Starting in 1999, Ness became a character in each of the Super Smash Bros. series of video games which helped popularize EarthBound. By the 2000s, the game had become regarded as a "sacred cow amongst gaming's cognoscenti",[3] with multiple reader polls and critics ranking it as one of the greatest video games of all time. A Japan-only sequel, Mother 3, was released for the Game Boy Advance in 2006.