# Difference between Earthbound (Prototype) and Earthbound Zero



## Deleted-236924 (Mar 26, 2011)

I found two different roms of the very first Earthbound for the NES, one being Earthbound (U) (Prototype).nes and another being Earthbound Zero (Demiforce Hack).nds
I ran both of them on an emulator and they both were in English.

My question is, are there any differences between the two except the "Zero" being added to the title screen?

Also, apparently the Earthbound Zero roms that have "Zero" written in White have anti-piracy and cannot be completed while those with the word Zero written in Blue has no AP and can be completed.
True or not?

Would I be fine if I played through the original Prototype rom? (the one without Zero on the titlescreen.)


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## ZombiePosessor (Mar 27, 2011)

play thru the demiforce hack, that's the actual dump of the EB0 cart, and it's Mother, not EarthBound. I know it's called EarthBound, but it's Mother 1. I don't know where you heard that white/blue text thing, but all the AP has been removed off those dumps unless you're playing a straight dump of the prototype cart, which are hard to find to download.


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## twiztidsinz (Mar 27, 2011)

ZombiePosessor said:
			
		

> play thru the demiforce hack, that's the actual dump of the EB0 cart, and it's Mother, not EarthBound. I know it's called EarthBound, but it's Mother 1. I don't know where you heard that white/blue text thing, but all the AP has been removed off those dumps unless you're playing a straight dump of the prototype cart, which are hard to find to download.


Hey... I've been looking for a bit of info on this game actually. Pretty much same question.
There are two versions of the hack. The second one has a light blue 'frosting' to the top, and the Zero is a different "font":





From what I know, the ones WITH "Zero" on the logo have the AP removed, the ones without it are 'clean' dumps.
If I'm reading it right, according to http://www.lostlevels.org/200407/200407-earthbound.shtml the pure white text has the antipiracy screens pop up. The white with blue 'frost' is the fix for that.


Also, do you happen to know the CRC of the untouched Prototype dump?


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## Deleted-236924 (Mar 28, 2011)

After some reading on lostlevels.org, the (Prototype) is the clean rom straight from the cart.

However, this didn't work on Nesticle, the emulator used at the time, so Demiforce hacked it to make it work again and added Zero to the titlescreen to differentiate it from Earthbound on the SNES.
It was easy to do, they just had to edit one single byte for it to work.

But then, another problem arose. Since the rom had beed edited, the checksum wasn't correct anymore, which made the game display it's anti-piracy text.

Demiforce then hacked it again to solve the anti-piracy problems and changed the Zero from White to Blue to differentiate the AP hacked version from the other one.

Oh, and for those interested, the original untouched prototype rom works just fine on nesDS.
The reason why Demiforce hacked it in the first place is because it froze on Nesticle whenever textboxes appeared.
This doesn't happen on nesDS.

I doubt the clean dump would need any AP fix, since the AP screen occured only because the game data had been tampered with (the modified titlescreen and textbox fix)
So it normally should be fine to use the clean dump.

(Also, how do I find out a NES rom's CRC? Google doesn't seem to want to help me.)

ZombiePossessor: No one cares, Mother is the Japanese name. This is a dump of the NA prototype cart, so it's Earthbound.


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## Skye07 (Apr 3, 2011)

You should consider playing Tomato's English translation for the Mother 1+2 game on GBA. You can find it on http://earthboundcentral.com/

The quality of the translation is similar to Mother 3 since it's the same translator


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## Tonitonichopchop (Apr 3, 2011)

Skye07 said:
			
		

> You should consider playing Tomato's English translation for the Mother 1+2 game on GBA. You can find it on http://earthboundcentral.com/
> 
> The quality of the translation is similar to Mother 3 since it's the same translator



Tomato hasn't released it yet.


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## hunter291 (Apr 3, 2011)

i would approve that, but the translation isn't released yet.


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## machomuu (Apr 3, 2011)

ZombiePosessor said:
			
		

> play thru the demiforce hack, that's the actual dump of the EB0 cart, and it's Mother, not EarthBound. I know it's called EarthBound, but it's Mother 1. I don't know where you heard that white/blue text thing, but all the AP has been removed off those dumps unless you're playing a straight dump of the prototype cart, which are hard to find to download.


If you want to get technical, Mother 1 was originally called Earthbound before its localization was cancelled.


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## Rydian (Apr 3, 2011)

machomuu said:
			
		

> ZombiePosessor said:
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If you want to get really technical, it was called Earth Bound.


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## machomuu (Apr 3, 2011)

Rydian said:
			
		

> machomuu said:
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...My objection has been overruled...


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## Skye07 (Apr 4, 2011)

hunter291 said:
			
		

> i would approve that, but the translation isn't released yet.




He released a beta version where most of the text is translated, so if you don't want to wait you can go play it right now


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## thaddius (Apr 4, 2011)

Skye07 said:
			
		

> hunter291 said:
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There seems to be some confusion here. He released a beta patch that had some of the menu's translated into English for Mother 2/Earthbound. An early (incomplete) version Mother 1/Earthbound Zero translation patch was released to starmen.net/fangamer.net for a promotion or something, but it has _not_ been released to the public... yet.


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## Rydian (Apr 4, 2011)

machomuu said:
			
		

> ...My objection has been overruled...


NERDINESS FTW


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## Deleted-236924 (Apr 5, 2011)

hunter291 said:
			
		

> i would approve that, but the translation isn't released yet.


The sole reason why I wanted to play the NES version.


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## Skye07 (Apr 5, 2011)

thaddius said:
			
		

> There seems to be some confusion here. He released a beta patch that had some of the menu's translated into English for Mother 2/Earthbound. An early (incomplete) version Mother 1/Earthbound Zero translation patch was released to starmen.net/fangamer.net for a promotion or something, but it has _not_ been released to the public... yet.



Ah okay, I must've misread it then. And yes, I'm also eager to play Mother the way it's meant to be played with a good translation ^^


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