Video: Now Is The Best Time To Release Mother 3

If you want Mother 3, but haven't played Earthbound Beginnings, please do so. It is wonderful.

Just play the English fan made patch simple

Pfft, emulation sites have hosted the fan translation for years.

Y'all need to get with the times and stop relying on gaming corporations to always give you what you want and diy.

I'm jumping on the "just emulate it" train. The game is ancient, and Nintendo has shown no interest in releasing it overseas in any official capacity. The fan translation is supposedly pretty decent, and you can always purchase it if Nintendo ever deigns to release it in some official capacity.

@Ralizah ah yes. This game is a few months older than me. Therefore, I am ancient

I still don't get why people still ask for a localization when theres already been a fan translation available for years.
If Nintendo is being too stubborn to release something than emulate it - simple.

Just play the fan translation. Buy an original copy if you really want but at this point that’ll be second hand and Nintendo won’t be making any money off it anyway.

I'd rather ask for Remaster of the entire trilogy, but that might be too much I guess

@Ralizah Glad to have ya on board.

Yeah, it's the same thing with old ps2/Gamecube games that Sony and Nintendo refuse to re-sell on their digital store fronts, and if you really want to know the truth about it, even piracy itself isn't nearly as detrimental to their profit margin as Nintendo and Sony make it out it be and is nothing more than a boogey man that they use to scare the unsuspecting player base with to keep them loyal to their brands.

Fan translation sounds really good about now.

The more we talk about it, the more likely it is to happen, right? ....right?

I feel like even if Mother 3 got localized the game would have so much hype to the point where it ends up with unrealistic expectations. I played the fan translation and it was great. I don't usually emulate games at all but the fan translation was so simple to do so. I'd really recommend the fan translation if anyone REALLY wants to play it at this point.

@nimnio If you have a backlog of games though, why add another to that list then?

Somehow, there's an english version on my SNES mini. And I'm glad I played it, because so very little lives up to 15 years (and running) of anticipation.

It's amusing the disconnect between some other Nintendo franchises and Mother's with Nintendo's stance on emulation. Here you have a game that people will happily throw their money at to have but are being herded away to explicitly goes through shady means to play. But heaven forbid you want to see something Metroid or F-Zero or Pokemon.

Not a one-for-one, before you all shove your "ACK-shually"s down my throat. But it remains amusing nonetheless for years upon years.

The censorship angle over the Magypsies also seemed oblivious to me within the past 10-so years, because clearly we haven't had shows like Adventure Time or Steven Universe within those time frames become popular mainstream. But whatever, Nintendo has more riding on its middle-tier dead franchise than Warner Bros. top modern cartoons I suppose. It's just such a small detail. Not like we have had Vivian in Paper Mario before, right?

I can't even claim to be die-hard fan because yeah, EarthBound was pretty great but I didn't play this because duh, that's the whole issue we're here with and EarthBound Beginnings was....ok? Let's be generous and say it was competing with other games attentions at the time and lost. But it's just so silly what reasons could be holding them back by this point.

"There's been a lot of news about Mother 3" You mean deluded people screaming on social media for Nintendo to release it, like they have done for nearly two decades. But as ya'll said before: Anything Nintendo related (be it Sakurai having having a purple chair in his office, or Reggie likes to play Xbox once in a blue moon) is considered "News".

The best time to release mother 3 would be next week on mother’s day. I would like it to happen and I think it’s more likely than ever, but it most likely will not happen.

Wii U had a Mother 3 re-release in Japan so I would assume that was the perfect time to release it localized, instead we got Earthbound Zero.

I want an official Mother 3 English release more than maybe any new video game, but I've accepted at this point that there's actually zero chance its happening unless it comes out again in Japan, at the very least.

I don't like this meme anymore

Interesting to see someone get so worked up about Nintendo not localising a 15 year old game from a very niche series

If only posting these daily articles about mother 3 would suddenly make the game appear. Keep that dream alive! Oh or you could just buck up and emulate it. It ain't hard.

I will never understand this situation. It's not difficult at all to play the complete fan version through emulation, but even given that it's not that good of a game. Perfectly enjoyable, sure, but I've never understood why there's such enormous demand for this middle-of-the-road GBA game.

If Nintendo thought this would sell well enough to make it worth their time they would have already done it. They know it wouldn’t sell well here. The loud noise to have it released comes from an overall tiny group.

They should release it as a limited time release to create a massive explosion of cognitive dissonance, guaranteed anyone that criticized it would be devoured alive by the rabid fans who wanted this game released at all costs so it would be a big win for Nintendo’s future plans.

@SwitchVogel That part I thought simple, actually. Closure. It's the definitive end of a series how the creator wanted it. Regardless of its metric of how good or bad it is to the individual, it's where anyone invested enough to reach the point before actually playing it would want to see how it goes.

Essentially how Kingdom Hearts 3 went for so many. Regardless how many popular online critics told you it came from the innermost circle of Hell and devoted fanboys praised it for putting all the pieces together, MANY people had to see it for themselves. Except in this case I suppose it'd be the other way around, it's a lot harder to find people calling out Mother 3's faults than its accomplishments.

@BobbyAtomic Earthbound was one of the best selling VC games on Wii U (I wanna say top 5 maybe top 3), which also made it one of the best selling digital games on Wii U period (including every retail game people downloaded). Edit: Quick search says Earthbound is 5th most downloaded game on the Wii U, ever.

Also Earthbound is on that SNES mini classic that sold 5 million+ copies a few months in.

For now just install https://mgba.io/ and https://vimm.net/vault/4274

Lol. Honestly, if y'all just keep quiet and pretend like it doesn't exist, they'll announce a remake collection using the Link's Awakening engine at E3. SO QUIET!

Man, I share your frustration with this game never seeing a western release. I’ve been in love with the series since I rented Earthbound from blockbuster as a kid way back when! But at this point I doubt an official release will ever see the light of day outside Japan. Honestly, just download the rom/English patch and play it. The localization effort is extremely well done and is as good, if not better, than what Nintendo would do. I played it on my gba I modded with a backlit IPS screen using an everdrive and was quite an authentic feeling experience playing it on actual Nintendo hardware. I don’t know how anyone who wants to play it has held out this long though lol and in the unlikely event that Nintendo DOES release it, you can always buy it to support them.

At this point I have changed my stance and hope Nintendo never release it again.

@nimnio True, also I feel like the majority of us just want to play it legally. It may be a minor crime to emulate games yet a crime it is.

There is a fervent following, that is for sure. But the question we should be asking, besides the fervent fans who would buy on day one, if released, would this sell more than 1 million copies?

Thing is Its not like devils third at all, like violence in games is way more acceptable in the west over the other issues that nintendo probably don't want the potentially backlash for and probably won't remove them due to respect for the creator I suspect (Back in the day there wasn't enough of an audience to release it earthbound didn't do great on snes in us). So seems its trapped in limbo unless you use fan sub.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who felt the need to import it before downloading the time.

Genesis does what Nintendont

So download that fan translation

Either they're holding it for a rainy day like Earthbound Beginnings, or they don't think it'll sell well. Guaranteed that if it costs anything more than free, people are going to whine it is too expensive. Doubtful it has to do with the content, there's nothing extreme in that game unless you're in the habit of splitting hairs. In typical Nintendo fashion this'll happen when it happens, unless it doesn't.

To be honest I'd like to see Beginnings in 3D.

Assuming (and probably a big if) Nintendo were to actually re-release this game on Switch, how much you wanna bet it will probably be another limited release game?

❗BEFORE everyone else cries about 'Mother 3', you NEED to watch this Video about the game by Nerrel.

He goes on to explain that the reason it's not re-released is because of certain non-gender characters:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EXa_RJvQvuI

@SeantheDon29 I mostly agree.

If a game is out of print and/or not actively being distributed by a publisher in any way, then there's no harm in emulating it. If anything, buying new games and emulating everything out of print is imminently more ethical than refusing to buy new games and instead going second-hand for everything, since none of that money is going to the people who published the game. Used game sales are a plague on the industry.

While I don't think anyone is morally obliged to do so, I also like to repurchase old games I've emulated when they're remastered.

But yeah, screw missing out on classics because companies like Nintendo arbitrarily decide to pretend like they don't exist. I'm just glad so many passionate fans are willing to translate these games (for free!).

You people sure are hellbent on dishing out Mother 3 articles as of late.

Interesting timing for this article. Just received my new GBA flashcart today and put the fan translation on as the first and only game. It's my first time playing it, and it quickly sucked me into the mood as if I had just finished playing Earthbound yesterday. Although it makes sense to play Beginnings first as a commenter above also suggested, I'm finding it hard to stick to that plan

If it isn't part of some sneaky viral campaign leading up to a reveal, it would be a genius move for Nintendo to just say screw it and jump on it as if it were all along. I haven't played any game in the series. But it would be a great marketing stunt and have me tempted to see give it a try

Just make it rated M if they are soooooo worried with kids buying it, it's a niche game and most of the hard hitting controversial moments will go over their head

An English ver. of Mother 3 is not worth buying, guys. They're going to change SO MUCH of the game releasing it in the current world that we live in, PLUS the devs will be so exhausted by then, it's a lose-lose situation

At this point, Nintendo should be remaking all of the games, from Beginnings to Mother 3, all in the LttP remake style. They owe it to their fans, to make up for years of Nintendo's *****.

Earthbound > Mother 3, anyway.

Port Earthbound in the style of Link's Awakening's remake or I riot.

NINJA GIYAGAS SMASHER APPROVED

Do an Earthbound All-Stars on one cart, each game unified with updated graphics. Then make it limited release so people can raise hell about it again for years to come.

Sorry but these games get way to much hype for something that is mediocre. There is a reason these have not been released after all this time.

@nukatha eh it has aged pretty poorly. Still a quaint little game. I did have to rely on save states and grinding tho

@Dirty0814 I wouldn't call them mediocre but I agree too much hype. I honestly think they would not sell well tbh

@BloodNinja have you played mother 3?

@Deppasois love nerrel but yeah I agree. As of now I am around the halfway point of chapter 7 (out of 8) and dont see this coming at all tbh

@Roibeard64 yeah I thought the devils third comparison was really stupid.

@CromAstronomy not a crime to emulate games

@kkslider5552000 that's still not a good number to judge. Keep in mind the poor software sales of the wii I and also not everyone who owned a snes mini played earthbound. I could easily say it's a niche series still and probably would not sell as well as you would think

@PickledKong64
I have to disagree strongly with you regarding Earthbound Beginnings aging poorly.
We're talking about a wholly open-world RPG where every point of interest is noted on the world map, has fast-travel, has 35+ minutes of music, NPCs each with unique dialogue, even down to shopkeepers and doctors in different towns, combat options with multiple layers of strategies, and each party member has a highly unique role in-and-out of combat.
Plus, the game constantly does things that made me think 'They accomplished this on the FAMICOM!' How?

@PickledKong64 I have, I put it down halfway because it felt like a slog. Just couldn’t get into it.

@BloodNinja a slog? It's so much better than earthbound

@nukatha still is a primitive game that has showed its age

@PickledKong64 I'm glad you liked it.

If it's not for sale, and it's been years, why don't you just download it and play the fan translation, it's fantastic. Nintendo don't seem to be interested in making any sales on that game, so I don't think there's anything to feel bad about with playing it that way. If they were that concerned I'm sure they would have shut down that fan translation site years ago. With such a huge catalog of games, you can't just expect every game to come out everywhere and on newer systems.

Every console has it's exclusives, just because it's been a multiple of 5 years (15 years) doesn't mean anything special, there's literally zero reason for anyone to get their hopes up over old unannounced games. Mother 3 was a great game, but so were Dot Stream and Sound Voyager (also unreleased in my country), and I don't expect them to port those either. I'm just glad I played them when I did, because you can wait and wait forever and it can be the difference between playing them or not.

So Nintendo did a re release of Zelda, Links Awakening with new visuals but they can't do this for the mother games? Do they really hate easy money so much?

Oh MOTHER... I've never played any entry in this series yet I've wanted to (with ease and legally) for soooo long now. Just release the damn games, the whole Mother series, on the Eshop like you did with that old Fire Emblem throwback Nintendo. Not even asking for it to be on Switch online. We will pay a cheap price. C'mon smh.

OR... I could see remakes of all 3 games being piecemealed out slowly over the next while from a team like Grezzo for Switch with a similar look and feel of Link's Awakening remake, which was beautiful and fun, but felt a little short and light for a full priced release in this era. MOTHER games being RPG's might feel different however.

Nintendo please revive this series asap!