[boomboomsubban]

So their reason seems to involve some usage of the NES Ness pun, but does that pun work in Japanese? Is there an equivalent shortening of Famicom, and does Ness's Japanese name bare any relation?

Pure curiosity, the author can do what they want.

[thristian]

According to the Earthbound wiki, the default name of the protagonist in Mother 2 (the Japanese version of Earthbound) is ネス (Ness), which doesn't really resemble the name of the Japanese name of the console (Super Famicom).

The default name of the protagonist of Mother 1 (released on the original Nintendo Famicom) was... ニンテン (Ninten).

[boomboomsubban]

Thanks, all that's left is whether the term NES is common in Japan as one of the bizarre American loan words for Japanese things.

Though, I suppose the author seems to somewhat regularly use the English parts of the internet. They'd pick up the term even if it wasn't common.

[jbermudes]

The Japanese slang terms for the NES/SNES are "Famicom" and "Sufami" respectively. HAL Laboratories may not have felt that those terms would make for a good protagonist name, especially since the characters are supposed to be American with American sounding names (like Jeff and Paula). But "Ness" is an anagram of SNES and is similar enough to other English names like Jess, Jeff, etc. But it's important to note that in Earthbound, the name Ness is not so much the default name as it is the first of the suggested names if you "Don't Care" what the protagonist's name is. In the Japanese manual in fact, the Ness character's title is "Me" and in parenthesis it says "Nesu" and Jeff, Paula, and Poo are named Friends 1, 2, and 3. [1]

So even though NES might not have been a term known to the general Japanes public, it didn't need to be. Ness is not the intended name of the character, it is only the most common suggested name and hence more like an easter egg.

[1] https://motherforever.net/official-artwork-of-mother-2/

[boomboomsubban]

Thank you. When I asked I was sure there'd be bigger Mother 2 fans than me that could answer. Rockin!

[aasasd]

Considering that Earthbound parodied Western cultural stuff, the names probably wouldn't need to be Japan-specific.