I am pleased to announce the public release of The Rat Race, a subtle hack of EarthBound which restores a great many censored elements from the original Mother 2 while altering and switching some of the major characters to make it a different story from the original.
The best way to describe this game, in my opinion, is as a kind of applied fan fiction; while literary EarthBound fan fiction abounds and several game hacks as well, I’ve not seen these concepts combined until now. Where EarthBound is a rather satirical look at modern life in the West (especially in the USA), The Rat Race is a similar story told from the point of view of those being satirized.
In any event, anyone who’s played EarthBound should find the settings and story of The Rat Race both familiar and strange much as the characters in the original Star Trek found their mirror universe to be in the “Mirror, Mirror” episode, albeit (I hope) not so much more evil. Enjoy!
(Now that I think of it, however, exploring an evil mirror universe of EarthBound might be a story worth pursuing. If anyone here has the interest and know-how to make that game, feel free.) RHDN Project Page
Relevant Link: (http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/807/)