title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: Caidin's novel "Cyborg" was a best-seller when it was published in 1972. He followed it up with three sequels, "Operation Nuke", "High Crystal", and "Cyborg IV", respectively about a black market in nuclear weapons, a "Chariots of the Gods?" scenario, and fusing Austin's bionic hardware to a spaceplane.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: In March 1973, "Cyborg" was loosely adapted as a made-for-TV movie titled "The Six Million Dollar Man" starring Majors as Austin. The producers' first choice was Monte Markham. (When re-edited for the later series, it was re-titled "The Moon and the Desert, Parts I and II".) The adaptation was done by writer Howard Rodman, working under the pseudonym of Henri Simoun. The film, which was nominated for a Hugo Award, modified Caidin's plot and notably made Austin a civilian astronaut rather than a colonel in the United States Air Force. Absent were some of the standard features of the later series: the electronic sound effects, the slow-motion running, and the character of Oscar Goldman. Instead, another character named Oliver Spencer, played by Darren McGavin, was Austin's supervisor, of an organization here called the Office of Strategic Operations, or "OSO". (In the novels, "OSO" stood for Office of Special Operations. The CIA did have an Office of Scientific Intelligence in the 1970s.) The lead scientist involved in implanting Austin's bionic hardware, Rudy Wells, was played in the pilot by Martin Balsam, then on an occasional basis in the series by Alan Oppenheimer, and, finally, as a series regular, by Martin E. Brooks. Austin did not use the enhanced capabilities of his bionic eye during the first TV movie.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: The first movie was a major ratings success and was followed by two more made-for-TV movies in October and November 1973 as part of ABC's rotating "Movie of the Week" series. The first was titled "The Six Million Dollar Man: "Wine, Women and War"", and the second was titled "The Six Million Dollar Man: "The Solid Gold Kidnapping"". The first of these two bore strong resemblances to Caidin's second "Cyborg" novel, "Operation Nuke"; the second, however, was an original story. This was followed in January 1974 by the debut of "The Six Million Dollar Man" as a weekly hour-long series. The latter two movies, produced by Glen A. Larson, notably introduced a James Bond flavor to the series and reinstated Austin's status from the novels as an Air Force colonel; the hour-long series, produced by Harve Bennett, dispensed with the James Bond-gloss of the movies, and portrayed a more down-to-earth Austin. (Majors said of Austin, "[He] hates...the whole idea of spying. He finds it repugnant, degrading. If he's a James Bond, he's the most reluctant one we've ever had.")


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: The show was very popular during its run and introduced several pop culture elements of the 1970s, such as the show's opening catchphrase ("We can rebuild him; we have the technology", voiced over by Richard Anderson in his role of Oscar Goldman), the slow motion action sequences, and the accompanying "electronic" sound effects. The slow motion action sequences were originally referred to as ""Kung Fu" slow motion" in popular culture (due to its use in the 1970s martial arts television series), although according to "The Bionic Book" by Herbie J. Pilato, the use of slow motion on the series was inspired by its use by NFL Films.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: In 1975, a two-part episode titled "The Bionic Woman", written for television by Kenneth Johnson, introduced the lead character Jaime Sommers (played by Lindsay Wagner), a professional tennis player who rekindled an old romance with Austin, only to experience a parachuting accident that resulted in her being given bionic parts similar to Austin. Ultimately, her body "rejected" her bionic hardware and she died. The character was very popular, however, and the following season it was revealed that she had survived, having been saved by an experimental cryogenic procedure, and she was given her own spin-off series, "The Bionic Woman". This spin-off ran until 1978 when both it and "The Six Million Dollar Man" were simultaneously cancelled, though the two series were on different networks when their final seasons aired.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: Steve Austin and Jaime Sommers returned in three subsequent made-for-television movies: "The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman" (1987), "" (1989) which featured Sandra Bullock in an early role as a new bionic woman; and "Bionic Ever After?" (1994) in which Austin and Sommers finally marry. Majors reprised the role of Steve Austin in all three productions, which also featured Richard Anderson and Martin E. Brooks, and Lindsay Wagner reprising the role of Jaime Sommers. The reunion films addressed the partial amnesia Sommers had suffered during the original series, and all three featured Majors' son, Lee Majors II, as OSI agent Jim Castillian. The first two movies were written in the anticipation of creating new bionic characters in their own series, but nothing further was seen of the new characters introduced in those produced. The third TV movie was intended as a finale.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: The crash footage during the opening credits is from the M2-F2 crash that occurred on May 10, 1967. Test pilot Bruce Peterson's lifting body aircraft hit the ground at approximately and tumbled six times, but survived what appeared to be a fatal accident, though he later lost an eye due to infection. In the episode "The Deadly Replay", Oscar Goldman refers to the lifting body aircraft in which Austin crashed as the HL-10, stating "We've rebuilt the HL-10." The HL-10 is the aircraft first seen in the original pilot movie before the accident flight. In the 1987 TV film "The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman", Austin refers to the craft as the "M3-F5", which was the name used for the aircraft that crashed in the original "Cyborg" novel.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: In the opening sequence, a narrator (series producer Harve Bennett) identifies the protagonist, "Steve Austin, astronaut. A man barely alive." Richard Anderson, in character as Oscar Goldman, then intones off-camera, "Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world's first bionic man. Steve Austin will "be" that man. Better than he was before. Better...stronger...faster." During the first season, beginning with "Population: Zero", Anderson, as Goldman, intoned more simply, "We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better...stronger...faster." During the operation, when he is having his bionics fitted, a list of items and numbers is displayed and lists his power plant as "atomic".


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: The opening and closing credits of the "Wine, Women & War" and "The Solid Gold Kidnapping" telefilms used a theme song written by Glen A. Larson, and sung by Dusty Springfield, backed by Ron "Escalade" Piscina. This song was also used in the initial promotion of the series.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: However, when the weekly series began, the song was replaced by an instrumental theme by Oliver Nelson. The first regular episode, "Population: Zero", introduced a new element to the opening sequence: a voiceover by Oscar Goldman stating the rationale behind creating a bionic man. The first season narration was shorter than that used in the second and subsequent seasons.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: To maintain the show's plausibility, producer Kenneth Johnson set very specific limits on Steve Austin's abilities. He elaborated, "When you're dealing with the area of fantasy, if you say, 'Well, they're bionic so they can do whatever they want,' then it gets out of hand, so you've got to have really, really tight rules. [Steve and Jaime] can jump up two stories but not three. They can jump down three stories but not four."


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: The implants have a major flaw in that extreme cold interferes with their functions and can disable them given sufficient exposure. However, when Austin returns to a warmer temperature, the implants quickly regain full functionality. The first season also established that Austin's bionics malfunction in the micro-gravity of space, though Austin's bionics are later modified to rectify this. The bionic eye is vulnerable to ultrasonic attack, resulting in blindness and dizziness. It is not explained how Austin's organic body is able to withstand the stress of either bionic hardware weight or performance of superhuman feats.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: To indicate to viewers that Austin was using his bionic enhancements, sequences with him performing superhuman tasks were presented in slow-motion and accompanied by an electronic "dit dit dit dit" sound effect. (This characteristic sound effect was actually first used in season 1 episode 4, "Day of the Robot", not during use of Austin's bionics but with the robotic clone of Major Fred Sloan, played by actor John Saxon, during the final fight scene.) When the bionic eye was used, the camera zoomed in on Austin's face, followed by an extreme close-up of his eye; his point of view usually included a crosshair motif accompanied by a beeping sound-effect. In early episodes, different ways of presenting Austin's powers were tested, including a heartbeat sound effect that predated the electronic sound, and in the three original made-for-TV movies, no sound effects or slow-motion were used, with Austin's actions shown at normal speed (except for his running, which used trick photography); the slow-motion portrayal was introduced with the first hour-long episode, "Population: Zero."


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: Martin Caidin wrote four novels featuring his original version of Steve Austin beginning in 1972 with "Cyborg". Although several other writers such as Mike Jahn later wrote a number of novelizations based upon the TV series, in most cases these writers chose to base their character upon the literary version of Austin rather than the TV show version. As a result, several of the novelizations have entire scenes and in one case an ending that differed from the original episodes, as the cold-blooded killer of Caidin's novels handled things somewhat differently from his non-killing TV counterpart. For example, the Jahn book "International Incidents", an adaptation of the episode "Love Song for Tanya", ends with Austin using the poison dart gun in his bionic hand to kill an enemy agent; since the TV version of the character lacked this weapon, the villain was simply captured in the episode as broadcast.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: Charlton Comics published both a color comic book and a black and white, illustrated magazine, featuring original adventures as well as differing adaptations of the original TV movie. While the comic book was closely based upon the series, and geared toward a young audience, the magazine was darker and more violent and seemed to be based more upon the literary version of the character, aimed at adult readers. Both magazines were cancelled around the same time the TV series ended. Artists Howard Chaykin and Neal Adams were frequent contributors to both publications. Steve Kahn, who had previously published magazines on the Beatles and the teen fan magazine FLiP, worked with MCA and Charlton in overseeing and publishing these books.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: A British comic strip version was also produced, written by Angus P. Allan, drawn by Martin Asbury and printed in TV comic "Look-In". A series of standalone comic strips was printed on the packaging of a series of model kits by Fundimensions based upon the series. In Colombia, a black and white comic book series was published in the late 70s, with art and stories by Jorge Peña. This series was licensed by Universal studios to Greco (Grupo Editorial Colombiano), then known as Editora Cinco, now part of Grupo Editorial Televisa. In France, "Télé-Junior", a magazine devoted to comic book adaptations of all sorts of TV series and cartoons also featured a "Six Million Dollar Man" comic (under its French title, "L'Homme qui valait trois milliards", i.e. "The Three Billion Dollar Man") with art by Pierre Le Goff and stories by P. Tabet and Bodis. A tradepaperback reprinting several episodes from the magazine was released in October, 1980.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: In 1996, a new comic book series entitled "Bionix" was announced, to be published by Maximum Press. The comic was to have been an updated version of both the "Six Million Dollar Man" and the "Bionic Woman" and feature new renditions of the two characters. Although the magazine was advertised in comic book trade publications, it was ultimately never published.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: On August 24, 2011, Dynamite Comics published the first issue of "The Bionic Man", an adaptation written by Kevin Smith based upon a screenplay he'd written for a never-produced 1990s motion picture version of "The Six Million Dollar Man". After concluding the adaptation in the spring of 2012 the comic series moved on to original stories, as well as a re-imagining of the original TV series' "Secret of Bigfoot" storyline. A spin-off comic re-imagining "The Bionic Woman" followed a few months later, and in January 2013 Dynamite launched a crossover mini-series, "The Bionic Man vs. The Bionic Woman". The artwork in these series, covers and interiors, varies between Austin being rendered in the likeness of Lee Majors and not. As 2014 began, Dynamite discontinued its reboot titles and replaced them with a new ongoing series, "The Six Million Dollar Man Season 6", continuing the adventures of Austin from the conclusion of the 1977–78 season and featuring not only the likeness of Lee Majors, but also other recurring actors such as Richard Anderson, as well as Darren McGavin as Oliver Spencer from the first TV movie. Jaime Sommers was reintroduced from issue 3, with a spin-off comic series, "The Bionic Woman Season 4", announced in June 2014 with a scheduled launch in the fall of 2014.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: Peter Pan Records and its sister company Power Records published several record albums featuring original dramatized stories (including an adaptation of the pilot film), several of which were also adapted as comic books designed to be read along with the recording. Three albums' worth of stories were released, one of which featured Christmas-themed stories. Individual stories were also released in other formats, including singles.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: Universal Pictures developed a screenplay in 1995 with Kevin Smith, but the outing never materialized. In December 2001, it was announced that Universal had pacted with Dimension Films on the project after Dimension president Bob Weinstein saw its potential as a franchise. Universal retained film rights to the original TV show, while Dimension purchased the rights to the "Cyborg" novel, as well as Caidin's three other novels in the series: "Operation Nuke", "High Crystal" and "Cyborg IV". Larry Gordon and Scott Faye were going to produce with Paul Rosenberg's Collision Entertainment. Smith's screenplay was later adapted for "The Bionic Man", an ongoing comic book series launched in 2011 by Dynamite Comics.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: In October 2002, Trevor Sands was hired to write a new screenplay, titled "The Six Billion Dollar Man", but Dimension scrapped it when actor Jim Carrey pitched a comedic take on the material for him to star in, with Scot Armstrong as writer and Todd Phillips as director/co-writer. Filming was expected to begin in 2004.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: In a July 2006 interview at Comic Con, Richard Anderson (who played Oscar Goldman in the series) stated that he was involved with producing a movie of the series, but the rights were at the time in litigation between Miramax and Universal.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: On November 6, 2014, it was announced that a feature film, tentatively titled "The Six Billion Dollar Man", would go into production. Mark Wahlberg was set to play Colonel Steve Austin, with Peter Berg as director. Filming was to begin in early 2015, for a theatrical release the following year. On November 2, 2015 it was reported that Berg had left the film and had been replaced by Damian Szifron, who will also write the film. Filming was to begin in September 2016 with a December 22, 2017 release date.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: In December 2017, The Weinstein Company sold the film's rights to Warner Bros. As of January 2018, they hoped to start filming the movie in mid 2018. In April 2018, they set an early to mid 2019 release for the film. The film was moved to June 5, 2020 until "Wonder Woman 1984" took over the release date, and in April 2019, Travis Knight and Bill Dubuque replaced Szifron as director and writer.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: In Brazil, under the military dictatorship, some important government officials, previously elected by direct suffrage, were appointed by the president, or elected indirectly, out of a shortlist picked by the president. These politicians were called "bionic" ("biônicos"), due to the series' popularity, and the association with the perceived extraordinary power and influence held by the appointed officials. Between 1964 and 1985, Brazil came to have "bionic" senators, governors and mayors. With the 1988 Constitution of Brazil, all "bionic" appointments were abolished.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: In Israel, the series was retitled "The Man Worth Millions" since "six million" evoked memories of The Holocaust; specifically the most commonly quoted estimate of the number of Jewish victims.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: Universal Playback released the first two seasons of "The Six Million Dollar Man" on DVD in Region 2 and Region 4 in 2005–2006. The first three seasons were also released on the Italian market (Region 2) in late 2008. The season 1 release also features the three pilot movies that preceded the weekly series.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: The Region 1 (North American) release, along with that of "The Bionic Woman" was one of the most eagerly awaited; its release had been withheld for many years due to copyright issues regarding the original novel. In fact, with the exception of a few episodes released in the DiscoVision format in the early 1980s and a single VHS release of the two-part "The Bionic Woman" storyline that same decade, the series as a whole had never been released in North America in any home video format.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: On July 21, 2010 however, Time Life (under license from Universal) announced the release of a complete series box set of "The Six Million Dollar Man" on DVD in Region 1 for the first time on November 23, 2010. The 40-disc set features all 99 episodes of the series as well as the three pilot films and the three reunion TV-movies which also feature Jaime Sommers, along with several episodes of "The Bionic Woman" that were part of inter-series crossovers (i.e. part one aired on one series, and part two on another) in order to include complete storylines. In addition, the set features extensive bonus features including interviews and featurettes with all major cast members and the set comes encased in collectible packaging that includes a sound chip, activated when the box is opened, that plays back part of the first season opening credits dialogue. The release is available directly through Time-Life's "6mdm" website as well a through several third-party on-line vendors.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: In November 2011, Universal Pictures began releasing individual season sets of the series on DVD, available in retail stores. It has subsequently released all five seasons. The fifth and final season was released on February 18, 2014.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: Several episodes of "The Six Million Dollar Man" actually saw their North American DVD debut several weeks in advance of the box set, as Universal Home Video included the three "crossover" episodes that helped launch "The Bionic Woman" as bonuses on the October 19, 2010 DVD release of Season 1 of "The Bionic Woman".


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: On October 13, 2015, Universal Pictures released a retail version of "The Six Million Dollar Man- The Complete Series" on DVD in Region 1.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: In Region 2, Fabulous Films acquired the rights to the series in 2012 and subsequently released seasons 3–5 on DVD on October 1, 2012. It also re-released the first two seasons on February 25, 2013. A 40-disc complete series boxset was released on April 2, 2012.


title: The Six Million Dollar Man

text: On May 2, 2022, Shout Factory announced the complete series is scheduled to be released on Blu-ray July 12, 2022. It will also feature crossover episodes and six films.


title: Michael York

text: Michael York OBE (born Michael Hugh Johnson; 27 March 1942) is an English film, television and stage actor. After performing on-stage with the Royal National Theatre, he had a breakthrough in films by playing Tybalt in Franco Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Juliet" (1968). His blond, blue-eyed boyish looks and English upper social class demeanor saw him play leading roles in several major British and Hollywood films of the 1970s. His best known roles include Konrad Ludwig in "Something for Everyone" (1970), Geoffrey Richter-Douglas in "Zeppelin" (1971), Brian Roberts in "Cabaret" (1972), George Conway in "Lost Horizon" (1973), D'Artagnan in "The Three Musketeers" (also 1973) and its two sequels, Count Andrenyi in "Murder on the Orient Express" (1974), Logan 5 in "Logan's Run" (1976).


title: Michael York

text: In his later career he found success as Basil Exposition in the "Austin Powers" film series (1997–2002). He is a two-time Emmy Award nominee, for the "ABC Afterschool Special": "Are You My Mother?" (1986) and the AMC series "The Lot" (2001).


title: Michael York

text: York was born in Fulmer, Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, son of Florence Edith May Chown, a musician, and Joseph Gwynne Johnson, a Llandovery-born Welsh ex-Royal Artillery British Army officer and businessman. York has an elder sister, Penelope Anne (born 1940) and younger twin sisters, Caroline and Bridget (born 1947); Bridget died a few hours after birth, according to his autobiography. He was brought up in Burgess Hill, Sussex.


title: Michael York

text: During his teenage years, York was educated at Bromley Grammar School for Boys, Hurstpierpoint College and University College, Oxford. He did some early acting at the community theatre Bromley Little Theatre and is now its president. This then led to his joining the National Youth Theatre, also performing with the Oxford University Dramatic Society and the University College Players. He began his career in a 1956 production of "The Yellow Jacket". In 1959, he made his West End début with a small part in a production of "Hamlet".


title: Michael York

text: Prior to graduating with a degree in English from the University of Oxford in 1964, York had toured with the National Youth Theatre, After some time with the Dundee Repertory Theatre, where he played in Brendan Behan's "The Hostage", York joined National Theatre under Laurence Olivier where he worked with Franco Zeffirelli during the 1965 staging of "Much Ado About Nothing". Following his role on British TV as Jolyon (Jolly) in "The Forsyte Saga" (1967), York made his film debut as Lucentio in Zeffirelli's "The Taming of the Shrew" (1967). He then was cast as Tybalt in Zeffirelli's 1968 film adaptation of "Romeo and Juliet". He starred in "The Guru" (1969), then played an amoral bisexual drifter in "Something for Everyone" (1970). In the 1971 film "Zeppelin", he portrayed a World War I soldier with conflicted family loyalties who pretends to side with the Germans. He portrayed the bisexual Brian Roberts in Bob Fosse's film version of "Cabaret" (1972). In 1975, he portrayed a British soldier in 19th century colonial India in "Conduct Unbecoming", the first of three movies he did with director Michael Anderson. In 1977, he reunited with Franco Zeffirelli as John the Baptist in "Jesus of Nazareth".


title: Michael York

text: York starred as D'Artagnan in the 1973 adaptation of "The Three Musketeers" and he made his Broadway début in the original production of Tennessee Williams's "Out Cry". One year later the sequel to "The Three Musketeers" was released (roughly covering events in the second half of the book) titled "The Four Musketeers". Fifteen years later, most of the cast (and crew) joined together in a third film titled "The Return of the Musketeers" based on the Dumas novel "Twenty Years After". He played the title character in the film adaptation of "Logan's Run" (1976), a fugitive who tries to escape a computer-controlled society. The following year, he starred in "The Island of Dr. Moreau" opposite Burt Lancaster.


title: Michael York

text: Since his auspicious early work, York has enjoyed a busy and varied career in film, television and on the stage. He appeared in two episodes in the second season of the "Road to Avonlea" series as Ezekiel Crane, the lighthouse keeper of Avonlea and foster father of Gus Pike. His Broadway theatre credits include "Bent" (1980), "The Crucible" (1992), "Someone Who'll Watch Over Me" (1993) and the ill-fated musical "The Little Prince and the Aviator" (1982), which closed during previews. He also has made many sound recordings as a reader, including Harper Audio's production of C. S. Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe".


title: Michael York

text: York appeared in the 1996 "Babylon 5" episode "A Late Delivery from Avalon" as a delusional man who believed himself to be King Arthur returned. Two years later he would play King Arthur in A Knight in Camelot. He also appeared as Professor Asher Fleming, a 60-year-old Yale professor and boyfriend of Yale student Paris Geller (Liza Weil) during the fourth season of "Gilmore Girls". He performed the voice of the character Dr. Montague Kane in the "" episode "Zatanna", as well as Kanto in the "" episode "Tools of the Trade" and Ares in the "Justice League Unlimited" episode "Hawk & Dove". York starred in both "The Omega Code" and its sequel, "", as Stone Alexander, the Antichrist from Christian eschatology.


title: Michael York

text: In 2002, he received a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to motion pictures. He played President Alexander Bourne of Macaronesia on "seaQuest 2032". He played Basil Exposition in all three of the "Austin Powers" films. He has made an appearance on "The Simpsons" as Mason Fairbanks, Homer Simpson's possible father, in "Homer's Paternity Coot". In 2006, York played the character Bernard Fremont (inspired by real life serial killer Charles Sobhraj) in the "" episode "". He also appeared as a fictionalised version of himself in several episodes of the third season of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" as an investor in Larry's new restaurant 'BoBo's. In 2009, he lent his voice to "".


title: Michael York

text: York voiced Petrie's uncle Pterano in "". In 2009, he narrated the entire Bible for "The Word of Promise Audio Bible," a star-studded, performance of the New King James Version. York again played King Arthur in a revival of Lerner and Loewe's "Camelot", which began its run at the La Mirada Theatre in Southern California, and toured nationally in 2006 and 2007.


title: Michael York

text: York portrays Luke in "The Truth & Life Dramatised Audio New Testament Bible", a 22-hour audio dramatisation of the New Testament, which uses the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition translation. In 2008, York took part in the BBC Wales programme "Coming Home" about his Welsh family history. In September 2013, York played Albany in the Gala Performance of William Shakespeare's "King Lear" at the Old Vic in London.


title: Michael York

text: York met photographer Patricia McCallum in 1967 when she was assigned to photograph him, and they married on 27 March 1968, York's 26th birthday. His stepson is "Star Wars" producer Rick McCallum. York was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1977.


title: Michael York

text: In 2013, York announced he was suffering from the rare disease called amyloidosis. Doctors initially thought he had bone cancer. In 2012, he underwent a stem cell transplant, which can alleviate symptoms.


title: Michael York

text: In 2022, York and his wife moved to Rochester, Minnesota, to be closer to the Mayo Clinic Hospital for treatment.


title: EarthBound

text: EarthBound, released in Japan as is a role-playing video game developed by Ape Inc. and HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The second entry in the "Mother" series, it was first released in Japan in August 1994, and in North America in June 1995. As Ness and his party of Paula, Jeff and Poo, the player travels the world to collect melodies from eight Sanctuaries in order to defeat the universal cosmic destroyer Giygas.


title: EarthBound

text: "EarthBound" had a lengthy development period that spanned five years. Its returning staff from "Mother" (1989) included writer/director Shigesato Itoi and lead programmer Satoru Iwata, as well as composers Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka, who incorporated a diverse range of styles into the soundtrack, including salsa, reggae, and dub. Most of the other staff members had not worked on the original "Mother", and the game came under repeated threats of cancellation until Iwata joined the team. Originally scheduled for release in January 1993, the game was completed around May 1994.


title: EarthBound

text: Themed around an idiosyncratic portrayal of Americana and Western culture, "EarthBound" subverted popular role-playing game traditions by featuring a modern setting while parodying numerous staples of the genre. Itoi wanted the game to reach non-gamers with its intentionally goofy tone; for example, the player uses items such as the Pencil Eraser to remove pencil statues, experiences in-game hallucinations, and battles piles of vomit, taxi cabs, and walking nooses. For its American release, the game was marketed with a $2 million promotional campaign that sardonically proclaimed "this game stinks". The game's puns and humor were reworked by localizer Marcus Lindblom. Since the original "Mother" had not been released outside Japan, "Mother 2" was called "EarthBound" to avoid confusion about what it was a sequel to.


title: EarthBound

text: Although it was positively received by Japanese audiences, "EarthBound" sold poorly in the U.S., which journalists attributed to a combination of its simple graphics, satirical marketing campaign, and a lack of market interest in the genre. In the ensuing years, a dedicated fan community spawned that advocated for the series' recognition, particularly after Ness appeared as a playable character in the "Super Smash Bros." series. By the 2000s, multiple reader polls and critics had named it one of the greatest video games ever made, and it became regarded as a "sacred cow among gaming's cognoscenti". It was followed by the Japan-only sequel "Mother 3" for the Game Boy Advance in 2006. "EarthBound" was later made available worldwide on the Wii U Virtual Console in 2013, 3DS Virtual Console in 2016, the SNES Classic in 2018, and Nintendo Switch Online in February 2022.


title: EarthBound

text: "EarthBound" features many traditional role-playing game elements: the player controls a party of characters who travel through the game's two-dimensional world composed of villages, cities, caves, and dungeons. Along the way, the player fights battles against enemies and the party receives experience points for victories. If enough experience points are acquired, a character's level will increase. This pseudo-randomly increases the character's attributes, such as offense, defense, and the maximum hit points (HP) and psychic points (PP) of each character. Rather than using an overworld map screen like most console RPGs of its era, the world is entirely seamless, with no differentiation between towns and the outside world. Another non-traditional element is the perspective used for the world. The game uses oblique projection, while most 2D RPGs use a "top-down" view on a grid or an isometric perspective.


title: EarthBound

text: Like its predecessor, "EarthBound Beginnings", "EarthBound" uses random encounters. When contact occurs between a character and one of the randomly generated enemy parties, the screen dissolves into battle mode. In combat, once an enemy or character's HP reaches zero, that enemy or character is rendered unconscious. There is a chance that the party will receive an item after the battle. Battle commands include attacking, spying (reveals enemy weakness), mirroring (emulates an enemy), and running away. Characters can also use PSI actions that require PP. Once each character is assigned a command, the characters and enemies perform their actions in an order determined by character speed and a random number generator. Whenever a character receives damage, the HP box gradually "rolls" down, similar to a mechanical counter. This allows players an opportunity to heal the character or win the battle before the counter hits zero, after which the character is knocked unconscious. This mechanic does not apply to enemies, for whom unconsciousness is instantaneous and can be reversed only with healing PSI. If all characters are rendered unconscious, the game transitions to an endgame screen, asking if the player wants to continue. An affirmative response brings Ness, conscious, back to the last save point, with half the money on his person at the time of his defeat, and with other party members still unconscious. If the party contacts an enemy from behind (indicated by a translucent green swirl that fills the screen), the player is given a first-strike priority when battle mode begins. If the party contacts an enemy with their backs, the swirl is red, and the enemy is given first-strike priority. Neutral priority is indicated by a black swirl. Battles with weaker enemies are won automatically, forgoing the battle sequence, and weaker monsters will flee from Ness and his friends rather than chase them.


title: EarthBound

text: Currency is indirectly received from battles. Each time the party wins a battle, Ness' father, who can also save the game's progress, deposits money in an account that can be withdrawn at ATMs. In towns, players can buy weapons, armor, and items from stores. Weapons and armor can be equipped to increase character strength and defense, respectively. Items can be used for a number of purposes, such as healing. Towns also contain useful facilities such as hospitals where players can be healed for a fee.


title: EarthBound

text: "EarthBound" takes place in the 1990s, several years after the events of "Mother", in the fictional country of Eagleland, a parody of the United States. The player starts as a young boy named Ness as he investigates a nearby meteorite crash with his neighbor, Pokey, to find his neighbor's brother Picky. They find that an alien force, Giygas, has enveloped and consumed the world in hatred and consequently turned animals, humans, and objects into malicious creatures. A small, bee-like creature from the future named Buzz-Buzz instructs Ness to collect melodies in a Sound Stone from eight Sanctuaries to preemptively stop the force, but is killed shortly thereafter when Pokey and Picky's mother mistakes him for a pest. On his journey to visit the sanctuaries, Ness visits the cultists of Happy Happy Village, where he saves Paula, and the zombie-infested Threed, where the two of them fall prey to a trap. After Paula telepathically instructs Jeff in a Winters boarding school to rescue them, they continue to Saturn Valley, a village filled with a species of creatures called Mr. Saturn, the city of Fourside, and the seaside resort Summers. Meanwhile, Poo, the prince of Dalaam, undergoes training called "Mu Training" before joining the party as well.


title: EarthBound

text: The party continues to travel to the Scaraba desert, the Deep Darkness swamp, another village of creatures called the Tenda and a forgotten underworld where dinosaurs live. When the Sound Stone is eventually filled, Ness visits Magicant, a surreal location in his mind where he fights his personal dark side. Upon returning to Eagleland, Ness and his party use the Phase Distorter to travel back in time to fight Giygas, transferring their souls into robots so as to not destroy their bodies through time travel. The group discovers a device that contains Giygas, but it is being guarded by Pokey, who has been aiding Giygas all along and is using alien technology. After being defeated in battle, Pokey turns the device off, releasing Giygas and forcing the group to fight the alien, whose infinite power is turning him into an incomprehensible embodiment of evil and insanity. During the fight, Paula reaches out to the inhabitants of Earth, and eventually the player, who prays for the children's safety. The prayers manage to exploit Giygas' fatal weakness – human emotions – and defeat the alien, eradicating him from existence. In a post-credits scene, Ness, whose life has returned to normal following Giygas' defeat, receives a note from Pokey, who challenges Ness to come and find him.


title: EarthBound

text: The first "Mother" was released for the NES in 1989. Its sequel, "Mother 2", or "EarthBound", was developed over five years by Ape and HAL, and published through Nintendo. The game was written and designed by Japanese author, musician, and advertiser Shigesato Itoi, and produced by Satoru Iwata, who became Nintendo's president and CEO. "Mother 2" was made with a development team different from that of the original game, and most of its members were unmarried and willing to work all night on the project. "Mother 2" development took much longer than planned and came under repeated threat of cancellation. Itoi has said that the project's dire straits were resolved when Iwata joined the team. Ape's programming team had more members than HAL on the project. The HAL team (led by lead programmer Iwata) worked on the game programming, while the Ape team (led by lead programmer Kouji Malta) worked on specific data, such as the text and maps. They spent biweekly retreats together at the HAL office in view of Mount Fuji.


title: EarthBound

text: The game continues "Mother" story in that Giygas reappears as the antagonist (and thus did not die at the end of "Mother") and the player has the option of choosing whether to continue the protagonist's story by choosing whether to name their player-character the same as the original. He considered interstellar and interplanetary space travel instead of the confines of a single planet in the new game. After four months, Itoi scrapped the idea as cliché. Itoi sought to make a game that would appeal to populations that were playing games less, such as girls.


title: EarthBound

text: The "Mother" series titles are built on what Itoi considered "reckless wildness", where he would offer ideas that encouraged his staff to contribute new ways of portraying scenes in the video game medium. He saw the titles foremost as games and not "big scenario scripts". Itoi has said that he wanted the player to feel emotions such as "distraught" when playing the game. The game's writing was intentionally "quirky and goofy" in character, and written in the Japanese kana script so as to give dialogue a conversational feel. Itoi thought of the default player-character names when he did not like his team's suggestions. Many of the characters were based on real-life personalities. For instance, the desert miners were modeled on specific executives from a Japanese construction company. The final battle dialogue with Giygas was based on Itoi's recollections of a traumatic scene from the Shintoho film "The Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty" that he had accidentally seen in his childhood. Itoi referred to the battle background animations as a "video drug". The same specialist made nearly 200 of these animations, working solely on backgrounds for two years.


title: EarthBound

text: The idea for the rolling HP meter began with pachinko balls that would drop balls off the screen upon being hit. This did not work as well for characters with high health. Instead, around 1990, they chose an odometer-style hit points counter. The bicycle was one of the harder elements to implement—it used controls similar to a tank before it was tweaked. Iwata felt that the Ape programmers were particularly willing to tackle such challenges. The programmers also found difficulty implementing the in-game delivery service, where the delivery person had to navigate around obstacles to reach the player. They thought it would be funny to have the delivery person run through obstacles in a hurry on his way off-screen. The unusual maps laid out with diagonal streets in oblique projection required extra attention from the artists. Itoi specifically chose against having an overworld map, and didn't want to artificially distinguish between towns and other areas. Instead, he worked to make each town unique. His own favorite town was Threed, though it was Summers before then.


title: EarthBound

text: "Mother 2" was designed to fit within an eight-megabit limit, but was expanded in size and scope twice: first to 12 megabits and second to 24 megabits. The game was originally scheduled for release in January 1993 on a 12 megabit cartridge. It was finished around May 1994 and the Japanese release was set for August 27. With the extra few months, the team played the game and added small, personal touches. Itoi told "Weekly Famitsu" that Shigeru Miyamoto liked the game and that it was the first role-playing game that Miyamoto had completed. "Mother 2" would release in North America about a year later.


title: EarthBound

text: The game includes anti-piracy measures that, when triggered, increases enemy counts to make the game less enjoyable. Additionally, right before players reach the end of the pirated copy's story, their game resets and deletes its saved file in an act that IGN declared "arguably the most devious and notorious example of 'creative' copy protection".


title: EarthBound

text: "Mother" composers Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka returned to make the "EarthBound" soundtrack, along with newcomers Hiroshi Kanazu and Toshiyuki Ueno. In comparison with "Mother", Itoi said that "EarthBound" had more "jazzy" pieces. Suzuki told "Weekly Famitsu" that the Super NES afforded the team more creative freedom with its eight-channel ADPCM based SPC700, as opposed to the old Nintendo Entertainment System's restriction of five channels of basic waveforms. This entailed higher sound quality and music that sounds closer to his regular compositions. Itoi believes that "EarthBound" may be the first video game to use vibrato, or "string-bending", in its music. The soundtrack was released by Sony Records on November 2, 1994.


title: EarthBound

text: In Suzuki's songwriting process, he would first compose on a synthesizer before working with programmers to get it in the game. His personal pieces play when the player is walking about the map, out of battle. Suzuki's favorite piece is the music that plays while the player is on a bicycle, which he composed in advance of this job but found appropriate to include. He wrote over 100 pieces, but much of it was not included in the game. The team wrote enough music as to fill eight megabits of the 24 megabit cartridge—about two compact discs.


title: EarthBound

text: According to Tanaka, the Beach Boys were repeatedly referenced between him and Suzuki, and that he would often listen to co-founder Brian Wilson's 1988 eponymous album while on the way to Suzuki's home. Suzuki has stated that the percussive arranging in the game's soundtrack was based on the Beach Boys' albums "Smile" (unreleased) and "Smiley Smile" (1967), which both contained American themes shared with Van Dyke Parks' "Song Cycle" (1968). To Suzuki, "Smile" evoked the bright and dark aspects of America, while "Song Cycle" displayed a hazy sound mixed with American humor and hints of Ray Bradbury, a style that he considered essential to the soundtrack of "Mother". Tanaka recalls Randy Newman being the first quintessentially American composer he could think of, and that his albums "Little Criminals" (1977) and "Land of Dreams" (1988) were influential. While Suzuki corroborated with his own affinity for Harry Nilsson's "Nilsson Sings Newman" (1970), he also cited John Lennon as a strong influence due to the common theme of love in his music, which was also a prominent theme in the game, and that his album "John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band" (1970) helped him to avoid excessive instrumentation over the SNES's technical constraints.


title: EarthBound

text: The soundtrack contains direct musical quotations of some classical and folk music; the composers also derived a few samples culled from other sources including commercial pop and rock music. The texture of the work was partially influenced by some salsa, reggae, and dub music. Speaking about Frank Zappa's "Make a Jazz Noise Here" (1991), Tanaka felt that Zappa would have been the best at creating a live performance of "Mother" music, but could not detail Zappa's specific influence on "EarthBound". Additionally, he felt that the mix tape "Wired Magazine Presents: Music Futurists" (1999) presented a particular selection of artists that embody the ethos of "EarthBound", running the gamut from space age composer Esquivel to avant-garde trumpeter Ben Neill, along with innovators Sun Ra, Steve Reich, Todd Rundgren, Brian Eno, and Can. Tanaka also mentioned that he listened to the various artists compilation "" (1988) heavily during "EarthBound"s development. Miscellaneous influences on Suzuki and Tanaka for "EarthBound" include the music of Michael Nyman, Miklós Rózsa's film score for "The Lost Weekend" (1945), and albums by various other pop/rock musicians.


title: EarthBound

text: As was traditional for Nintendo, "Mother 2" was developed in Japan and localized in the United States, a process in which the game is translated into English for Western audiences. As it was the only game in the "Mother" series to be released in North America at the time, its title ""Mother 2"" was changed to ""EarthBound"" to avoid confusion about what it was a sequel to.


title: EarthBound

text: Nintendo of America's Dan Owsen began the English localization project and converted about ten percent of the script before moving to another project. Marcus Lindblom filled Owsen's position around January 1995. Lindblom credits Owsen with coining some of the game's "most iconic phrases", such as "say fuzzy pickles". Lindblom himself was given liberties to make the script "as weird as [he] wanted", as Nintendo wanted the script to be more American than a direct translation would be. He worked alone and with great latitude due to no divisional hierarchies. Lindblom was aided by Japanese writer Masayuki Miura, who translated the Japanese script and contextualized its tone, which Lindblom positively described as "a glass half full".


title: EarthBound

text: Lindblom was challenged by the task of culturally translating "an outsider's view of the U.S." for an American audience. He also sought to stay true to the original text, though he never met or spoke with Itoi. In addition to reworking the original puns and humor, Lindblom added private jokes and American cultural allusions to Bugs Bunny, comedian Benny Hill, and "This Is Spinal Tap". Apart from the dialogue, he wrote the rest of the game's text, including combat, prompts and item names. As one of several Easter eggs, he named a non-player character for his daughter, Nico, who was born during development. While Lindblom took the day off for her birth, he proceeded to work 14-hour days without weekends for the next month.


title: EarthBound

text: Under directives from Nintendo, Lindblom worked with the Japanese artists and programmers to remove references to intellectual property, religion, and alcohol from the American release, such as a truck's Coca-Cola logo, the red crosses on hospitals, and crosses on tombstones. Alcohol became coffee, Ness was no longer nude in the Magicant area as seen in the image, and the Happy Happyist blue cultists were made to look less like Ku Klux Klansmen. The team was not concerned with music licensing issues and considered itself somewhat protected under the guise of parody. Lindblom recalled that the music did not need many changes. The graphical fixes were not finished until March 1995, and the game was not fully playable until May.


title: EarthBound

text: In Japan, "Mother 2" sold 518,000 units, becoming the tenth best-selling game of 1994. "EarthBound" was released on June 5, 1995, in North America. The game sold about 140,000 units in the United States, for a total of approximately units sold worldwide.


title: EarthBound

text: Though Nintendo spent about $2 million on marketing, the American release was ultimately viewed as unsuccessful within Nintendo. The game's atypical marketing campaign was derived from the game's unusual humor. As part of Nintendo's larger "Play It Loud" campaign, "EarthBound" "this game stinks" campaign included foul-smelling scratch and sniff advertisements. At the time, Digital Trends described the campaign as "bizarre" and "based around fart jokes". "GamePro" reported that they received more reader complaints about the game's scratch and sniff ad than about any other 1995 advertisement. The campaign was also expensive. It emphasized magazine advertisements and had the extra cost of the strategy guide included with each game. Between the poor sales and the phasing out of the Super NES, the game did not receive a European release. Aaron Linde of "Shacknews" believed that the price of the packaged game ultimately curtailed sales.


title: EarthBound

text: "EarthBound" originally received little critical praise from the American press, and sold poorly in the US: around 140,000 copies, as compared to twice as many in Japan. "Kotaku" described "EarthBound" 1995 American release as "a dud" and blamed the low sales on "a bizarre marketing campaign" and graphics "cartoonish" beyond the average taste of players. The game was released when RPGs were not popular in the US, and visual taste in RPGs was closer to "Chrono Trigger" and "Final Fantasy VI". The game piggybacked on Itoi's celebrity in Japan.


title: EarthBound

text: Most journalists attributed the game's poor sales in the US to its simple graphics, atypical marketing campaign, and disinterest in the genre. Of the original reviewers, Nicholas Dean Des Barres of "DieHard GameFan" wrote that "EarthBound" was not as impressive as "Final Fantasy III", although just as fun. He praised the game's humor and wrote that the game completely defied his first impressions. Des Barres wrote that "past the graphics", which were purposefully 8-bit for nostalgia, the game is not an "entry-level" or a "child's" RPG, but "highly intelligent" and "captivating". The Brazilian "Super GamePower" explained that those expecting a "Dungeons and Dragons"-style RPG will be disappointed by the childish visuals, which were unlike other 16-bit games. They wrote that the American humor was too mature and that the gameplay was too immature, as if for beginners. "GamePro" commented that "The lack a convincing storyline and the dull NES-clone graphics ... will make serious RPG fans a little cautious about approaching "EarthBound". The saving graces are the fairly good music and the unintentionally hilarious adult humor." They concluded that the game is inappropriate for children due to its adult humor, but would not appeal to more mature gamers due to its simplistic gameplay and poorly illustrated graphics.


title: EarthBound

text: Lindblom and his team were devastated by the release's poor critical response and sales. He recalled that the game was hurt by the reception of its graphics as "simplistic" at a time when critics placed high importance on graphics quality. Lindblom felt that the game's changes to the RPG formula (e.g., the rolling HP meter and fleeing enemies) were ignored in the following years, though he thought the game had aged well at the time of its Virtual Console rerelease in 2013.


title: EarthBound

text: Reviewing the game years after its release, writers described the game as "original" or "unique", and praised its script's range of emotions. IGN's Scott Thompson said the game teetered between solemn and audacious in its dialogue and gameplay, and noted its deviance from RPG tropes in aspects such as choice of attacks in battle. He found the game both "bizarre and memorable". "Official Nintendo Magazine" Simon Parkin thought the game's script was its best asset, as "one of the medium's strongest and idiosyncratic storylines" that fluctuated "between humorous and poignant". "GameZone" David Sanchez thought its script was "clever" and "sharp", as it displayed a wide range of emotions that made him want to talk to all non-player characters. "GamesTM" wrote that the game designers spoke with their players through the non-playable characters, and noted how Itoi's interests shaped the script, its allusions to popular culture, and its "strangely existential narrative framework". Nintendo Life praised the game's touching story, charm and modern-day setting, with minor criticism of the slow pacing.


title: EarthBound

text: Critics praised its "real world" setting, which was seen as an uncommon choice. Thompson noted its 1990s homage as "a love letter to 20th-century Americana", with a payphone as a save point, ATMs to transfer money, yo-yos as weapons, skateboarders and hippies as enemies, and references to classic rock bands. "Official Nintendo Magazine" Parkin noted the theme's distance from the "knights and dragons" common to the Japanese role-playing game genre. Thompson noted the game's steep difficulty. He wrote that the beginning was the hardest and that aspects such as limited inventory, experience grinds, and monetary penalties upon death were unfriendly for players new to Japanese RPGs. He also cited the quick respawn time for foes and ultimate need not to avoid battles given the difficulty of bosses.


title: EarthBound

text: Reviewers described the game's ambiance as cheery and full of charm. David Sanchez of "GameZone" thought the game's self-awareness added to its charm, where the player learned through the game's poking lighthearted fun. He added that the music was an "absolute delight" and complimented its range from space sounds to themes to "bizarre" battle tracks that varied with the enemy type. "GamesTM" wrote that the game's reputation comes from the "consistent ... visual language" in its Charles M. Schulz-esque character and world design. "Kotaku" Jason Schreier found the ending unsatisfying and unrelieving, despite finding the ending credits with its character curtain call and photo album of "fuzzy pickles" moments all "wonderful".


title: EarthBound

text: Thompson wrote that "EarthBound" balances "dark Lovecraftian apocalypse and silly lightheartedness", and was just as interesting nearly a decade after its original release. While he lamented a lack of "visual feedback" in battle animations, he felt the game had innovations that still feel "smart and unique": the rolling HP meter and lack of random battles. Thompson also noted that technical issues like animation slowdown with multiple enemies on-screen went unfixed in the rerelease. Parkin found the game to provide a more potent experience than developers with more resources and thought its battle sequences were "sleek". "Nintendo World Report"s Justin Baker was surprised by the "excellent" battle system and controls, which he found to be underreported in other reviews despite their streamlined, grind-reducing convenience. He wrote that some of the menu interactions were clunky. "GamesTM" felt that the game was "far from revolutionary", compared to "Final Fantasy VI" and "Chrono Trigger", and that its battle scenes were unexciting. The magazine compared the game's "chosen one" story to a "throwaway "Link's Awakening"/"Goonies" hybrid narrative". Thompson praised Nintendo for digitizing the Player's Guide, though noted that it was technically easier to view it on another tablet rather than switching the Wii U's view mode. Reviewers concluded that the game had aged well.


title: EarthBound

text: "EarthBound" was listed in "1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die", where Christian Donlan wrote that the game is "name-checked by the video gaming cognoscenti more often than it's actually been played". He called the game "utterly brilliant" and praised its overworld and battle system. Similarly, "Eurogamer" Simon Parkin described it as a "sacred cow amongst gaming's cognoscenti". Game journalists have ranked "EarthBound" among the best Super NES games and most essential Japanese role-playing games, and at least three reader polls ranked the game among the best of all time. For a piece about the "top worlds" in video games, "IGN" rated "EarthBound" setting among the best, indelible between its unconventional environments, 1960s music, and portrayal of Americanism.


title: EarthBound

text: "Kotaku" described the game "as one of the weirdest, most surreal role-playing games in RPG history". Examples include using items such as the Pencil Eraser to remove pencil statues, experiencing in-game hallucinations, meeting "a man who turned himself into a dungeon", and battling piles of vomit, taxi cabs, and walking nooses. David Sanchez of "GameZone" wrote that "EarthBound" "went places no other game would" in the 1990s or even in the present day, including "trolling" the player "before trolling was cool". Localization reviewer Clyde Mandelin described the Japanese-to-English conversion as "top-notch for its time". "1UP.com" said it was "unusually excellent" for the time. IGN wrote that Nintendo was "dead wrong" for believing that Americans would not be interested in "such a chaotic and satirical world". Complex included "EarthBound" as one of the "Best Super Nintendo Games of All Time", saying the game is "definitely the craziest and one of the most fun RPGs the SNES had to offer.


title: EarthBound

text: Jeremy Parish of "USgamer" called "EarthBound" "the all-time champion" of self-aware games that "warp ... perceptions and boundaries" and break the fourth wall, citing its frequent internal commentary about the medium and the final scenes where the player is directly addressed by the game. "GamesTM" said the game felt fresh because of its reliance on "personal experiences" made it "exactly the sort of title that would thrive today as an indie hit". He called this accomplishment "remarkable" and credited Nintendo's commitment to the "voices of creators". IGN's Nadia Oxford said that nearly two decades since the release, its final boss fight against Giygas continues to be "one of the most epic video game standoffs of all time" and noted its emotional impact. "Kotaku" wrote that the game was content to make the player "feel lonely", and, overall, was special not for any individual aspect but for its method of using the video game medium to explore ideas impossible to explore in media.


title: EarthBound

text: The few role-playing games set in real-world settings, "PC Gamer" has written, are often and accurately described as having been influenced by "EarthBound". It was cited as an influence on video games including "Costume Quest"; "" (via South Park creator Trey Parker); "Undertale"; "Contact;" "Omori"; "Lisa"; "Citizens of Earth"; ""; and "Kyoto Wild". Japanese writer Hiromi Kawakami told Itoi that she had played "EarthBound" "about 80 times".


title: EarthBound

text: A cult following for "EarthBound" developed after the game's release. Colin Campbell of "Polygon" wrote that "few gaming communities are as passionate and active" as "EarthBound", and "1UP.com" Bob Mackey wrote that no game was as poised to have a cult following. IGN's Lucas M. Thomas wrote in 2006 that "EarthBound" "persistent", "ambitious", and "religiously dedicated collective of hardcore fans" would be among the first groups to influence Nintendo's decision-making through their purchasing power on Virtual Console. Digital Trends's Anthony John Agnello wrote that "no video game fans have suffered as much as "EarthBound" fans", and cited Nintendo's reluctance to release "Mother" series games in North America. IGN described the series as neglected by Nintendo in North America for similar reasons. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata later credited the community response on their online Miiverse social platform as leading to "EarthBound" eventual rerelease on their Virtual Console platform. Physical copies of "EarthBound" were hard to find before the rerelease, and in 2013, were worth twice its initial retail price.


title: EarthBound

text: "Wired" described the amount of "EarthBound" "fan art, videos, and tributes on fan sites like "EarthBound" Central or Starmen.net" as mountainous. Reid Young of Starmen.net and Fangamer credits "EarthBound" popularity to its "labor of love" nature, with a "double-coat of thoughtfulness and care" across all aspects of the game by a development team that appeared to love their work. Young started the fansite that would become Starmen.net in 1997 while in middle school. It became "the definitive fan community for "EarthBound" on the web" and had "almost inexplicable" growth. "Shacknews" described the site's collection of fan-made media as "absolutely massive". It also provided a place to aggregate information on the "Mother" series and to coordinate fan actions.


title: EarthBound

text: The "EarthBound" fan community at Starmen.net coalesced with the intent to have Nintendo of America acknowledge the "Mother" series. The community drafted several thousand-person petitions for specific English-language "Mother" series releases, but in time, their request shifted to no demand at all, wanting only their interest to be recognized by Nintendo. A 2007 campaign for a "Mother 3" English localization led to the creation of a full-color, 270-page art book—"The EarthBound Anthology"—sent to Nintendo and press outlets as demonstration of consumer interest. "Shacknews" called it more of a proposal than a collection of fan art, and "the greatest gaming love letter ever created". Upon "little" response from Nintendo, they decided to localize the game themselves. Starmen.net co-founder and professional game translator Clyde "Tomato" Mandelin led the project from its November 2006 announcement to October 2008 finish. They then printed a "professional quality strategy guide" through Fangamer, a video game merchandising site that spun off from Starmen.net. Unlicensed "EarthBound"-themed merchandise produced by Fangamer contributors included T-shirts, a pin set and a mug; "The Verge" cited the effort as proof of the fan base's dedication.


title: EarthBound

text: Other fan efforts include "EarthBound, USA", a full-length documentary on Starmen.net and the fan community, and "Mother 4", a fan-produced sequel to the "Mother" series that went into production when Itoi definitively "declared" that he was done with the series. After following the fan community from afar, Lindblom came out to fans in mid-2012 and the press became interested in his work. He had planned a book about the game's development, release, and fandom before a reply from Nintendo discouraged him from pursuing the idea. He plans to continue to communicate directly with the community about the game's history. Books that have been written about "EarthBound" include Ken Baumann's "Earthbound", by Boss Fight Books, and "Legends of Localization Book 2: Earthbound", by Clyde Mandelin.


title: EarthBound

text: Ness became widely known for his appearance as a playable character throughout the "Super Smash Bros." fighting game series, debuting as a fighter in the first installment in 1999. Ness' inclusion in the original release was among its biggest surprises, and renewed "Mother" series fans' faith in new content from Nintendo. Ness was one of the game's most powerful characters, according to "IGN", if players could perfect his odd controls and psychic powers. In Europe, which did not see an "EarthBound" release, Ness was better known for his role in the fighting game than for his original role in the role-playing game.


title: EarthBound

text: Ness returned in the first sequel, "Melee", alongside an "EarthBound"-themed item and battle arena. Lucas, the protagonist of "Mother 3", joined Ness in "Brawl". Several years after "Brawl" release, "Official Nintendo Magazine" wrote that Ness was an unpopular "Smash" character who should be removed from future installments. However, Ness returned in "Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U" and "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate", and Lucas was later added to the former as downloadable content. Nintendo also produced Ness and Lucas Amiibo figurines. Ness was included in a licensed set of "EarthBound"-themed figurines released in Japan in 2014.


title: EarthBound

text: In 1996, Nintendo announced a sequel to "EarthBound" for the Nintendo 64: "Mother 3" ("EarthBound 64" in North America). It was scheduled for release on the 64DD, a Nintendo 64 expansion peripheral that used a magneto-optical drive, but struggled to find a firm release date as its protracted development entered development hell. It was later canceled altogether in 2000 when the 64DD flopped. In April 2003, a Japanese television advertisement revealed that both "Mother 3" and a combined "Mother 1+2" cartridge were in development for the handheld Game Boy Advance. "Mother 3" abandoned the Nintendo 64 version's 3D, but kept its plot. It became a bestseller upon its Japanese release in 2006, yet did not receive a North American release on the basis that it would not sell. "IGN" described the series as neglected by Nintendo in North America, as "Mother 1", "Mother 1+2" and "Mother 3" were not released outside Japan.


title: EarthBound

text: When Nintendo launched its digital distribution platform, Virtual Console, for the Wii in 2006, "IGN" expected "EarthBound" to be among Nintendo's highest priorities for rerelease, given the "religious" dedication of its fanbase. Though the game was ranked the most desired Virtual Console release by "Nintendo Power" readers, rated for release by the ESRB, and able to be published with little effort, the Wii version did not materialize. Many fans believed that music licensing or legal concerns impeded the rerelease. English localizer Marcus Lindblom doubted that the game's music samples were an issue, since they were not a concern during development, and instead hypothesized that Nintendo did not realize the magnitude of the game's popular support and did not consider it a priority project. By 2008, it was not apparent that Nintendo of America was considering a rerelease. At the end of 2012, Itoi revealed that the re-release was moving forward, which was confirmed in a January 2013 Nintendo Direct presentation.


title: EarthBound

text: As part of the anniversary celebrations for the Nintendo Entertainment System and "Mother 2" in March 2013, Nintendo rereleased "EarthBound" for Japan on the Wii's successor, the Wii U Virtual Console. "EarthBound" producer Satoru Iwata soon announced a wider rerelease, citing fan interest on Nintendo's Miiverse social platform. The July American and European launch included a free, online recreation of the game's original Player's Guide, optimized for viewing on the Wii U GamePad. The game was a top-seller on the Wii U Virtual Console, and both "Kotaku" users and first-time "EarthBound" players had an "overwhelmingly positive" response to the game. Simon Parkin wrote that its re-release was a "momentous occasion" as the return of "one of Nintendo's few remaining lost classics" after 20 years. The re-release was one "GameSpot" editor's game of the year, and "Nintendo Life" Virtual Console game of the year. The New Nintendo 3DS-specific Virtual Console received the re-release the next year, in March 2016. In September 2017, Nintendo released the Super NES Classic Edition, which included "EarthBound" among its games. Japan's version of the console however, did not include the game.


title: EarthBound

text: In February 2022, Nintendo rereleased "EarthBound" worldwide on its Nintendo Switch Online service along with its predecessor "EarthBound Beginnings".


title: Neoclassicism

text: Neoclassicism (also spelled Neo-classicism) was a Western cultural movement in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Neoclassicism was born in Rome largely thanks to the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, at the time of the rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum, but its popularity spread all over Europe as a generation of European art students finished their Grand Tour and returned from Italy to their home countries with newly rediscovered Greco-Roman ideals. The main Neoclassical movement coincided with the 18th-century Age of Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th century, laterally competing with Romanticism. In architecture, the style continued throughout the 19th, 20th and up to the 21st century.


title: Neoclassicism

text: European Neoclassicism in the visual arts began c. 1760 in opposition to the then-dominant Rococo style. Rococo architecture emphasizes grace, ornamentation and asymmetry; Neoclassical architecture is based on the principles of simplicity and symmetry, which were seen as virtues of the arts of Rome and Ancient Greece, and were more immediately drawn from 16th-century Renaissance Classicism. Each "neo"-classicism selects some models among the range of possible classics that are available to it, and ignores others. The Neoclassical writers and talkers, patrons and collectors, artists and sculptors of 1765–1830 paid homage to an "idea" of the generation of Phidias, but the sculpture examples they actually embraced were more likely to be Roman copies of Hellenistic sculptures. They ignored both Archaic Greek art and the works of Late Antiquity. The "Rococo" art of ancient Palmyra came as a revelation, through engravings in Wood's "The Ruins of Palmyra". Even Greece was all-but-unvisited, a rough backwater of the Ottoman Empire, dangerous to explore, so Neoclassicists' appreciation of Greek architecture was mediated through drawings and engravings, which subtly smoothed and regularized, "corrected" and "restored" the monuments of Greece, not always consciously.


title: Neoclassicism

text: The Empire style, a second phase of Neoclassicism in architecture and the decorative arts, had its cultural centre in Paris in the Napoleonic era. Especially in architecture, but also in other fields, Neoclassicism remained a force long after the early 19th century, with periodic waves of revivalism into the 20th and even the 21st centuries, especially in the United States and Russia.


title: Neoclassicism

text: Neoclassicism is a revival of the many styles and spirit of classic antiquity inspired directly from the classical period, which coincided and reflected the developments in philosophy and other areas of the Age of Enlightenment, and was initially a reaction against the excesses of the preceding Rococo style. While the movement is often described as the opposed counterpart of Romanticism, this is a great over-simplification that tends not to be sustainable when specific artists or works are considered. The case of the supposed main champion of late Neoclassicism, Ingres, demonstrates this especially well. The revival can be traced to the establishment of formal archaeology.


title: Neoclassicism

text: The writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann were important in shaping this movement in both architecture and the visual arts. His books "Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture" (1750) and "Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums" ("History of Ancient Art", 1764) were the first to distinguish sharply between Ancient Greek and Roman art, and define periods within Greek art, tracing a trajectory from growth to maturity and then imitation or decadence that continues to have influence to the present day. Winckelmann believed that art should aim at "noble simplicity and calm grandeur", and praised the idealism of Greek art, in which he said we find "not only nature at its most beautiful but also something beyond nature, namely certain ideal forms of its beauty, which, as an ancient interpreter of Plato teaches us, come from images created by the mind alone". The theory was very far from new in Western art, but his emphasis on close copying of Greek models was: "The only way for us to become great or if this be possible, inimitable, is to imitate the ancients".


title: Neoclassicism

text: With the advent of the Grand Tour, a fad of collecting antiquities began that laid the foundations of many great collections spreading a Neoclassical revival throughout Europe. "Neoclassicism" in each art implies a particular canon of a "classical" model.


title: Neoclassicism

text: In English, the term "Neoclassicism" is used primarily of the visual arts; the similar movement in English literature, which began considerably earlier, is called Augustan literature. This, which had been dominant for several decades, was beginning to decline by the time Neoclassicism in the visual arts became fashionable. Though terms differ, the situation in French literature was similar. In music, the period saw the rise of classical music, and "Neoclassicism" is used of 20th-century developments. However, the operas of Christoph Willibald Gluck represented a specifically Neoclassical approach, spelt out in his preface to the published score of "Alceste" (1769), which aimed to reform opera by removing ornamentation, increasing the role of the chorus in line with Greek tragedy, and using simpler unadorned melodic lines.


title: Neoclassicism

text: The term "Neoclassical" was not invented until the mid-19th century, and at the time the style was described by such terms as "the true style", "reformed" and "revival"; what was regarded as being revived varying considerably. Ancient models were certainly very much involved, but the style could also be regarded as a revival of the Renaissance, and especially in France as a return to the more austere and noble Baroque of the age of Louis XIV, for which a considerable nostalgia had developed as France's dominant military and political position started a serious decline. Ingres's coronation portrait of Napoleon even borrowed from Late Antique consular diptychs and their Carolingian revival, to the disapproval of critics.


title: Neoclassicism

text: Neoclassicism was strongest in architecture, sculpture and the decorative arts, where classical models in the same medium were relatively numerous and accessible; examples from ancient painting that demonstrated the qualities that Winckelmann's writing found in sculpture were and are lacking. Winckelmann was involved in the dissemination of knowledge of the first large Roman paintings to be discovered, at Pompeii and Herculaneum and, like most contemporaries except for Gavin Hamilton, was unimpressed by them, citing Pliny the Younger's comments on the decline of painting in his period.


title: Neoclassicism

text: As for painting, Greek painting was utterly lost: Neoclassicist painters imaginatively revived it, partly through bas-relief friezes, mosaics and pottery painting, and partly through the examples of painting and decoration of the High Renaissance of Raphael's generation, frescos in Nero's "Domus Aurea", Pompeii and Herculaneum, and through renewed admiration of Nicolas Poussin. Much "Neoclassical" painting is more classicizing in subject matter than in anything else. A fierce, but often very badly informed, dispute raged for decades over the relative merits of Greek and Roman art, with Winckelmann and his fellow Hellenists generally being on the winning side.


title: Neoclassicism

text: It is hard to recapture the radical and exciting nature of early Neoclassical painting for contemporary audiences; it now strikes even those writers favourably inclined to it as "insipid" and "almost entirely uninteresting to us"—some of Kenneth Clark's comments on Anton Raphael Mengs' ambitious "Parnassus" at the Villa Albani, by the artist whom his friend Winckelmann described as "the greatest artist of his own, and perhaps of later times". The drawings, subsequently turned into prints, of John Flaxman used very simple line drawing (thought to be the purest classical medium) and figures mostly in profile to depict "The Odyssey" and other subjects, and once "fired the artistic youth of Europe" but are now "neglected", while the history paintings of Angelica Kauffman, mainly a portraitist, are described as having "an unctuous softness and tediousness" by Fritz Novotny. Rococo frivolity and Baroque movement had been stripped away but many artists struggled to put anything in their place, and in the absence of ancient examples for history painting, other than the Greek vases used by Flaxman, Raphael tended to be used as a substitute model, as Winckelmann recommended.


title: Neoclassicism

text: The work of other artists, who could not easily be described as insipid, combined aspects of Romanticism with a generally Neoclassical style, and form part of the history of both movements. The German-Danish painter Asmus Jacob Carstens finished very few of the large mythological works that he planned, leaving mostly drawings and colour studies which often succeed in approaching Winckelmann's prescription of "noble simplicity and calm grandeur". Unlike Carstens' unrealized schemes, the etchings of Giovanni Battista Piranesi were numerous and profitable, and taken back by those making the Grand Tour to all parts of Europe. His main subject matter was the buildings and ruins of Rome, and he was more stimulated by the ancient than the modern. The somewhat disquieting atmosphere of many of his "Vedute" (views) becomes dominant in his series of 16 prints of "Carceri d'Invenzione" ("Imaginary Prisons") whose "oppressive cyclopean architecture" conveys "dreams of fear and frustration". The Swiss-born Johann Heinrich Füssli spent most of his career in England, and while his fundamental style was based on Neoclassical principles, his subjects and treatment more often reflected the "Gothic" strain of Romanticism, and sought to evoke drama and excitement.


title: Neoclassicism

text: Neoclassicism in painting gained a new sense of direction with the sensational success of Jacques-Louis David's "Oath of the Horatii" at the Paris Salon of 1785. Despite its evocation of republican virtues, this was a commission by the royal government, which David insisted on painting in Rome. David managed to combine an idealist style with drama and forcefulness. The central perspective is perpendicular to the picture plane, made more emphatic by the dim arcade behind, against which the heroic figures are disposed as in a frieze, with a hint of the artificial lighting and staging of opera, and the classical colouring of Nicolas Poussin. David rapidly became the leader of French art, and after the French Revolution became a politician with control of much government patronage in art. He managed to retain his influence in the Napoleonic period, turning to frankly propagandistic works, but had to leave France for exile in Brussels at the Bourbon Restoration.


title: Neoclassicism

text: David's many students included Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, who saw himself as a classicist throughout his long career, despite a mature style that has an equivocal relationship with the main current of Neoclassicism, and many later diversions into Orientalism and the Troubadour style that are hard to distinguish from those of his unabashedly Romantic contemporaries, except by the primacy his works always give to drawing. He exhibited at the Salon for over 60 years, from 1802 into the beginnings of Impressionism, but his style, once formed, changed little.


title: Neoclassicism

text: If Neoclassical painting suffered from a lack of ancient models, Neoclassical sculpture tended to suffer from an excess of them. Although examples of actual Greek sculpture of the "Classical Period" beginning in about 500 BC were then very few; the most highly regarded works were mostly Roman copies. The leading Neoclassical sculptors enjoyed huge reputations in their own day, but are now less regarded, with the exception of Jean-Antoine Houdon, whose work was mainly portraits, very often as busts, which do not sacrifice a strong impression of the sitter's personality to idealism. His style became more classical as his long career continued, and represents a rather smooth progression from Rococo charm to classical dignity. Unlike some Neoclassical sculptors he did not insist on his sitters wearing Roman dress, or being unclothed. He portrayed most of the notable figures of the Enlightenment, and travelled to America to produce a statue of George Washington, as well as busts of Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and other founders of the new republic.


title: Neoclassicism

text: Antonio Canova and the Dane Bertel Thorvaldsen were both based in Rome, and as well as portraits produced many ambitious life-size figures and groups; both represented the strongly idealizing tendency in Neoclassical sculpture. Canova has a lightness and grace, where Thorvaldsen is more severe; the difference is exemplified in their respective groups of the "Three Graces". All these, and Flaxman, were still active in the 1820s, and Romanticism was slow to impact sculpture, where versions of Neoclassicism remained the dominant style for most of the 19th century.


title: Neoclassicism

text: An early Neoclassicist in sculpture was the Swede Johan Tobias Sergel. John Flaxman was also, or mainly, a sculptor, mostly producing severely classical reliefs that are comparable in style to his prints; he also designed and modelled Neoclassical ceramics for Josiah Wedgwood for several years. Johann Gottfried Schadow and his son Rudolph, one of the few Neoclassical sculptors to die young, were the leading German artists, with Franz Anton von Zauner in Austria. The late Baroque Austrian sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt turned to Neoclassicism in mid-career, shortly before he appears to have suffered some kind of mental crisis, after which he retired to the country and devoted himself to the highly distinctive "character heads" of bald figures pulling extreme facial expressions. Like Piranesi's "Carceri", these enjoyed a great revival of interest during the age of psychoanalysis in the early 20th century. The Dutch Neoclassical sculptor Mathieu Kessels studied with Thorvaldsen and worked almost exclusively in Rome.


title: Neoclassicism

text: Since prior to the 1830s the United States did not have a sculpture tradition of its own, save in the areas of tombstones, weathervanes and ship figureheads, the European Neoclassical manner was adopted there, and it was to hold sway for decades and is exemplified in the sculptures of Horatio Greenough, Harriet Hosmer, Hiram Powers, Randolph Rogers and William Henry Rinehart.


title: Neoclassicism

text: Neoclassical art was traditional and new, historical and modern, conservative and progressive all at the same time.


title: Neoclassicism

text: Neoclassicism first gained influence in England and France, through a generation of French art students trained in Rome and influenced by the writings of Winckelmann, and it was quickly adopted by progressive circles in other countries such as Sweden, Poland and Russia. At first, classicizing decor was grafted onto familiar European forms, as in the interiors for Catherine II's lover, Count Orlov, designed by an Italian architect with a team of Italian "stuccadori": only the isolated oval medallions like cameos and the bas-relief overdoors hint of Neoclassicism; the furnishings are fully Italian Rococo.


title: Neoclassicism

text: A second Neoclassic wave, more severe, more studied (through the medium of engravings) and more consciously archaeological, is associated with the height of the Napoleonic Empire. In France, the first phase of Neoclassicism was expressed in the "Louis XVI style", and the second in the styles called "Directoire" or Empire. The Rococo style remained popular in Italy until the Napoleonic regimes brought the new archaeological classicism, which was embraced as a political statement by young, progressive, urban Italians with republican leanings.


title: Neoclassicism

text: In the decorative arts, Neoclassicism is exemplified in Empire furniture made in Paris, London, New York, Berlin; in Biedermeier furniture made in Austria; in Karl Friedrich Schinkel's museums in Berlin, Sir John Soane's Bank of England in London and the newly built "capitol" in Washington, D.C.; and in Wedgwood's bas reliefs and "black basaltes" vases. The style was international; Scots architect Charles Cameron created palatial Italianate interiors for the German-born Catherine II the Great, in Russian St. Petersburg.


title: Neoclassicism

text: Indoors, Neoclassicism made a discovery of the genuine classic interior, inspired by the rediscoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum. These had begun in the late 1740s, but only achieved a wide audience in the 1760s, with the first luxurious volumes of tightly controlled distribution of "Le Antichità di Ercolano" ("The Antiquities of Herculaneum"). The antiquities of Herculaneum showed that even the most classicizing interiors of the Baroque, or the most "Roman" rooms of William Kent were based on basilica and temple exterior architecture turned outside in, hence their often bombastic appearance to modern eyes: pedimented window frames turned into gilded mirrors, fireplaces topped with temple fronts. The new interiors sought to recreate an authentically Roman and genuinely interior vocabulary.


title: Neoclassicism

text: Techniques employed in the style included flatter, lighter motifs, sculpted in low frieze-like relief or painted in monotones "en camaïeu" ("like cameos"), isolated medallions or vases or busts or "bucrania" or other motifs, suspended on swags of laurel or ribbon, with slender arabesques against backgrounds, perhaps, of "Pompeiian red" or pale tints, or stone colors. The style in France was initially a Parisian style, the "Goût grec" ("Greek style"), not a court style; when Louis XVI acceded to the throne in 1774, Marie Antoinette, his fashion-loving Queen, brought the "Louis XVI" style to court. However, there was no real attempt to employ the basic forms of Roman furniture until around the turn of the century, and furniture-makers were more likely to borrow from ancient architecture, just as silversmiths were more likely to take from ancient pottery and stone-carving than metalwork: "Designers and craftsmen ... seem to have taken an almost perverse pleasure in transferring motifs from one medium to another".


title: Neoclassicism

text: From about 1800 a fresh influx of Greek architectural examples, seen through the medium of etchings and engravings, gave a new impetus to Neoclassicism, the Greek Revival. At the same time the Empire style was a more grandiose wave of Neoclassicism in architecture and the decorative arts. Mainly based on Imperial Roman styles, it originated in, and took its name from, the rule of Napoleon in the First French Empire, where it was intended to idealize Napoleon's leadership and the French state. The style corresponds to the more bourgeois Biedermeier style in the German-speaking lands, Federal style in the United States, the Regency style in Britain, and the "Napoleon style" in Sweden. According to the art historian Hugh Honour "so far from being, as is sometimes supposed, the culmination of the Neoclassical movement, the Empire marks its rapid decline and transformation back once more into a mere antique revival, drained of all the high-minded ideas and force of conviction that had inspired its masterpieces". An earlier phase of the style was called the Adam style in Great Britain and "Louis Seize", or Louis XVI, in France.


title: Neoclassicism

text: Neoclassicism continued to be a major force in academic art through the 19th century and beyond—a constant antithesis to Romanticism or Gothic revivals —, although from the late 19th century on it had often been considered anti-modern, or even reactionary, in influential critical circles. The centres of several European cities, notably St. Petersburg and Munich, came to look much like museums of Neoclassical architecture.


title: Neoclassicism

text: Gothic revival architecture (often linked with the Romantic cultural movement), a style originating in the 18th century which grew in popularity throughout the 19th century, contrasted Neoclassicism. Whilst Neoclassicism was characterized by Greek and Roman-influenced styles, geometric lines and order, Gothic revival architecture placed an emphasis on medieval-looking buildings, often made to have a rustic, "romantic" appearance.


title: Neoclassicism

text: It marks the transition from Rococo to Classicism. Unlike the Classicism of Louis XIV, which transformed ornaments into symbols, Louis XVI style represents them as realistic and natural as possible, ie laurel branches really are laurel branches, roses the same, and so on. One of the main decorative principles is symmetry. In interiors, the colours used are very bright, including white, light grey, bright blue, pink, yellow, very light lilac, and gold. Excesses of ornamentation are avoided. The return to antiquity is synonymous with above all with a return to the straight lines: strict verticals and horizontals were the order of the day. Serpentine ones were no longer tolerated, save for the occasional half circle or oval. Interior decor also honored this taste for rigor, with the result that flat surfaces and right angles returned to fashion. Ornament was used to mediate this severity, but it never interfered with basic lines and always was disposed symmetrically around a central axis. Even so, "ébénistes" often canted fore-angles to avoid excessive rigidity.


title: Neoclassicism

text: The decorative motifs of Louis XVI style were inspired by antiquity, the Louis XIV style, and nature. Characteristic elements of the style: a torch crossed with a sheath with arrows, imbricated disks, guilloché, double bow-knots, smoking braziers, linear repetitions of small motifs (rosettes, beads, oves), trophy or floral medallions hanging from a knotted ribbon, acanthus leaves, gadrooning, interlace, meanders, cornucopias, mascarons, Ancient urns, tripods, perfume burners, dolphins, ram and lion heads, chimeras, and gryphons. Greco-Roman architectural motifs are also very used: flutings, pilasters (fluted and unfluted), fluted balusters (twisted and straight), columns (engaged and unengaged, sometimes replaced by caryathids), volute corbels, triglyphs with guttae (in relief and trompe-l'œil).


title: Neoclassicism

text: It representative for the new French society that has exited from the revolution which set the tone in all life fields, including art. The Jacquard machine is invented during this period (which revolutionises the entire sewing system, manual until then). One of the dominant colours is red, decorated with gilt bronze. Bright colours are also used, including white, cream, violet, brown, bleu, dark red, with little ornaments of gilt bronze. Interior architecture includes wood panels decorated with gilt reliefs (on a white background or a coloured one). Motifs are placed geometrically. The walls are covered in stuccos, wallpaper pr fabrics. Fireplace mantels are made of white marble, having caryatids at their corners, or other elements: obelisks, sphinxes, winged lions, and so on. Bronze objects were placed on their tops, including mantel clocks. The doors consist of simple rectangular panels, decorated with a Pompeian-inspired central figure. Empire fabrics are damasks with a bleu or brown background, satins with a green, pink or purple background, velvets of the same colors, brooches broached with gold or silver, and cotton fabrics. All of these were used in interiors for curtains, for covering certain furniture, for cushions or upholstery (leather is also used for upholstery).


title: Neoclassicism

text: All Empire ornament is governed by a rigorous spirit of symmetry reminiscent of the Louis XIV style. Generally, the motifs on a piece's right and left sides correspond to one another in every detail; when they don't, the individual motifs themselves are entirely symmetrical in composition: antique heads with identical tresses falling onto each shoulder, frontal figures of Victory with symmetrically arrayed tunics, identical rosettes or swans flanking a lock plate, etc. Like Louis XIV, Napoleon had a set of emblems unmistakably associated with his rule, most notably the eagle, the bee, stars, and the initials I (for "Imperator") and N (for "Napoleon"), which were usually inscribed within an imperial laurel crown. Motifs used include: figures of Victory bearing palm branches, Greek dancers, nude and draped women, figures of antique chariots, winged putti, mascarons of Apollo, Hermes and the Gorgon, swans, lions, the heads of oxen, horses and wild beasts, butterflies, claws, winged chimeras, sphinxes, bucrania, sea horses, oak wreaths knotted by thin trailing ribbons, climbing grape vines, poppy rinceaux, rosettes, palm branches, and laurel. There's a lot of Greco-Roman ones: stiff and flat acanthus leaves, palmettes, cornucopias, beads, amphoras, tripods, imbricated disks, caduceuses of Mercury, vases, helmets, burning torches, winged trumpet players, and ancient musical instruments (tubas, rattles and especially lyres). Despite their antique derivation, the fluting and triglyphs so prevalent under Louis XVI are abandoned. Egyptian Revival motifs are especially common at the beginning of the period: scarabs, lotus capitals, winged disks, obelisks, pyramids, figures wearing nemeses, caryatids "en gaine" supported by bare feet and with women Egyptian headdresses.


title: Neoclassicism

text: From the second half of the 18th century through the 19th century, Italy went through a great deal of socio-economic changes, several foreign invasions and the turbulent Risorgimento, which resulted in the Italian unification in 1861. Thus, Italian art went through a series of minor and major changes in style.


title: Neoclassicism

text: The Italian Neoclassicism was the earliest manifestation of the general period known as Neoclassicism and lasted more than the other national variants of neoclassicism. It developed in opposition to the Baroque style around c.1750 and lasted until c.1850. Neoclassicism began around the period of the rediscovery of Pompeii and spread all over Europe as a generation of art students returned to their countries from the Grand Tour in Italy with rediscovered Greco-Roman ideals. It first centred in Rome where artists such as Antonio Canova and Jacques-Louis David were active in the second half of the 18th century, before moving to Paris. Painters of Vedute, like Canaletto and Giovanni Paolo Panini, also enjoyed a huge success during the Grand Tour. Neoclassical architecture was inspired by the Renaissance works of Palladio and saw in Luigi Vanvitelli and Filippo Juvarra the main interpreters of the style.


title: Neoclassicism

text: Classicist literature had a great impact on the Risorgimento movement: the main figures of the period include Vittorio Alfieri, Giuseppe Parini, Vincenzo Monti and Ugo Foscolo, Giacomo Leopardi and Alessandro Manzoni (nephew of Cesare Beccaria), who were also influenced by the French Enlightenment and German Romanticism. The virtuoso violinist Paganini and the operas of Rossini, Donnizetti, Bellini and, later, Verdi dominated the scene in Italian classical and romantic music.


title: Neoclassicism

text: The art of Francesco Hayez and especially that of the Macchiaioli represented a break with the classical school, which came to an end as Italy unified (see Italian modern and contemporary art). Neoclassicism was the last Italian-born style, after the Renaissance and Baroque, to spread to all Western Art.


title: Neoclassicism

text: The Adam style was created by two brothers, Adam and James, who published in 1777 a volume of etchings with interior ornamentation. In the interior decoration made after Robert Adam's drawings, the walls, ceilings, doors, and any other surface, are divided into big panels: rectangular, round, square, with stuccos and Greco-Roman motifs at the edges. Ornaments used include festoons, pearls, egg-and-dart bands, medallions, and any other motifs used during the Classical antiquity (especially the Etruscan ones). Decorative fittings such as urn-shaped stone vases, gilded silverware, lamps, and stauettes all have the same source of inspiration, classical antiquity. The Adam style emphasizes refined rectangular mirrors, framed like paintings (in frames with stylised leafs), or with a pediment above them, supporting an urn or a medallion. Another design of Adam mirrors is shaped like a Venetian window, with a big central mirror between two other thinner and longer ones. Another type of mirrors are the oval ones, usually decorated with festoons. The furniture in this style has a similar structure to Louis XVI furniture.


title: Neoclassicism

text: Besides the Adam style, when it comes to decorative arts, England is also known for the ceramic manufacturer Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795), who established a pottery called Etruria. Wedgwood ware is made of a material called jasperware, a hard and fine-grained type of stoneware. Wedgwood vases are usually decorated with reliefs in two colours, in most cases the figures being white and the background blue.