Destructoid is no stranger to the myriad Mother 3 translation dramabombs that have dropped since the game's original Japanese (and nowhere else) release of the game, mostly due to my corrupt influence. But now we've got something new to share with you -- very exciting news, but not so much in the 'round-the-water-cooler sort of gossip way that previous breaks had been: the two major groups, Starmen.net and Mother3.org, have joined up to work towards a goal of one solid, single translation. With the key players of both teams in tow, this new collective hopes to have a finished translation sooner than either team would have completed individually.
It also seems that the translation isn't as far along as some of the blokes at Mother3.org would have us believe. Reid (by night known as reidman), while cluing me into some of the latest developments of the Starmen.net Siege project, was also good enough to update me (and his site) with the news. From his post:
The not-so-good news is that the translation isn't nearly as far along as many people seem to believe. sblur has made good progress on the hacking, and many of the 'small things' like item names, descriptions, menus, etc. have been carefully translated by Doctor Fedora. Unfortunately, even with our combined translations, we still haven't made huge amounts of progress on the meat of the translation -- the game dialogue.
But with two teams working towards a completed translation, there's hope of seeing some finished product sometime in the (relatively) near future -- noting, of course, that the announcement of a US localization of Mother 3 in any capacity would put a stop to the project entirely. And why not? That's the ultimate goal, after all -- to bring Shigesato Itoi's incomparable Mother series to other territories.
Say what you like about the game, but you simply can't dismiss the dedication of this community. It's been just over 12 years since we last saw Mother in the States and they're still going strong. Speaking of which, I'll have a lot more to tell you about Siege in the coming days, so keep your eyes peeled.
[Wee update: While there's a shot for a before-2008 release of the translation and the team is hopeful, it is by no means an official timetable, and you shouldn't go banking your hopes on the stupid misconceptions of an editor who drinks too much. It'll be done when it's done, yo -- but it looks like it'll be getting done a lot sooner than it would have otherwise.]
Contest:
1:09 PM on 07.04.2007
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Im not too much of an RPG player(zelda and thats it, if it even counts), but I must say that earthbound was one of my favorite games for SNES. I wanted it before it was released, and loved every minute of it. I guess thats the power of Mother.
If you have not yet played it, find it, borrow it, steal it, do what you have to do and play it. It is epic.
Nintendo, you are a POS
Wii with the Wind Waker's game engine would be the hotness.
For those who haven't played Mother 3, I'll tell you why I think Nintendo didn't localize it.
Spoilers.
It has major death and depression with in the first hour. It has cross dressing, stubbly men living in a sea shell blowing kisses at you. It has a main character who is implied to be a lesbian. It has a Mermaid man kissing a 10-12 year old boy under water.
Plus, it has low fi graphics and no monster collecting. And a 15 foot tall man ringing a bell, with no explination why.
I'm sure Nintendo looked at Mother 3 as both a financial and public relations risk that was too big to take outside of Japan.
It is an awesome game though. I prefer Earthbound over all, but in some ways Mother 3 is better than Earthbound, in fact better thann any other game I have ever played. It's story is so incredibly original and well written, even with only partial understanding of the language.
If you have any interest in video games as a narritive medium at all, you must play Mother 3.
It would probably help if I didn't hate turn based RPGs =0\
I have been waiting for a localized version of Mother 3, official or otherwise, since I heard the game was coming out in Japan. Damn my lack of knowledge of the Japanese language!!!
Check out the podtoids, i dunno which one but one does talk about Earthbound
You'd think if anyone got it they would.
Why do I defend a game I myself have little info on? BECAUSE THE FREAKIN' CULT FOLLOWING MAKES ME WANNA PLAY SO BAD!!!
While you're policing the use of proper marks on innanet websitez, might I recommend GameFAQs? They're rife with that shit.
It'd be a lot of fun, but I don't think we'd see it for some of the same reasons Tron mentioned, but not limited to the ones he listed. Though it'd be an easy 'fix,' regaining health is by entering hot springs in the buff.
Hopefully Earthbound will also be on the virtual console for the Wii soon.
An official localization would be great, but the announcement would be devastating at this point because it would just take even longer for a translation to hit US shores.
While this is good news, I'm a little disappointed to hear that the Mother3.org team wasn't as far along as they had claimed. The old status updates on Mother3.org alleged that pretty much the entire game was translated and they were just revising the last few chapters.