Game:

Earthbound (1994)

Duration: 5:21

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26

INCLUDES A BRIEF BLURB BY THE UPLOADER

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Track: Pollyanna (I Believe In You) by Keiichi Suzuki & Hirokasu Tanaka

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BLURB FROM THE UPLOADER: 13/July/2015

I'd been out for a good chunk of yesterday, so I wasn't aware that Nintendo President, Satoru Iwata, had died until just this morning. Hell, I didn't even know there was something wrong with the man in the first place, so don't blame me for thinking that this might have been a really odd joke some part of the internet was pulling. But nope; as I logged onto Twitter and saw all the fantastic tributes and fanart, reality sunk in: Iwata's gone for good.

It's an odd thing for me to get choked up about, especially since I don't care all that much about Nintendo (they make good games, but I have no emotional attachment to them, in other words). So why is that the death of this man gets me rather depressed, but the passing of Christopher Lee or Leonard Nimoy don't? I suppose it's just because I'm more attached to video games and the people who work on them than most other media, even if Nintendo doesn't inspire much more than a shrug from me most days, and Iwata really was a remarkable man. (I'm not trying to excuse my lack of total grief for when certain people die, mind you. That's just how I am, for better or worse)

He always had this sense of fun about him that most people would be ashamed to show off these days, be it commissioning the use of Muppets for their E3 conference, or approaching pretty much everything he worked on with a great deal of enthusiasm. And if you didn't watch his public appearances, there was also his achievements as a programmer. Compressing Pokémon: Gold & Silver so well that the entire game managed to fit into half a GB cartridge (and leaving enough room to insert the Red & Blue region as post-game content), debugging Smash Bros Melee by himself in just two weeks, and even managing to fix the otherwise unworkable code that EarthBound/Mother 2 within six months and saving the entire project.

That last mention is why I decided to do a piano version of the quintessential Mother theme, Pollyanna (I Believe In You). It's nothing more than the MIDI file found on VGMusic.com with the instruments replaced by a piano soundfont and the notes changed to a slower, happier pitch than what they really are, but I wanted to do something to cheer the rest of the grieving world up. Maybe I'll do a proper version at a later date, when I'm better at playing music. I might even combine it with It Is Finished from Mother 3 (another song I considered doing, but it seems a bit too bittersweet and sad at the moment).

In any case, thank you, Mr Iwata. Thank you for facing the world with a smile and a laugh, even if the world didn't always smile back. R.I.P. Satoru Iwata (1959-2015)

And no crying until the end, remember?

-Jim McGrath

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