EarthBound
In the United States, Lindblom returned to college and,[1] in 1990,[3] began to work at Nintendo of America's customer service and game assistance call center in Redmond, Washington. He would wake up at four a.m. to work before class, a schedule he considered "energizing". Upon his graduation, Lindblom became a Software Analyst at Nintendo, where he worked on their games.[1]
Lindblom later transitioned to work as a localizer, where he translated Nintendo's Japanese games into English for Western audiences.[1] As standard for the time, he worked without a department and in direct contact with the headquarters,[a] which gave him wide decision-making latitude.[3] Lindblom worked on Wario's Woods before coming to the EarthBound project[1] around January 1995.[2] He took over for Nintendo of America’s Dan Owsen, who had localized a tenth of the game's script before moving to another project.[1] The game was roughly translated from Japanese by a translator, and Lindblom received a paper script with the translation. Masayuki Miura, a Japanese writer, worked with Lindblom to contextualize the English script for the mood and message intended by the game's original development team.[1]
Lindblom found his task of translating an "outsider's view of the U.S." for an American audience the hardest part of the localization.[2] Nintendo did not want a direct translation, but a more American version of the script.[3] He recalled that he was given latitude to make the script "as weird as [he] wanted" but also sought to stay true to the original text's translation, though he never communicated with Shigesato Itoi (the game's creator) directly.[2] Lindblom's own humor and office in-jokes worked their way into the script alongside cultural allusions to pieces of American pop culture, including cartoon character Bugs Bunny, comedian Benny Hill, and musical mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap.[2] Outside ofnthe game's script, Lindblom's in-game text includes the item and weapon names as well as the combat prompts. His writing contains multiple Easter eggs, such as in some of the character's names.[1] One character is named after his daughter, Nico, who was born during the localization process. After taking the day off for her birthday, Lindblom recalled working for the next 30 days straight, without weekends off.[2] He remembered the workload as large, and recalled "grinding-out" for about 14 hours a day.[1] The localization process took four months.[1]
Lindblom credited Miura and the game's affirming "tone" as what helped him manage the magnitude of the project. He remembers the game as "very [positive at its heart]"[1] and wrote it to be "a glass half full kind of game".[2] When asked of his favorite contribution to the final work, Lindblom remembered the character Pokey's mother, Lardna. He described the name choice as "just the most ridiculous thing to have picked".[1] Nicholas Dean Des Barres of DieHard GameFan, an original reviewer, wrote that EarthBound was translated "impeccably"[4] and praised the game's humor.[5] In the period following its release, the game's English localization has found praise. Localization reviewer Clyde Mandelin described the Japanese-to-English conversion as "top-notch for its time".[1] Kotaku found the localization "funny, clever, and evocative".[1]
The American localization team was devastated by the release's poor critical response and sales. Lindblom recalled that the game's reception was hurt by appearing "simplistic" in an age that revered graphics quality. He felt that the game's changes to the RPG formula—e.g., the rolling HP meter and fleeing enemies—were ignored in the following years.[1] At the time of the game's Virtual Console rerelease, he felt the game had aged well.[2]
