The Gamer's Quarter

[Harveyjames]

Right, gang, we can do this.

As you must now be aware, the translation team currently patching Mother 3 have been up to some freaky shit lately. Clicking on the icon of Mr Saturn on their front page takes you to this blog, which appears to be a series of cryptic riddles. It is assumed that solving them will allow you access to a beta version of the Mother 3 patch, since some software companies use similar methods to audition beta testers, but it's not a sure thing. Whatever the reward at the end, this is too much fun to ignore.

The first post on the blog reads ' I also need to remember to find out the password for my favourite forum's account', and this is mentioned a couple of other times throughout the blog. I assume this refers to the mother3.org forums, meaning an important part of the puzzle must be to work out this guy's username and password and log on to his account. (Perhaps his instant messages hold some sort of clue? That's my guess.)

UPDATE: scanning the forum's members list reveals a user called 'Muffin Man', who has been banned... is his the password we have to guess, or is he just some kid?

Some riddles have been solved for us, which if nothing else gives us an insight into how the question setter's minds work, which will be useful later on. It has been revealed that the correct password for this page is 'kiwibird'. This was alluded to by the name of the html page - 'marking'. The mysterious marking on the wall mentioned in the blog on Sept 30th is shaped vaguely like a kiwi bird. That it is a Kiwi Bird (and not a one-legged tortoise, or something) is confirmed to the player by the (fictional?) blogger's location: Stewart Island, New Zealand.

Also, on this page, also linked to on the front page, 'tack nothing onto the end of the number of mothers and the day of the pass-insertion will be...' obviously refers to the 30th of the month, and that's when the marking.htm page with password encryption was linked on the blog.

The clue to examine the walls and see the marking might have been alluded to on edat.txt, too:

'the walls are bare,
there's nothing there.
just sit and stare,
look everywhere.'

I think the 'date squares' referred to in the same document might refer to calender squares, too, which are a recurring motif of the puzzle. This is pretty much all I've got, but I'm stranded away from home with nothing but the internet to keep me company right now, so I will continue to work on this tonight at least.

What have you guys got? Let's pool our resources. Some upstart fansubbers are no match for the collected brains of the Gamer's Quarter!

[Harveyjames]

As I was typing that, edat.txt changed. A line that was previously just a string of letters ( I made out that the word 'password' was jumbled up in there, but that's as much as I got) just unravelled itself and now reads 'there will be a password'.

However, the phrase 'where are ?password? found? where are ?password? made?' has vanished.

This puzzle is alive! Exciting!

I think the ?password? bit is algebraic. Whatever the password is, it has to fit in that sentence. eg. 'Where are muffins made?'

UPDATE:

One of the comments on the blog contains a hidden youtube address containing more clues: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TzGW0eIVCc

[Harveyjames]

BUMP

Don't you like videogames? GET SLEUTHING ALREADY

[simplicio]

Prediction: There is no translation, just an eager group of suckers buying into an ARG.

[Sushi d]

hmm.

a mother 3 translation is serious business.

if they're gonna be playing games like this than there's no point in waiting for a patch from them.
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X_X

[dessgeega]

i'm a little put off by these antics as well.
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[Harveyjames]

Boooo.

I think the opposite. I think it shows that they're that confident they've done a good job on their nearly-finished translation, they can play about and do things like this.

Since the ARG is smart, literate, well-conceived, and in the spirit of Shigesato Itoi, it gives me high hopes for the translation patch.

[Nana Komatsu]

I always wanted to play in an ARG, until I realized the ones I hear about all just marketing scams and the real ARGs don't let on they're happening until they're over.

[Lockeownzj00]

I love the idea of these immersive games, and I always like to (try and) participate, but the truth is, I just suck. It's similar for me in adventure games--although in those I can usually discern what to do after a little while. In these "real world" ones, I just flounder around pretending I understand what I'm supposed to do next.

So I'll help. I'll try, at least.

On a side note, I was playing Mother 3 in JP a ways back...it was going well for a few minutes, and then there was so few kanji and so many strange colloquialisms that muh brain 'sploded.

PS(2): the mother sites (2/3) don't work fer me? what's up with that?

[Ketch]

Mother reminds me a lot of Psychonauts, in the way that they put an imaginative new spin on a tired genre.

[Harveyjames]

Or took a tired genre and used it to tell a story actually worth telling.

[dessgeega]

hey what up my hoborgs.

good news.
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[Lackey]

Wow, this is a pretty impressive demonstration of fan productivity.
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| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

[dessgeega]

so is this.
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[SuperWes]

So that's pretty exciting. I hope it forces Nintendo to announce an official release.

-Wes
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[Isfet]

an official release would always be the hope (as i'd love to actually own a real, English-language copy of this game), but it would appear as if NOA really has no idea what to do with the game. at this point, though, i trust anything that AGTP puts out as being pretty authentic.

[Harveyjames]

NOA's localisation guy said he has no idea if they're working on a Mother 3 translation, but hasn't heard anything of it. I doubt it, since they'd have to devote a lot of manpower to getting Mother 3 translated, since there is a lot of text, written with much delicacy and nuance. From a business point of view it wouldn't be worth the investment just for a GBA game which didn't even sell well in Japan.

Those Mother3.net guys kind of gave up on their ARG thing, but the translation seems to be progressing smoothly. Apparently it's one woman translating the whole thing who has nothing to do with the rest of the Mother3.net guys, who are just handling the technical side of things. This should provide some comfort to those turned off by their ARG shenanigans.

[Tablesaw]