MOTHER 3 Message Board

Forget Miley Cyrus—before the pop star's inane VMA performance made national headlines and got "twerking" added to the dictionary, Mother 3's Wess was shaking it like the best of them. The aging ninja had to do the twerk-filled Osohe Dance in order to open two doors in the Osohe Castle in Nintendo's GBA role-playing game, which never officially made it to the United States (although fans have translated it to English).Read more...

Mother 2, or Earthbound, is finally coming to the West once more courtesy of the Wii U's Virtual Console. Mother 3, at least for now, is not, meaning the only way you can play that in English is courtesy of some very dedicated fans. Which, incidentally, is also how you're going to be able to play Mother 4. The fan-made project, which we first covered nearly three years ago, is still going strong, and after a new round of hires the team tells me it's full steam ahead. While there's no release date as of yet - and no shutdown notice from Nintendo, either - they did send over these screenshots, which are about as perfect as you could hope for with a game like this. If you want to keep up to date with how they're going, you can get to their project site here.

The people who translated Mother 3 to English say that if Nintendo ever wants to bring the quirky RPG to U.S. shores, the company can use their script. Free of charge. Writing on the Mother 3 fan translation website, translator Clyde Mandelin says that if Nintendo were to ever localize the game, he'd be happy to give Nintendo the English script they released on the Internet in 2008. Mother 3, you may remember, is the excellent Game Boy Advance sequel to Earthbound (which is called Mother 2 in Japan). Although Mother 3 never made it to the west, Mandelin and his team released a fan translation in 2008, and their script is great, full of wit and charm and ridiculous puns. Earlier this week, Nintendo announced plans to finally re-release Earthbound in the United States: they'll bring it to the Wii U's Virtual Console later this year. This has led RPG fans to wonder: what about Mother 3? Well, what about Mother 3? The chances of Nintendo localizing a Game Boy Advance game in 2013 are zilch, but some sort of digital release on the Wii U or 3DS eShop could do quite well for them—and earn some serious goodwill from RPG fans across Europe and North America. Nintendo would have to do far more than just swap in an English script, of course—localization is a time-consuming and expensive process—but fans sure would appreciate it. And I imagine a lot of curious gamers would want to know what the hype is all about. Your move, Nintendo.

A portion of a Kotaku review...

Mother 3 is an excellent RPG. It has a deep emotional plot, crazy comedic aspects, and an excellent battle system. The exploration of the “loss of a mother” theme is handled amazingly well, though the plot twists and humor can serve to somewhat undercut the game's more serious aspects.

Full review here

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