Mother 3, The Race For The Prize

As I reported earlier, Mother 3 is undergoing a fan based translation of the Japanese title. Now I see that two separate efforts are underway to translate the title. Starman.net and Mother3.org are both racing to create a patch that allows users to play the game in English. Mind you, the patch is being developed under the assumption that you’ve actually purchased the game. Regardless, I commend both sites for going through with this grueling task. The game is extremely text heavy and to undergo such an effort without monetary compensation just shows the determination of the fans to bring Mother 3 to American audiences.

Mother 3 has had a long and sordid past. The game was prominently displayed on the back of the N64 box, declaring that it was coming soon. It was in development for 5 years or so, and had a playable demo at Spaceworld 1999, but on August 21, 2000 the game’s creator Shigesato Itoi cancelled the project. He picked the project back up in 2002, and reworked the game for the GBA. Mother 3 was released in Japan on the GBA in 2006, 11 years in the making.

Starmen.net has tried numerous attempts to contact Nintendo with pleas from their fans, from a barrage of fan art and music inspired by the series, to a petition of over 31,388 signatures from around the world. After 8 years of petitioning, Nintendo basically tells their fans, that a translation will never happen, due to the lack of support for Earthbound (Mother 2).

From the mouth of Shigeru Miyamoto:

“We had high hopes for EarthBound, the Super NES version, in the US, but it didn’t do well…”

“You might not know this, but there was a petition in the US, a ‘Please make Mother 3’ petition and it got about 30,000 signatures! After that, we thought “Wow… Earthbound fans are really solid.”

I hope that Nintendo will do the right thing and allow these groups to help translate the game, pay them for their toil, and release it in the states. Most likely, they will halt their efforts and exclude American audiences from playing a game that has become legendary amongst RPG fanatics everywhere.

Click here to see the last surviving footage of Earthbound 64.