Mother (Japanese: マザー, MOTHER), later released outside Japan as EarthBound Beginnings, is a role-playing video game developed by Ape and published by Nintendo for the Famicom. The game is modeled on the gameplay of the Dragon Quest series, but is set in the late 20th century United States, unlike its fantasy genre contemporaries. Mother follows the young Ninten as he uses his great-grandfather's studies on psychic powers to fight hostile, formerly inanimate objects and other enemies. The game uses random encounters to enter a menu-based, first-person perspective battle system. It is the first game in the Mother series and was followed by two sequels, EarthBound in 1994 and Mother 3 in 2006.