Oh, hard, admittedly. EarthBound and Mother both had several loveable features. I really liked the graphics used in the first game; even though it only was 8-bit, it really was visual eye-candy in my opinion. Though I always had a thing for Ninten looking like Charlie Brown from his profile, now that was just highly unfitting. รด_o
EarthBound does gain a lot in time spent on making it, as it is much longer and is overall more multifaceted. And even though I'm infatuated with the graphics in that game, I'm in love with the style used in M1 (squares of plain awesomeness, I tell ya). I do however like the fact that so much is unexplained in M1 (which in turn makes me want to buy tons of guides and that sorta stuff).
I'm going to go ahead and say that it's a tie, because EB did actually have quite many terrific surprises and qualities (dakota, blue and whatnot

). As you probably can see, Mother 3 has yet to appear on my list of games which I've experienced (planning on grabbing hold of the ROM in due time though).