A history of zealous Earthbound fandom
Members of the Mother series fan site Starmen.net may be celebrating now, with Earthbound recently rated on the ESRB's web site, but just getting to that tenuous victory (as Ys I & II can affirm, ESRB rating is not the same as a Virtual Console release) has been the culmination of years of agonizing effort and constant campaigning that may not have actually had anything to do with the news.
Shacknews has posted a great retrospective of Starmen's 11-year campaign to get something related to Earthbound to happen outside of Japan, from a Game Boy Color release of Mother to localized versions of Mother I & II on the DS to (of course) a U.S. version of Mother 3. They've carried out insane plots like creating a beautiful book of fan works to show Nintendo how much they care about the series. Nintendo's response has ranged from politely dismissive to nonexistent, though the feature reveals that somewhere within Nintendo, Starmen's efforts were at least attracting attention.
