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What's In My MP3 Player: Mother 3+'s "Pollyanna"

There exists a song that's a perfect accompaniment to the sunrise on the first warm day of the year. That song, as I discovered though an example of ideal iPod shuffling, is “Pollyanna” from the Mother 3+ soundtrack.

Pollyanna is one of a few pieces of music that recur through all three games in the Mother/Earthbound series. The revision done for the Mother 3+ soundtrack—which you can buy on iTunes (do it)—is very pretty and, as I already stated, God's own theme song for springtime.

However, I dare say that the first occurrence of the song (Mother for the Famicom) is the most impressive. The 8-bit era wasn't lacking for ambitious and memorable game music, but retro-Pollyanna is especially heartfelt and spunky. The story for Mother was a bit less structured than most Famicom RPG offerings: not aimless, but not as urgent as “Holy crap, a Dragon Lord draws near.” Pollyanna, which serves as the basic world map theme for Mother, reflects the laid-back start to Ninten's adventure.

The name of the song is telling in itself: “Pollyanna” is a reference to the hyper-positive lead girl of a popular children's book initially published in 1913 (it's still being printed and adapted today). When things were looking down, Pollyanna played the “Glad Game,” which allowed her to see the good bad situations. “Pollyanna” is even a term in the English language that refers to cheerful optimism.

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.