The Gamer's Quarter

[Harveyjames]

Man I check the Mother 3 Translation blog like a child waiting for Christmas! http://mother3.fobby.net/

I'm looking forward to this more than you could know! Seriously I could give two shits about Smash Bros Brawl. But this is a different story! Here is a TV commercial from Japan when the game came out. Just a seemingly candid interview with a Japanese celebrity who played the game. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=z8YaKuWLvGs&feature=related

She is crying her eyes out!

Mother 2 is probably the most I've ever been involved by a video game, and I don't play any other RPGs. I think they're stupid crap!

Talk about the Earthbound series! Where were you when you first played Mother 2? Do you think Shigesato Itoi was good when he played the father in My Neighbour Totoro? Did you know Itoi was a consultant on the original Pokemon game? Also he came up with the names 'Game Boy' and 'Nintendo 64'! How much of him do you suppose is in Pokemon, anyway? NO MOTHER 3 SPOILERS.

[Max Cola]

Maaaaan Harveyjames it's funny but I was just playing through this series again recently! You can check out the recently played games thread to see some impressions. But I will contribute to this thread later! Earthbound/Mother threads should be a regular feature, I think.

You had me all psyched that there was an official translation anounced or something, though. I still believe that Nintendo of America is going to have to do SOMETHING when Brawl comes out.

Anyway, yeah. Further MOTHER related cool thoughts to come?
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The only girl I've ever loved was born with roses in her eyes. But then they buried her alive, one evening 1945, with just her sister at her side, and only weeks before the guns all came and rained on everyone...

[Harveyjames]

I really do want to know what Itoi did on the original Pokemon game. There's a reference to the film 'Stand By Me' in the first Pokemon, did you know that? They really tried to evoke a spirit of boyhood adventure.

But in fact the whole setting is sort of Earthboundy. You've got a landscape that's a collection of small towns separated by green countryside, in a world that's an idyllic, idealised version of our own. The towns in Earthbound are named for their corresponding numbers and the towns in Pokemon are named for colours. HUH

[Max Cola]

And the hero of the first Pokemon game looks a lot like Ness! But that's probably mere coincidence...

Did you know that the regions in the Pokemon games are based (geologically speaking) on real regions in real-life Japan? That's kind of like how Eagleland is based on a warped Eastern perception of the United States. (And Dalaam is, I assume, based on a warped Western perception of Japan... a goofy kingdom of samurai floating in the clouds.)
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The only girl I've ever loved was born with roses in her eyes. But then they buried her alive, one evening 1945, with just her sister at her side, and only weeks before the guns all came and rained on everyone...

[bleak]

In New Pork City (I tihnk that's the title of the city in Brawl) there's a pink rinoceros thing that one hit kills anything it touches when it arrives on the map. It is awesome.
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[Harveyjames]

[Max Cola]

[JasonMoses]

You have a pretty good idea of how psyched you should be about Mother 3, but it's still going to blow your socks off.

[Harveyjames]

I decided not to play it with a walkthrough translation, because I want to have at least some kind of illusion of freedom, even if it's just picking who to talk to next.

[Max Cola]

I was going to wait, but I lost patience and played it with the translation guide. It's a little limited, sure, but I still came away from the experience feeling like I'd just played the best jRPG ever (which I had). So I can only imagine how it's going to feel when I play it in English on my GBA like it was intended to be played.
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The only girl I've ever loved was born with roses in her eyes. But then they buried her alive, one evening 1945, with just her sister at her side, and only weeks before the guns all came and rained on everyone...

[dessgeega]

the ultimate chimera is one of my favorite parts of mother 3.
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[Intentionally Wrong]

I've said before that my favorite parts of Mother 3 all involve water. The sense of safety finding the next Hot Springs brings is the obvious one, of course, but there are three spots in particular I'm thinking of: a point where you submerge yourself in water, a point where you immerse yourself in something that looks like water, and a point where you have to move water from one spot to another.

[Harveyjames]

So how many of you have actually played through Mother 3?

[Cycle]

I own the MOTHER 3 SUPER BOXSET WILLENIUM EDITION, but I don't want to play the game until a real translation is out. I refuse to play it with a translation guide!

I should really finish earthbound (again). DS emulation needs to not suck already so I can play it on the go.
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[dessgeega]

[Ethoscapade]

[Cycle]

How was the emulation? I hear it's NOT PERFECT so I haven't bothered trying it.
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[Max Cola]

I think my favorite moments are the little things that happen. Like... try walking on the train tracks for a while, some time.

Man, this game frustrates me. There are so many cool things I want to talk about and only a few people here have beaten it. And, of course, not a single person I know offline is an Earthbound fan, and I get the feeling they're sick of me talking about it (though I did convince one friend to play EB).
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The only girl I've ever loved was born with roses in her eyes. But then they buried her alive, one evening 1945, with just her sister at her side, and only weeks before the guns all came and rained on everyone...

[Harveyjames]

I'm playing through Earthbound Zero on Nestopia. The random battles are really quite relentless in this game. It's bearable, though, so long as you bind a key (say, R1) to 'speed up' and put every battle on auto. That way you can blaze through it.

So far, the game seems like a trial run for all the interesting ideas that were in Mother 2! The melodies are there, and magicant, and the contemporary setting, and the role your parents play. Only, the whole thing is a lot more rudimentary and pared down, and it isn't so jam-packed with interesting characters... the're no Pokey, for example.

One thing that is interesting is that some of the incidental townsfolk you come across look like they're based directly on Peanuts characters! So maybe that was originally a reference point for the series? Ness and Paula are pretty unique looking in the world of JRPGS, and certainly don't share the same manga stylings most games of this type do. Maybe this gives us some insight into what they were going for, exactly. Itoi has said in the past that the series was meant to be set in some idealized version of America, so it makes sense for Peanuts to be the primary visual inspiration.

[Max Cola]

Note how different the atmosphere of the game is from Earthbound, though. The title music... the use of colors. It sets a very different tone. The oddly straight-faced translation helps this.

Also, it's a lot more wide-open and exploratory than Earthbound. Whereas the sequel was about colorful set pieces and quirky ideas, the original is about wandering across minty green fields, fighting wild animals and looking for lost fragments of a forgotten melody.

This ad really gets the "point", I think. Note the music, which is from the lovely arranged soundtrack that everyone should download/buy immediately.
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The only girl I've ever loved was born with roses in her eyes. But then they buried her alive, one evening 1945, with just her sister at her side, and only weeks before the guns all came and rained on everyone...

[Harveyjames]

BLIMEY, they had their nerve calling it a 'guaranteed masterpiece'.

That's an interesting advert, though. It's funny, because stylistically the game is nothing like that clip. I guess the game is like a haiku and that video is the picture your imagination comes up with when you read it. I guess I'm personally not getting the full flavor of the game because I'm not giving my mind space to wander, crashing through the game as I am at breakneck speed.

What's amazing is I would have thought it unlikely that most people would invest that much imagination into a game where you plod around looking like Charlie Brown in his pitcher's cap, smacking up tigers, lorries, and bag ladies with a baseball bat, with minimal clues to tell you 'this is a work of art'. Funny that the player is expected to invest such an epic sense of wonder into Mother and not into something with a similar tone like I dunno, Bad Street Brawler.

I guess it's because it deals with the classic Hero's Journey archetypes, but translates them to a recognisable setting? It's Star Wars enacted by the cast of Peanuts; and the usual idea that the hero's quest is a metaphor for a young boy's coming of age- yours and his- is made completely explicit, because here is a young boy in what's basically our own planet Earth.

I guess this is 'zen' at work. The game is very content to let us fill in the blanks. The characters barely even speak, or show emotion more complex than the average Pokemon character, and the music wouldn't be out of place in any other NES game of the time. The game only hints, subtley, at the highly charged emotional content it's supposed to have. That it succeeds, and for so many people who play the game, is testament to how well concieved it is. I hope this makes sense! I don't know what I'm talking about, really! I'm just collecting my thoughts.

[Harveyjames]

Wow, the Mother series made Famitsu reader's all-time top 100 games in 2006...

37. Mother 2 (1994)
38. Mother (1989)

Interesting because I thought the series was mostly overlooked over there. Huh. Numbers 1-10 are all Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, though, and I can't stand that crap, so I guess it's not so much a sign of the game having mass appeal as it is a sign that Famitsu is read by dorks.

Actually, number 5 is something called 'Machi'! Who has even heard of this?

[Harveyjames]

Mother 1. HOLY CRAP the dungeons in this game are big. And empty! No keys, no tricks, just one massive maze-like hall, with side rooms leading off it, and just one thing to do inside which is just a matter of flicking a switch. You have to battle through about a billion monsters to get there, though. It took ages!

I'm enjoying this game quite a bit now. Once you get to the train station the whole world opens up to you, and you're really given your freedom. There are a lot of towns to visit, and you can do them in any order. Good times!

[dessgeega]

[Harveyjames]

You can tell in some ways it's just the first draft of Mother 2, though. Like Magicant doesn't have all your old friends in there, living happily, so you don't have quite the same emotional connection to it. You're told 'everyone here loves you!' but it's not clear why.

[dessgeega]

i think the magicant in mother 2 exists just as a throwback to the first game. magicant plays a much more central role in the first game's narrative.
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[Harveyjames]

Yep. It's better 'written' in Mother 2, though, I'd say.

[Max Cola]

Well sure, there's the fill-in-the-blanks thing, and EarthBound has that too. I mean, that's why you get to name the hero and his favorite food and his friends. You kind of invest your personality into the game a little.

Much like its sequel, however, MOTHER has some surprises waiting for you near the end. I like that these games have this hidden dark side that they give you a glimpse at once in a while. I thought I was just imagining it at first, but MOTHER3 confirms that it is indeed there.

Also, I thought these games were some kind of smash hit in Japan? At least, that's what Wikipedia says...
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The only girl I've ever loved was born with roses in her eyes. But then they buried her alive, one evening 1945, with just her sister at her side, and only weeks before the guns all came and rained on everyone...

[Swimmy]

http://mother3.fobby.net/

The fan translation is complete.

Unfortunately, thanks to midterms I don't have a second of spare time to play this until Thursday night. But when I do, oh, I'll be happy.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[Intentionally Wrong]

I noticed my saved games were preserved, albeit with gibberish character names. Kind of disconcerting to jump in to the end of Chapter 7 and be assaulted by English Text on all sides with no appropriate build-up. I've been playing through properly again on and off today. It's pretty excellent.
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Okay!

[Worm]

I have it on my PSP ready for the commute.

True Story: I couldn't beat the final boss of Earthbound and my friend finally explained that I had to pray. I couldn't bring myself to do it and he did it for me, and I thought it was so fucking stupid that I was barely interested in the end.
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Exit stage left, exit stage right, there is no place to run, all the fuses in the exit signs have been BURNT OUT

[Ryan - SuperWes' Bane]

I have a feeling I should have picked up the Mother 1+2 games in Akihabara for the GBA for 999 yen when I had the chance . Maybe they'll have it when I go back!

[silentmatt]

Is it conceivable to play Mother 3 without having played Earthbound or any other prior games in the series?

With school, I don't have tons of time but with all of the hype around Mother 3's translation, I kind of wanted to try it out.

Any hints for a complete newcomer?
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PSN: Twitch_City ||| Wii: 8083 5371 5767 6700
"Jadis, si je me souviens bien, ma vie était un festin où s'ouvraient tous les coeurs, où tous les vins coulaient."

[helicopterp]

Only that I'm right there with you, silentmatt. My big problem right now is figuring out how to get the ROM to save my game.
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[KinokoFry]

Just finished Mother 3, and uh, I'm too lazy to rewrite my thoughts so you'll get a copy-paste of what I wrote in a chat window:

You know, it was a great game, and had some really, really fantastic moments and so, so, so many nice touches that make you think, "Brilliant!". However, in the end, I just didn't connect with it the way I did with Terranigma, for example.

I really do think that it was too linear. And I don't think that's such a dirty word at all. However, this, when I think about it, was probably one of the most linear RPGs I've played. Maybe that's something to do with it, because Terranigma and BoFII really let you explore an enormous amount, and so many things within the game changed depending on your actions.

It's interesting. That sense of connecting with characters and feeling for them was kind of dulled because I just felt like I was jumping through the hoops - or rather, almost standing there and waiting for the hoops to go over me.

I can't say it's necesarilly a failing, for the fact that the way the game is probably works for a lot of people. But for me, all those story elements could have actually carried far, far more weight if the gameplay had made me feel connected. And yet, obviously they took particular care in this game to attempt that. In so many ways, such as giving the game your own name and having it talk to you, etc. Just didn't quite make it there for me.

I wanted more freedom and motivation to explore the world and find the story for myself, but it was always just there, one step in front of me.

[Intentionally Wrong]

[Cycle]

Fry, those are pretty much all the reasons I'm enjoying this game. It should be mentioned I can't stand 99.8% of jrpgs, though.
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[KinokoFry]

Cycle: Really? Well, see, there you go. It works for some.

Just for the record, I did think it was a good game and I absolutely loved a lot of it. I think that it was because so much of it was so great that I found the fucking typicl RPG-ness of it so disappointing.

[daphaknee]

hey i havent been on this site for a really long time hi guys

my big complaint about mother 3 is i didnt carea bout a lot of the characters that you're supposed to care about

is this a spoiler free thread ill be totally vague

[Cycle]

[moonside]