FasciNATEion Blog

I knew about this when it came out, but I figured, “I need to make another blog post, eh?”  So, here you go.

Mother 3, the unofficial fan translation of the final installation in the Mother series has been released.  Mother 3 is the ‘final’ installation because of all the troubles its development went through.  Shigesato Itoi had originally intended its release about 11 years ago– and only about 2 years ago did he get it released on the GBA.   Because of the stress that went into its development for its ORIGINAL console (N64 and N64DD), and the final production of the GBA Title, I can guess that Itoi is sick of the pressure and hassle unsuccessful development causes.

Furthermore, Mother3 apparently was ‘badly coded’ in many parts– this means that Tomato, Jeffman, and the other M3 translation crews had to do a lot of specific fixes for issues that could’ve been better handled by the original programmers.  Of course, this wouldn’t've been an issue, if the Mother 3 team received the original code instead of the already-compiled videogame code.

Basically, it’s like getting spaghetti and meatballs,a nd having to add TONS of spices to it.  The spaghetti is already cooked, and the flavor is pretty much set-in.. so how do you alter such a core ingredient?  You make it a hundred times, and add spices to it like crazy each time– until you have something different.

Anyways, Mato is quoting numbers that are at least 70,000 from their official website.  Why Nintendo didn’t release it stateside?  Because the DS was already popular enough in the USA.  “NObody’d buy the GBA title.”  The irony is that this happened to the first game in the series (Mother 1) when it was about to be brought stateside as well.

I’d love to suggest that you get the game rom, and patch it with the unofficial translation.  But, of course, even LuizPrower of YouTube couldn’t handle “Story” and non-instant return on actions.

Ah well.  I hope this game becomes another classic, like Cave Story did.