Mother (マザー, Mazā) is a console role-playing game developed by Ape, Inc. and Nintendo Tokyo R&D Products and published by Nintendo for the Famicom video game console. It was designed and directed by Shigesato Itoi and produced by Shigeru Miyamoto, with music by Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka. It is the first game in the EarthBound video game series, and was never released outside of Japan. Mother tells the story of Ninten, a 12-year-old boy with psionic powers who journeys around the world to collect eight melodies in order to save the planet from an evil race of mind-controlling aliens.