Oh my GOD, YOU GUYS: Check out this front-page news item and tell me your pants are still on. They are? Well, way to not read Japanese, guys. Come on, are me and Tim Rogers gonna have to fansub this piece all by ourselves? Wait, no, I can’t read that shit either. Guess it’s just Tim by himself, then, on the Yamanote line, circumscribing Tokyo unto infinity. Good luck ROM-hacking some epic-length screeds in there dude.

Oh, you want proof you can parse? [heavy sigh] Alright, you can thank the unreasonably-diligent fan community at starmen.net for this news break. Let me just point out how much I love this website, while I’m at it: I went to their forums a few months ago through some link and read a ninety-page thread which was seriously trying to deconstruct a Flash animation for signs of Earthbound 3 in the way that people advance The Wizard of Oz frame-by-frame looking for the dead Munchkin. Then it turned out it was for a different game altogether and they all got simul-mega-bummed, all scuffing little clouds of e-dust into the air. I mean, Matt pointed this out: The US only saw one Earthbound game, and that was like ten years ago. I distinctly remember drawing a picture of Ness with colored pencils as a tinier dude, young enough that I was excited about Nintendo Power and carried a box of colored pencils around. Shit, I was young enough that I added a cat who was also a ninja to that picture and labeled it “Earthbound 2.” And you guys have been making fan art all this time? I don’t think there’s been a marriage that devoted since back when you could legally garrote someone for cuckoldry. Good show, people.

Either way, that release date doesn’t refer to the North American version, so we can all just bang our heads against some pine trees until it finally gets here. At least this way you don’t have any major distractions on 4/20, AM I RIGHT PEOPLE?