Topic: MOTHER 3 translator willing to work for Nintendo for free.

Clyde Mandelin, dedicated MOTHER/EarthBound fan is willing to give his translated script of MOTHER 3 to Nintendo to use for free in hope that they localize it! He has even stated that he is willing to rework the entire script of the game if requested by Nintendo. Whatever it takes, whatever Nintendo asks, he will be willing to do so, so long as MOTHER 3 finally becomes localized.

sources:
http://kotaku.com/mother-3s-fan-translators-say-nintendo-can-...
http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/04/20/earthbound-fans-offer-...

So what do you think? Would you like to see MOTHER 3 officially localized for your Wii U and/or 3DS?

Effing called it...

To be fair, MrWalkieTalkie was hardly complaining. If Nintendo declines the offer of the script though, then we'll be in for some serious backlash

Okay then...

Of course they'll decline it. You know the backlash they'd get if they did accept it? It'd be setting a bad precedent, and I'm sure it's against some law. I'd rather suffer a few idiot fanboys who can't see reason than get a half@$$ed free translation from some fanboy, and Nintendo gets fined for it, swamped by fanboys wanting to provide "free translations" of their own, and losses any amount of business cred for allowing such a thing to happen.

Besides, even if he did work for free, is he going to do the editting? The programming? The uploading? The marketting (even a press release on Nintendo's official website probably counts towartds that)? There's more to localizing a game than just translating. In fact, I'll bet my bottom dollar that it's hardly the biggest expense, just the most time consuming. Sure, maybe he's just trying to increase Nintendo's Margins, but I highly doubt that much would be worth it to Nintendo, especially considering the possible consequences.

And for the record, I know Clyde is a professional, but still, even they work under others, and get some input from the creators on how something should be translated. There's no way his fan translation he did in '08 will be considered "good enough", he'll have to do with some input somewhere before it could be accepted.

I just know that for a proffessional, he's sounding very unprofessional to me...

I'd always assumed the fan translation was quality, since there was so much effort put into it by the internet crews. I wouldn't have accused them of being "fanboys", although now that I think about it, this article isn't necessarily talking about the same community that I'm familiar with. The legal issues, of course, are the most apparent. That being said, it's not original material the fan is providing, but rather just a translation of Nintendo's own source material. I don't know the first thing about Japanese/International copyright law though, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

And that last point was pretty interesting too. If Nintendo did decide to retranslate and rerelease Mother 3... where the heck would it go? It was originally a GBA game right? Nintendo doesn't have an easy outlet for re-releasing GBA games at the moment...

There are a couple of examples where companies have used fan-created content. But all of those examples come from Valve, and as we all know they simply do whatever they please. Nintendo doesn't seem like it'd spring for that kind of business model anytime soon.

I actually wasn't even thinking about copywrite law, but you could be onto something there. The rest I addressed in my edit of my previous post.

You should actually read his post before deciding anything.
http://mother3.fobby.net/blog/2013/04/20/offer-to-nintendo/

Honestly, you are just wrong. Complaining about a polite, self-aware request from one of the smartest and coolest people I've ever met from one of these silly gaming fanbases is a dumb idea. The guy knows what goes into this stuff, relax.

There is precedent for this sort of thing, however. Ys: Oath in Felghana was brought to the west (which Clyde actually refers to in the most on the Mother 3 page) after XSeed licensed a fan-translation of the Japanese PC release.

Not saying that Nintendo would definitely do it, but it's something that has happened before so it's not outside the realm of possibility (and there's not really any legal issues, as anything along those lines would be worked out in a contract between Ninty and Clyde).

Also, while I genuinely don't think this will happen (it'll be a Sin and Punishment situation even in the INCREDIBLY slim chance it does), my rebuttal to inevitable "but Nintendo is too big a company to do the same things as a small publisher" argument is to look at the limited release of Xenoblade Chronicles, which is something Atlus and friends do all the time.

So, Nintendo announced that they're finally re-releasing EarthBound in the west, and people are ALREADY trying to get them to do the third game? What, was it like 'thank you' for one day and now it's on to the next game to complain about? People need to learn to be happy with what they've got, or are getting. I wonder if all this hassling Nintendo for EarthBound was even about being able to play the game, or simply the fact that they weren't doing it, and people wanted to feel important by having their voices heard.

I take back my last sentence and that sentence only, because the rest still stands. Yes, XSEED did it. But Nintendo is an entirely different beast, whether you believe it or not. Where as XSEED's actions can fly entirely under the radar, Nintendo's will not, and there would be repercussions.

those being...

I hope that he succeeds in his endeavor, and that someday we can get the entire trilogy, but I'm glad that we're getting Earthbound in the first place.

And that last point was pretty interesting too. If Nintendo did decide to retranslate and rerelease Mother 3... where the heck would it go? It was originally a GBA game right? Nintendo doesn't have an easy outlet for re-releasing GBA games at the moment...

Haven't Ninty said that they wanted to get GBA games onto the Wii U eShop soon? I remember a thread about it.

Well I think we learned a lot from this in-depth discussion.