Just in case you’ve been waiting to see Earthbound on Nintendo’s Wii Virtual Console, you might want to stop holding your breath. According to hardcore series fan site Starmen.net, it probably just ain’t gonna happen. Why precisely is that? Well, you can blame the same thing you might be able to blame for a lot of America’s problems these days: lawyers.
Okay, yes, yes; I realize that such an assessment is fairly short-sighted and completely ignores the fact that lawyers are but mere tools of their clients, who are the real evil ones, always looking to find something to bring suit over and make some cash (or, in the case of large, lumbering corporations, frantically seek to protect their IP in a fashion often bordering on pure obsession). But the truth of the matter seems to be that NOA’s lawyers are concerned that a stateside release of Earthbound would result in some sort of possible litigative flare-up from deep within the legal departments of various entities within the music, movie, and other pop-cult industries… as that’s exactly what Earthbound takes shot after shot at imitating and mocking, however subtle the approach may be.
Starmen.net has to say:
…we found out that NoA’s lawyers were refusing to release the game without changes, and NCL was refusing to authorize those changes. The stalemate, if it continued, guaranteed that the game would go unreleased.
So, there you have it. Just in case you really dig situational depression, you can always click over to their full article and read all the fun and exciting details of this massive letdown. Yippee!
Hopefully we’ll be retracting this story ourselves in a matter of months, but we sincerely doubt it. Well, you win some, you lose some… right?