You Can Now Play Earthbound's Ridiculously Rare Tabletop Spin-Off

A small group of fans has recently gone to the incredible effort of recreating a ridiculously rare tabletop spin-off to Mother 2 / EarthBound to prevent it from becoming lost forever.

Slot Brothers is a card and dice game that stars the Sanchez Brothers, a bunch of characters that appeared in Earthbound's Dusty Dune Deserts area and Mother 3's New Pork City, who in those games offered players the chance to compete in minigames to win a series of prizes. It was produced by Shigesato Itoi, along with Ape Inc. and Nintendo, and was released in 1994 — the same year that Mother 2 was launched in Japan.

Since its original release, it has become increasingly sought after by members of the Mother fan community. However, photos of the game have been particularly hard to come by due to its remarkable rarity and price, with a 2020 video from the YouTuber EveryGameEver having previously represented the most comprehensive coverage of the game in English. The Mother / Earthbound YouTuber MonkeyNess is the person who spearheaded this recreation effort, having recently documented the project in a recent video on their channel called "I Found the Lost Earthbound Game".

In this video, they go over their efforts to find out more about the game, which eventually led them to source reference photos of the rare Mother entry from the YouTuber/collector Chuggaconroy. They then go over making the recreation itself, which was the result of a collaboration with their friend Malphasura, as well as the artists RK-d and MonkeyPaula.

Notably, they've not only recreated all of the cards and dice for players to download and print, but they have also translated the instructions and developed a digital add-on for the Steam game Tabletop Simulator, which can even be played online with friends.

If you're interested in checking the game out, you can download the assets and instructions now from the fansite Mother Forever. The Tabletop simulator add-on, meanwhile, is available from Steam Workshop.