What is the Mother 2 official guidebook?

Japan's Mother 2 received a Nintendo Official Guide Book from Shogakukan, Ape and Nintendo's guidebook line, released around November 1994, a few months after the game's August 27 launch. It is the full official companion: maps, data, and the game's world presented in Itoi's original Japanese.

The book's defining feature is its art. Hobonichi's own product history records that the clay figurines now famous worldwide were made specifically for the official Mother 2 guidebook in 1994, photographed to illustrate its pages. The guidebook is therefore not merely illustrated with the clay models; it is the reason they exist.

That makes it a different object from its American counterpart. The EarthBound Player's Guide was built as a travel guide to a fictional America and shipped inside the game's box; the Shogakukan book is a conventional, complete official guide sold separately in Japan, and between them they split the game's documentation into two national styles.

For a collector, the Shogakukan guide is the Mother 2 print anchor: period, official, and the primary source for the clay imagery the whole series is now identified by.