Old Japanese Magazine Reveals "New" Details About Nintendo's Axed Project, EarthBound 64

I remember in an interview of some sort, a dude said Mother 3 is too contoversial to be released in America. What is so controversial?

@PBandSmelly Gonna go on a limb and say it's things surrounding the Gypsies' (is that what they're called?) sexuality. Claus' fate, too, could be troublesome these days. I dunno. I'd think every sightgag or pun could be rewritten.

@PBandSmelly There's also Reggie, who easily comes off as a racist caricature, but he has an incredibly small part and they could easily rework him to be less of a problem.

@PBandSmelly Nothing at all. The talks for Mother 3 being ported were around 2015, during the WiiU era. In this era, the localization team were a bunch of Numbnuts, to put it generously. They saw almost everything as being offensive. Not even joking, when Super Mario Maker was being made originally the cursor was just going to be Mario's glove. However, the head of the localization team demanded that it be changed because, and I could not stress this enough as a quote, "It was sexist". And so to counter this, Nintendo added hands of men, women animals. They were the absolute worst, and thank god most of them were fired before the Nintendo Switch launched. Now Nintendo is very relaxed on censorship, and it has really helped with the Switch's success. And with those people ruining the localization team gone, perhaps we may finally get the Mother 3 port.

@patbacknitro18
Source on the mario maker claim?

Hope the rom end up on the internet one day

@PBandSmelly i cant remember where i saw the article on it. But heres one from after the change, where marios hand was replaced by a white womans hand. Then this person from Buisness Insider made an article about the later demo and how it was racist to only include a white womans hand. And it ended up gaining so much attention that NOA made a statment that the full game would include more inclusive hand options. https://amp.businessinsider.com/super-mario-maker-hand-2015-7

@patbacknitro18 I can understand representation in games, but to be honest, I don’t care of I’m playing a character that doesn’t look like me.

I wasn’t offended when my hand in Super Mario Maker was a cats paw.

If this trend continues we will probably have gender and race options for Mario. Or colour options for Sonic. And that will be stupid.

I'll try to be light on the spoilers

Back when the game released, I thought the whole criticism on capitalism and it's "relation" to New Pork City could also be seen of poor taste
Now, if the localization team is the same one that had a problem with Mario's glove on a Mario game, then the entire game is a wild ride for censorship

Yeah this is one of the reasons why I never liked it when people tried to act like the GBA version of Mother 3 made up for the cancellation of the N64 game. It is a completely different game and Earthbound 64 always looked far more appealing to me.

@patbacknitro18 Yeah one thing that the Wii U era always stood out to me for was this overbearing sense of censorship, especially with their online network at the time. I remember how they would ban you for making a fart joke in a game with fart jokes, that is how ridiculous it was. Their attitude with games and the way they acted against their customers no doubt made the console even less appealing than it already was. I wasn't aware of that hand situation but it doesn't surprise me the least knowing how things were being run back then. I am glad Nintendo became far more relaxed with the Switch and it seems to have made it appealing to everyone. Nobody wants to have a big brother situation where you always have some random authority standing over you trying to enforce political correctness in crazy ways.

You would think Nintendo releasing Earthbound on VC and as an exclusive on SNES Classic Edition outside of Japan were efforts to generate interest for Mother 3... Sigh

@KingBowser86 in many countries gypsy or even cigan got derogative meaning. Roma/Romani is more PC

If you haven't played the Mother 3 translated rom by now, you really ought to. That game will never be officially localised, and even if it was, it would be heavily censored, mainly due to the Magypsies.

@KingBowser86 There's also the fact that whether intentionally or not, the game can come off as pretty pro-communist which would not go down well in the west.

Earthbound is a real sore spot for me. Although I personally was never all that interested in the game, it really bugs me how Nintendo continued stringing fans along, especially in Nintendo Power where an editor responded to an inquiry with an assurance that it would get released on a future Nintendo platform. It reeked of arrogance and assumptions that fans' loyalties are unbreakable.

@Noid True, but I doubt that's as big of a reason as we might think since Hollywood throws out those messages constantly.

@dimi I was just trying to remember the official nomenclature. "Magypsies," was the word I couldn't recall.

In a parallel universe, I’d be playing Mother 3, Eternal Darkness, Resident Evil 0 and Dinosaur Planet on my N64.

There are a bunch of GBA games Nintendo never localised. Mother 3, Tomato Adventure, Starfy 1, 2 and 3, Fire Emblem 6, Kururin Paradise. ...

It's sad.

@EarthboundBenjy I think we actually got Kururin on the Wii U!

@JayJ

Kururin Paradise is the sequel to Kurukuru Kururin. We got the first one in English, on both GBA and Wii U. The second one, Paradise, was only in Japanese.

@EarthboundBenjy Oh you mean the Gamecube version? Yeah, it's one of those import only games.

@PBandSmelly One section of the game has Lucas and friends eat psychedelic mushrooms, and they have some messed up hallucinations of people close to them, Lucas especially has some messed up visions of his lost brother and his dad, the latter threatening to beat Lucas. Apparently, this section of the game was toned down from what was initially planned, meaning it was even more messed up earlier in development.

@JayJ the GameCube one is Kururin Squash, which is the third Kururin game. I was talking about Kururin Paradise for the GBA, which is the second Kururin game. Only the first Kururin game was ever localised.

It doesn't matter anyway. I just wanted to mention other GBA games Nintendo never localised. Mother 3 is the most notorious one, but it isn't the only case.

Why why why did they axe Mother 3 what a mistake it looks amazing.

@Luna-Harmony I know right!? It was apparently nearly finished. It is hard to say the exact reason why but I think they didn't think the demand was that great for the series and it was apparently going to be released late in the N64's life cycle which was somewhat of a difficult time for Nintendo. At that time Hal was doing rather poorly and they apparently didn't have the resources necessary to finish the game in the time frame needed. A gamecube version was considered which I think would have been incredible and it's a shame it didn't get the same treatment Dinosaur Planet got. I guess it all comes down to finances and resources for Hal and Nintendo back then so they just scrapped the game and went for a far more simple and cheap 2D adaptation instead.