The EarthBound series, known in Japan as the Mother series, is a role-playing game series created by Shigesato Itoi for Nintendo. The series started in 1989 with the Japan-only release of Mother, which was followed up by Mother 2 for the Super NES in 1995. It was released outside of Japan under the name of EarthBound, giving the series it's non-Japanese name. A second sequel was released in Japan only, Mother 3, for the Game Boy Advance in 2006. The music of the EarthBound series includes the soundtracks to all three games; the first game was composed for by Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka, who were joined by Hiroshi Kanazu for the second game, while Mother 3's score was written by Sh go Sakai. This music has inspired several album releases. Mother saw the release in 1989 of an album primarily composed of vocal arrangements of pieces from its soundtrack; this album was re-released in 2004 in an expanded form. Earthbound had a soundtrack album associated with the game released in 1994 and again in 2004 that contained both original tracks from the game and medleys of multiple tracks.