and separating them into four stacks. We were able to avoid the library since my church let us use the copy room. If you look carefully below, you'll notice two things; there is a handy description of each picture if you hold your mouse over it, and we got a special endorsement from a very important player in the gaming industry.

What you see here is the most complete raw form of the petition, finally compiled and split into four separate (but mostly identical) documents. The only one that was really different was EGM's, since the toner ran out halfway through. The stupid thing almost finished printing before I realized it was spitting blanks. Dang it. Anyway, as you'll see, this was a LOT of paper. If you want to be even more impressed, check out the Significant Figures page to find out just how many pages there were and how big the font was.

Of course, we weren't going to leave it at that. After a year of work, there was no way this puppy was going without some major style points to back it up. Meeellla once again came through with a fantastic drawing, around which I created a cover for the petition (both of which you can see on the petition documents page).

The rest is history; the petition was sent, Mother 1, 2, and eventually 3 were released, and reid got a new Corv-- wait a second. We're forgetting something. Something...important. Something...artistic. Something...SEXY:

As any good Starmen.Net junkie knows, Jonk does some incredible work. One of the many products of this guy's real ultimate thinking power was the fact that, while it may be really big and impressive, 470 pages of size 6 font just doesn't make for a real visual experience. Being the maintainer of the fan art section, Jonk set himself to a noble task: creating an art album to accompany the petitions.

Predictably, Jonk didn't half-bake it. He went all out. Ridiculously all out. The pictures speak for themselves mostly, but you must know that this thing was 100% hand-made. He designed the layout. He gathered content from every worthy source he could find (both English and Japanese). He burned two sets of data CD's and two sets of music CD's. He printed each of the roughly 100 pages from his own printer. He bound each copy by hand. He did it himself. How? I still can't figure it out. And for the love of Mr. T, he made four of them. The mind most definitely boggles.

The Art Album is divided into three main categories: Art, Comics, and Music/Data. The Art, obviously, hails largely from Starmen.Net's massive Fan Art Department, but there is lots of art included which can not be found on the site as well. The Comics are incredible, including a full showing of the two most famous and most complete EarthBound comics to date; Lis Vender's EBZ and Paper's /EarthBound, as well as tons of the wacky 4-koma from tani. The end of the album contains two copies of Rock Candy, two digital copies of the album as well as some other cool stuff, and a shout out to the fanfic section of the site (since it couldn't be included without making the entire thing much more expensive and large).