it’s good but the entire game feels like the abridged version of a much more ambitious game
Mother 3 is 61 Mothers less than Mother 64
Almost every games were more ambitious in their pre production than the final result
the big lore dump at the end of the game definitely feels unnatural
>>12075654Ive tried 3 different times to get through this game and Ive dropped it every time after getting a little further. its just so fucking insufferably boring. none of the humor lands at all, the story is shit, the combat is shit, the music is shit. the only joke I liked was the "good news and bad news" bit towards the beginning. earthbound is a 10/10 mainly because its funny, doesnt take itself seriously, has amazing music and atmosphere, and a fun unique and often surreal setting. none of which applies to m*ther 3
>>12075654What is this fake ass box art?
>>12075674>none of the humor lands at allBlame the shitty translation.
>>12075694yeah ive started to realize this might be the real problem with the game. earthbound got a real translation but for mother 3 we have to rely on one single trannylator and we all know their... tendencies.
>>12075654It was twelve years from concept to release, so yeah probably.
A few months ago, I went through the Earthbound script trying to find jokes that I remember making me laugh so I could encode them as gifs. There really weren't that many. There were plenty of lines that made me grin, but not many that were laugh out loud funny. Just from memory, MOTHER 3 got tons of laughs out of me. You guys are out of your minds.
>>12075669yeah you can tell it was rushed last minuteits because they cut the original ending/last boss
>>12075654Mommy
>>12075743Earthbound has a fanfiction-tier translation bro.
>>12076313Yeah, so? I personally like Earthbound's translation and it feels authentic, so it's good. Mother 3 feels so... artificial, like you're watching fansubbed anime or some shit.
>>12076313>>12076370I don't think the ramblings about the NJ Garden State Parkway (found in the Vacant House) are authentic but they cracked me up
>>12076313The same guy who helped Shigesato Itoi write the Japanese version - Masayuki Miura - helped Marcus Lindblom write the English version.https://www.1101.com/n/s/mother_project/marcus_lindblom_en/2025-03-31.htmlPhil Sandhop also consulted with the Japanese team to an extent I think, according to his interview with Lost Levels. Did Tomato have that kind of valuable support? Noooooo. He was a Lindblom fanboy who didn't realize Miura wrangled him at the time.If you're not getting Japdev input, your text hack is gay, end of.
>>12075654always bothered me how your party barely talks in the second half of the game
>>12075654well, it was supposed to be longer with the n64 version.i kinda get what you mean. for me, all the dungeons are just too short. the prologue is like 5 hours long while the whole game is 30 hours. the game isn't long enough.
>>12076119>Just from memory, MOTHER 3 got tons of laughs out of me. You guys are out of your minds.for me, it's the second battle with the mole cricket.and the mole in the porky empire building who gets scared when the lights come back on.and itoi's interview where he explains his reasoning behind the ionia hot springs scene.
>>12076119>>12076789oh, and i just remembered:when the pig soldier says he likes the oxygen machines and then the other soldier backs away from him.
>>12076119>>12076798oh, and also the mr. t npc who keeps saving your life if you try to run through the train tunnel before you're supposed to.
>>12076380You don't need to make stuff up to complain about. "Jersey Turnpike" is a a localization. The original says "Kōshū Kaidō" which is a famous highway in Japan. Everything else is verbatim.The same excerpt is hidden in MOTHER 3. In the Chimera Laboratory, there's a drawer in one of the rooms that has the magazine. You can find Overcoming Shyness on a bookshelf, too.
>>12075654It's the perfect length, thank fuck it's not any longer, earthbound felt like it went on forever
I can't help but notice that whenever anyone complains about the MOTHER 3 translation, its always vague notions of Mato being a fanboy and never anyone actually analyzing the text.
>>12077151probably none of them know jp
game has weird pacing. first few chapters feel a lot more focused than the later chapters. duster and kumatora don’t get enough to do either
>>12077237It really annoyed me that AGAIN the main boy turned out to be the best at everything while an adult man and a cool older tomboy are both inferior to him at physical combat, and the tomboy even though she specializes in PSI is also inferior to him in PSI. Stupid Japanese developers and their obsession with making a young boy the protagonist who is best at everything. And also a dog should not have been such a major party member for so long.I like the game though
>>12076726>I understand the original text way better than Tomato because I'm super smart you guys
>>12076726>>12075743>>12075694I’m sure there’s some real criticisms to be made about the translation, but every complaint I’ve heard has had very little to back it up
>>12077259>she's inferior to him in psinot really. lucas only gets his big multi hut attack which takes too much pp to use often. and he's the main healer so he needs to conserve his pp to heal everyone.bony and duster are quick so they can make good use of bombs and bottle rockets.
>>12075674>Good news! I found this really cool dinosaur tooth. >Bad news, it was lodged directly into your wife's heart. Haha she's dead btw.>>12075694What's wrong with the translation? I think it's pretty good. Had several laugh out loud moments when I last played through it again earlier this year.>>12077259>he didn't grind for PK Ground
>best line in the entire EarthBound franchise is an outright mistranslationLove it.
>>12076251if nintendo releases mother 3 to america itoi should add the full ending
>>12077569i love that line too. i was actually surprised when i found out it was a mistranslation.>>12077151something i can genuinely criticize is this:these lines where lucas and flint look in the mirror are translated as lookin' handsome in eng. it's not an outright mistranslation as おとこまえ / 男前 means "handsome / manly looking".hinawa also says lucas is おとこまえ when he switches out of his pajamas but i don't remember how the eng translates that.but this おとこまえ phrase also gets repeated later and in eng it's translated differently instead of the usual "lookin' handsome" — in the empire pork building when lucas' fly is down he also becomes おとこまえ but the eng puts it as "he felt manly".this おとこまえ phrase is a running gag in the jp version but it's not as obvious in the eng translation. i would've put it as "lookin' manly" when the characters look in the mirror so the fly down scene can keep the callback with "lucas became manly"
>>12077624and picrel is the jp fly down dialogue.here's a link too if anyone wants to look through the jp text:https://mother3onnelist.neocities.org/
>>12077375Most complaints I've seen of Earth Bound NES /EarthBound SNES can be chalked up to content guidelines or lack of translation coordination (because the former wasn't released and the latter had no incentive to ensure their work lined up at the time).I recall some Mother 3 JP/EN comparison streams by professional translators who started off super-excited to read what Tomato has done with the game only to finish it realizing a second translation would have a ton more room for improvement to put it nicely. You won't get that through another fan translation because it's an uphill battle and Tomato already said an official translation can use his work in full or as a starting point, so it could potentially undermine that even more. A very large part of the hack's success belongs to Jeffman and his hacking team for the tech wizardry they did fitting the translation in there with such good presentation.
>>12077648>realizing a second translation would have a ton more room for improvement to put it nicelyTrue for any translation. There comes a point where going through the script over and over trying to nitpick blinds you to certain things, and you're better off scrapping it and going in fresh with better knowledge and notes than trying to polish up what ultimately should be your first draft, even if the work you sink into it makes it feel like that draft could've been "final."I find even using an existing script as a basis isn't that helpful, but to each his own. Fan translators don't usually have the discipline, the process, or the "support staff" to get this kind of work done in a timely manner and just want to get it done.
>>12076776At least for me I don't think it had to be longer, I generally don't like games that go much longer than that. But I think the prologue should've been shorter or something. I felt like the prologue didn't do anything to hook me in and that seems to be a common complaint.
>>12076251It feels like the New Pork City arc specifically was supposed to be a lot longer and more in-depth but they ran out of development time so what we have in Mother 3 is like a summarized version of the original concept.
>>12077759i do agree with the prologue being too long. i feel maybe they should've also just relegated duster's and salsa's segments to strict cutscenes. i know itoi wanted the player to have to depend on yokuba/fassad for the unique feeling it creates but god that part just kinda sucks.and the main game should've been a bit longer.as is, the prologue (my least favorite part) just takes up too much of the playtime of the game.
>>12077763Every time I think of replaying Mother 3 I remember how it basically feels like a slog until Chapter 5. I don't know how you fix that. The whole Duster segment seems unnecessary or maybe could have been done differently. I actually do like the Salsa segment enough to keep it I think, it's too iconic.
>>12077773i just keep a save at the beginning of chapter 4 so i don't have to replay the prologue
>>12077773>salsamillion pity chapter
So what I gather from this thread is that EB64 development hell and cancelation fucked things up, either they didn't have the time or the GBA couldn't hold the planned scope of the game and a lot of compromises had to be made to release it on timeSounds like it's one of the few games that actually need a remake
>>12077971Nah. Everyone in this thread is being a sourpuss. The GBA version might not be what was originally planned, but its about as perfect a game in its genre can be. Being concise is a good thing. It explores every idea it set out to explore while being very well paced. Fleshing out, for example, Chapter 8, would do nothing but make it a drag.
>>12077624Interesting. Missing the callback is too bad, but its definitely not the type of thing people are talking about when they say shit like>Mother 3 feels so... artificial, like you're watching fansubbed anime or some shit.>>12077648At some point you just start splitting hairs. All writing, including translating, is a creative process. You can translate something in fifty different ways and have none of them be definitively better than the others. All the tools used to create the MOTHER 3 translation are publicly available. Anyone who doesn't like Mato's script is free to write a re-translation without ROM hacking trouble. Even so that seems like it would be a monumental waste of effort.
>>12078000>but its definitely not the type of thing people are talking about when they say shit like>Mother 3 feels so... artificial, like you're watching fansubbed anime or some shit.i think that guy was shitposting and didn't know what he was talking about
>>12077569It might be an ad-lib change of the joke rather than a mistake. It reminds me of how everyone called the change from Porky to Pokey a mistranslation for years. It turns out Lindblom said in an interview they were worried about trademark issues with Porky Pig the Looney Tunes character, so it was a deliberate change and not a mistranslation.
What games are there about this?I'm confused but I want to play them in a correct orderWhat is the correcto order?
>>12078021The release order isMOTHERMOTHER 2 Gyiyg no Gyakushuu (released in English as EarthBound)MOTHER 3The game's story's are largely standalone, but they have some connections. The connections between MOTHER and EarthBound are much weaker than the connections between EarthBound and MOTHER 3. MOTHER has some Famicom era JRPG jank, so a lot of people recommend skipping it, starting with EarthBound, and checking it out after if you really like the rest of the series.Depending on whether or not you are willing to put up with a Famicom JRPG, the recommended order is eitherEarthBound, MOTHER 3, MOTHERorMOTHER, EarthBound, MOTHER 3The connections between games is weak enough that if you REALLY want, you can start with MOTHER 3 and it won't ruin the game or anything.Regarding MOTHER, the game has two different translations. One by Phil Sandhop, and one by Clyde Mandelin (the person who did the MOTHER 3 translation). The one by Sandhop is the official Nintendo translation. It was completed but not released in the 90s, leaked online in the early 2000s, and then officially released in 2015 as a Virtual Console game under the title "EarthBound Beginnings." The title screen calls it "Earth Bound." If you play the ROM from any standard ROM set or from an official Nintendo source, this is the translation you will be using. Mandelin's translation is a patch you can download here: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5923/Having played both of them, I strongly prefer Mandelin's translation, so I recommend you play with that. Sandhop's translation loses much of the game's humor and is very much a product of the late 80s/early 90s.MOTHER 1 and EarthBound have GBA ports released under the title MOTHER 1+2, but these versions suck and I recommend you ignore them.
beat this somewhat recently. was the ending supposed to be a evangelion go do something with your life kinda deal?
>>12077569What's the original japanese?
>>12078043I think it's funny EB/M3 fans tend to recommend the Mato retranslation of EBB (which he made thinking the official version would always be an unreleased proto and was designed to supplant it) but you hardly see anyone recommending the EB hacks that were made based on his analysis.
>>12078254Earth Bound 25th anniversary is quite good.I prefer the Earth Bound names like Ellay instead of towns named after holidays.
>>12077754True, true.>Fan translators don't usually have the discipline, the process, or the "support staff" to get this kind of work done in a timely manner and just want to get it done.I think it's far worse these days with younger hackers than it was back then, for several reasons, 1) they grew up in an environment of streamers and infiluencers, and for a lot of them, it's their dream to get their favorite streamers to play that dingy game their older brother played with text edits that they personally wrote, 2) they grew up in a gaming hellscape of DLC/updates where everything has to be "supported" which they think gives them an excuse to crap out something and see what sticks to a wall, not realizing that unfinished versions tend to spread much farther on the internet beyond their control, 3) they have all the MTL/AI tools and hack/wiki resources at their disposal that have only lowered the skill ceiling, 4) less emotional attachment to retro games means they're more likely to look at them not as works of art but as cynical hustle marks for their resume and/or donations, 5) they were groomed into thinking a translator doesn't need to be in charge of a translation hack, because as we all know, anything is better than those smelly old game localizers who didn't know anything, so they might as well put that almighty English degree to use. Etc.
>>12078254There's a basic uncensorship hack that's all you need, which the MaternalBound cunt sniped off RHDN.https://forum.starmen.net/forum/Community/PKHack/Mother-2-to-EarthBound-Uncensored-patch/page/2#post1320464
>>12078254>you hardly see anyone recommending the EB hacks that were made based on his analysisBecause they don't do a great job of re-writing things from what I've seen. The most popular one wasn't done by a native English speaker and it kinda shows. When it comes down to it, the EarthBound localization is already very good. The only things you're really missing out on going with the official version is all the censored pop culture references like Blues Brothers, Grateful Dead, Monopoly, etc
>>12075654Next time just say you want to talk about M64 like a retarded discord tranny
>>12075654so like Knights of the Old Republic 2?
>>12078398>still no rom patch that fixes the Shark gang member's dialogue in the arcade when the guy walks up to you and says "Yeah?" which cannot be avoided>he is actually supposed to say "Hello!"People get uppity about what is wrong or censored yet this one, singular red flag remains for every single Mother 2 retranslation to date.
>>12078595>retranslationI'm pretty sure they call them "relocalizations" which is code for "Legends of Localication fanfictionm"
>>12075654>the entire game feels like the abridged version of a much more ambitious gameBoy do I have news for you
>>12078606Tell him about the poop kraken and all the worthless trivial information they cut. So expensive, such cut content
>>12078613>So expensiveWhat does the cost have to do with it
>>12078643Expense has everything to do with it because Itoi and his team wasted a ton of money and time on a low tier N64 title that never came to be
>>12078217>my wife ran away a second time. i have no luck!" or something along those lines. he says he's unlucky, not lucky.
>>12078185i don't think that's it.i think it's about enduring painful things because there's something good waiting for you somewhere if you can just get through it.
>>12078306>anything is better than those smelly old game localizers who didn't know anything, so they might as well put that almighty English degree to use. Etc.that's the worst part of translations. i hate when people outright try to change things unless it's a joke that doesn't translate well at all. some creativity is needed for translating weird jokes.
so now that the dust has settled, why DID claus have to kill himself?
>>12079763he wanted to avenge his mother but died doing so.
>>12079763He regained his humanity after having spent the entire game trying to destroy his community and getting within an inch of killing his family. He probably felt a tremendous pang of guilt. He spends his last breaths apologizing.
>>12079763i think claus was already dead. he died when he fell off the cliff in the mecha drago fight. the magypsies say he has no heartbeat and you can't hear one either if you put him to sleep, which is unique even among chimeras. all the other chimeras have heartbeats, but not claus.so claus was already dead and his suicide was a way for him to rightfully move on.i think hinawa was also aware of that and that's why she called him to return to her — "claus, come to your mother. you must be so exhausted."
>>12080786also, this fits as a contrast to how porky tried to hang onto things from his past even though they were long gone, like his mother (and ness in a really weird way).claus dies despite flint searching for him for so long. but flint and lucas can both accept that he's gone. they don't need to try to hold onto him anymore. they just look forward to what the future has in store for them.m3 is about a constantly changing world. no one can hang onto anything for too long.
plot feels like it could have gone through one more revision. they go after the hummingbird egg and the when they get it back it never gets brought up again until the end of the game.
i feel like you should've gotten to play as young lucas with claus in the party for longer. it looked like there was a lot more to do with them as little kids in eb64 as well.
I found it extremely disappointing. It feels like Itoi got too fixated on the storytelling and forgot what made 1 and 2 great was moreso the vibes and dialogue than the main plot
>>12077569hahah what the hell
>>12078397Oh shit, I was not aware of this. Thank you, compadre
>>12080786I agree with this
any good hacks for m3? there's a bunch of shit for m1 and m2 but what about m3?
>>12081481the memory rewriting never felt like it fit. it felt like itoi only put it in because he wanted to reference the notebook trilogy's reveal about how everything up to a certain point was false.
>>12075743tomato is literally regular dude who's married to a woman.
>>12086409Yes, a “woman”… right.
the beginning was a good introduction and set the stage perfectly for Lucas.I did prefer Mother 2's roadtrip across america. It didn't feel like it had to try hard with themes or messaging it was just a good time.
>>12086409He's also a translator who's done professional work too. He's done work on Dragon Ball, One Piece, Case Closed/Detective Conan, Steins;Gate, etc.
>>12086909Professional != qualityAll it means is that money changed hands.
>>12078043Isn't the Earthbound Beginnings a changed game from the original Japanese? Was it the last dungeon that got simplified or the experience rate or something? I know Mother in the Mother 1+2 collection got gay-babyfied for sure. I've always wanted to start the Mother series from the beginning but I don't think an English translation of the original Japanese game exists. It's weird how I can play the original Dragon Quest in English (the one with the password system and front facing sprites) but not original Mother
>>12087327The big differences are they added run and map buttons, 'updated' some graphics (there are restoration hacks), and added a ton more text (enemy flavor text to make the CHECK command more interesting, an eighth melody that's very close to the seventh, and a brand new expanded ending sequence), but you can see more here:https://tcrf.net/EarthBound_Beginnings/Regional_Differenceshttps://wikibound.info/wiki/List_of_regional_differences_in_EarthBound_BeginningsThere was supposedly a brief movement where fans alleged that Earth Bound was a fabricated prototype since Demi was working on a translation before it got leaked, but Phil Sandhop confirmed it was legit in his Lost Levels interview. Plus, Mother 1+2 carries over practically all the other changes (with even more censorship if you can believe it), not to mentiom it got released via Wii U/Switch.If you scroll down to the mals section, you can see they simplified some of the mord mazelike dungeons, yet they for some reason added a small winding path to the final boss with strong enemies.I -think- someone picked up hacking the Famicom ROM for people who want vanilla experience, but at this point, I wonder who'd want that besides people who play JRPs to brush up on their Japanese anyway. People who don't read Japanese want QoL crap even years ago when Mato added the silly "Easy Ring" to his Mother 1+2 hack, and now that crowd is gravitating toward the fan-remake. The audience for a true-to-Japanese hack is dying, for good or ill.
>>12087327The fan translations add an optional "easy ring," but otherwise all the versions have the same EXP gain and encounter rate. The only change they made w.r.t. difficulty is editing some of the maps. These changes are in every version except the Japanese Famicom original, but they are very minor and not worth skipping the game over.
>>12086939In the best-case scenario, it also means keeping in touch with the original creators or referring to their design documents. Obviously not always the case, but it's still way more likely than in fantranslations.
>>12087601Plus should add: being a professional translator -of other properties- doesn't mean shit, you either get the gig and you make the best use of company resources or you don't.Mr. Mandelin wanted desperately to be recognized like Sandhop-senpai, Lindblom-sensei or Miura-sama, and in the eyes of the fanbase he might be, but I'd be very surprised if Itoi/Nintendo doesn't tell the translator that eventually works on the official version "hey, make sure this bears as little resemblance to that punk pirate's work as possible, don't give him an inch."
>>12087625>that eventually works on the official versionlol
>>12087468they arguably made the game a bit harder by requiring you to scale the whole mountain to get the last melody, when in the original you could get EVE's next to the lake and call it a day.
>>12087672lol from me too. there will never be an official translation. reggie said a western release wouldn't be worth the money but if that was really the only problem why not just release the jp version for everyone on the nso service? there's some reason they keep m3 locked to japan despite other weird jp titles like ninja jajamarukun being released on the eng nso service despite being in jp only.
>>12088420mother 3 isn’t exactly a game you can play without understanding the dialog
>>12088420They only do that for games you can play effectively without reading.
>>12088450>>12088459even then we still have mediocre mtl. the people that want an official release could have one and nintendo could release the jp version on nso without any extra hassle.
>>12088476What the fuck are you talking about? You think Nintendo is going to release the game with machine translation?
>>12088495i'm saying why not just release the jp version on the english nso and people can do what they want.
>>12088502The Switch isn't region locked. If you want to play it in Japanese, you can already do that by downloading the Japanese app. The expectation is that if a game is in the English app you can play it without having to read Japanese.
>>12075654Thats probably because it is
>>12088591you wouldn't know that
>>12075654It doesn't even feels like a Mother game
>>12090626itoi wanted it to betray the player
>>12091108What a pretentious hack thing to say, just make earthbound but bigger and better
