Writer and director Shigesato Itoi pitched "Mother"s concept to Shigeru Miyamoto while visiting Nintendo's headquarters for other business. Though Miyamoto rejected the proposal at first, he eventually gave Itoi a development team. A North American version of the game was localized into English, but was abandoned as commercially nonviable. A copy of this prototype was later found and circulated on the Internet under the informal title "EarthBound Zero". The game was eventually released worldwide under the name "EarthBound Beginnings" for the Wii U Virtual Console in June 2015.