Title:	EarthBound Anthology (US) アースバウンド大全集 (JP)
Binding:	Full color paperback Perfect Bound
Pages:	268 pages total 161 pages of EB art 49 pages of M3 art
Pack-ins:	Anthology Data Disc /EarthBound DVD Fan Videos DVD RC 1-5 + Bound Together
First Print:	July 3, 2007 (US) August 2007 (JP)
Designed by:	Jon Kay
Illustrated by:	Shawn Witt
Written by:	Starmen.Net Staff
Price:	Not for sale or resale.
Publisher:	Lulu.com

Although we haven't been dropping very many hints in public, the donors know that the staff (mostly Jonk) have been slaving away at a secret project for a while now. As a matter of fact, a month ago, the project was still just a collection of fanart on Jonk's hard drive. But over the course of the past three weeks, all of that changed dramatically. After sleepless nights -- more than we can count -- we hit the giant red 'LAUNCH' button for the uberSiege Project. That was about 24 hours ago. Now that the first splashdown has been recorded by Mr. Linde of Destructoid, its time to fill you guys in on what we've been up to.

Scattered throughout this post are pictures of the project: The EarthBound Anthology, a 250+ page tribute to EarthBound and its potential future in America. There are 160+ pages of EarthBound art and 50 pages of MOTHER 3 art (which is sequestered to the back of the book for minimal spoilerage). In the front of the book are about 30 pages of discussion about the MOTHER series and its unfortunate relationship with America. In the back of the book are several CDs and DVDs, including the Rock Candy series, xfisjmg1's /EarthBound DVD, and a special DVD made by Plo filled with cool fan videos.

Ultra designmaster Jonk has been carefully crafting every page of the Anthology for the past month, choosing/arranging every piece of art (around 750 of them!) by hand. The staff and I wrote up the content and captions over the past two weeks. We finished everything up and sent it to the publisher (yay lulu.com!) late on Monday night.

Yesterday, Jon received the overnight delivery of the very first run of the book -- 16 copies -- and immediately zoomed over to FedEx to overnight them to our friends and contacts at places like EGM, IGN, Gamespot, Nintendo, Destructoid and more.

So why the rushing and the overnight mailing? Because E3 starts in just a few days. Most gaming media companies will be sending representatives to E3 early next week, and we wanted to get these books in their h ands before they left. Why is E3 important, if there's not going to be any MOTHER news there? Because our goal is to get the press interested in the fate of the series so that they will ask Nintendo about their plans for the MOTHER series.

So we've been doing the Mail'N and the Call'N, and now we've got... the Press'N. If we can get the media to prod Nintendo's reps with questions about MOTHER (and hopefully write up a story about EarthBound and/or the books once they get back from E3), then we have placed the last puzzle piece of the Siege.

But what's the point of all this hard work, you might be wondering -- sure, the fans are dedicated, artistic megalomaniacs. But why does Nintendo care about how artistic/productive we are? Because EarthBound is coming out on the Virtual Console soon, and its sales will be THE determining factor in whether MOTHER 3 is brought to America or not.

So, basically, we fans have become EarthBound's last-chance marketing team. The EB Siege has been focused (and timed) precisely for two goals -- to let Nintendo know that we're still alive and kicking, and to get the word out about EarthBound so that the VC downloads will be off the charts. We are already making headway on the first goal, and I think we can make the second goal happen, but only if you guys continue to support us.

When EarthBound is released on the VC, download it -- even if you've got a dozen copies already -- and get every one of your friends to download it! It's only going to be $8, and each download will be like a vote for MOTHER 3. Start Facebook groups, send messages to people on MySpace, talk about it on your favorite gaming forum -- the goal is to pique people's interest in EarthBound.

Of course, the importance of the Call'N and the Mail'N can't be diminished -- Nintendo must understand that there is a real fan base for this game, and it is 100% up to you guys, the fans, to make sure that happens. Neither the staff nor our media contacts have any control over that, so we're all counting on you!