Earthbound
Platform: NES
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo

The Basics
The Video Game Graveyard is not the place to find import games that never made it to the US. Those are mostly found in the Games You'll Never Play feature. However, the Earthbound game is an exception, as it was 100 percent finished, according to most accounts, but never released. Earthbound, or Mother, was released in Japan as an 8-bit RPG in which you played the role of a young kid whose dad called on the phone a lot, whose mother cooked food to keep you healthy throughout your battles (you'd enter in the name of your favorite food, such as asparagus, and mom would have it ready for you), and whose pals tried to help you figure out why lamps and other inanimate objects, as well as live creatures, were threatening you and your fellow humans. In spite of a failed US release, the game has quite a following in the US and Japanese game communities.

WHAT HAPPENED?
Yep. A huge upset. The Earthbound you know about is actually the SNES sequel to the Super Famicom game Mother 2, the sequel to the original Mother game that would have been called Earthbound, had that game (the one mentioned above) actually been released here in the States. Mother was translated and on its way to the US under the name Earthbound, when the game was, for reasons unknown to seemingly everyone, canceled by Nintendo. But all hope is not lost, as ROM of the game exists and is available to those willing to seek it out. The ROM of the finished translated version of Earthbound was auctioned off by the unknown owner and fell into the hands of an independent buyer. This person then shared the ROM with a certain group of Web guys, who gave gamers everywhere the chance to check it out. And by the way, the lost game's ROM version is now known in most circles as Earthbound Zero.