Mother 1/EarthBound Zero

Mother, (Earthbound Zero in the English translation) was a game released only in Japan for the Nintendo Entertainment System (FC). The original plan was to release the game in the USA, but Nintendo of America decided to put the game on hold, and it has never been released since. A fan got a hold of the English language prototype, and dumped the game into a ROM, which has since been circulated on the internet.

Opening Text
In the early 1900s, a dark shadow covered a small county town in rural America. At that time, a young married couple vanished. The husband's name was George. The wife's name was Maria. About 2 years later, George returned home, but he never told anyone where he had been or what he had done. He began an odd study all by himself. As for Maria, his wife... she never returned. ..

The year is 1988, on the outskirts of Mother's Day Town.

Mother told the story of a 12-year-old boy who had to journey around the world to save the planet from an evil race of mind-controlling aliens. Along the way he was joined by several friends, and met many unusual characters and visited strange settings before ultimately confronting the leader of the aliens. The game was a smash hit in Japan, and gamers appreciated its unorthodox and refreshing take on the often formulaic role-playing game genre.

United States non-release
Nintendo of America planned to translate and release the first Mother game in the United States under the title Earth Bound(Space intended). The game was ultimately deemed unprofitable for a US release, however, and the project was cancelled after the game had already been translated and all packaging and advertising was ready. The game was actually completed in 1990, however, marketing pushed it far into fall of 1991 - - the time period in which the SNES had been released. 

It was confirmed by former Nintendo employee Phil Sandhop, that Nintendo refused to release Earth Bound in the United States because the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) had already been released in the United States. Therefore, they thought that no one would notice a new Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) game because a large number of gamers had already shelved their NES consoles for their new SNES consoles. Simply put, it was all due to marketing. In recent years, one of the auctioned beta cartridges of the game was made into a ROM and circulated for download on the Internet. To avoid confusion, the game was dubbed Earth Bound Zero by fan translation group Neo Demiforce, as Nintendo had since released the SNES sequel to Mother (Mother 2: Gyiyg Strikes Back!) in the United States under the title EarthBound. Fans of the series and other video game enthusiasts still debate today as to the origin of the original development cartridge. Some people claim that the original beta cartridge is just an elaborate hoax in which a translated rom of the original Mother was burned to a blank EPROM chip and passed off as a prototype. Other less skeptical fans contest that the original prototype is a legitimate relic that managed to be saved from destruction. Today, it is generally agreed that the prototype is legitimate, as Mother 1 + 2 contains most of the changes found in the prototype.

Trivia

 * In the unreleased English prototype, a child in the TWINKLE Elementary School says: "Have you played Super Mario Bros. 7? I'm still playing Super Mario Bros. 3. It's been quite a challenge for me." In the Japanese game, the same child originally said: "Have you played Dragon Quest 4? I'm still having a hard time with 3." (Dragon Quest is the Japanese name for what was then known as Dragon Warrior in the US.) However, in Mother 1+2, it is changed to "I'm still having a hard time with 'that' game".
 * The game even had an increase in ROM memory size from 194.33 KB to 218.62 KB.