Mother 3, EarthBound's Japan-exclusive successor, is one of the most sought-after RPGs that never got a North American translation. Fans have demanded one for years, but new information reveals it isn't that simple. Read on to learn more.
Shigesato Itoi Weighs In on Mother 3 Localization Efforts
Mother 3 is a hot inclusion in the "Must Play List" of many RPG fans around the world, but its lack of an official English translation has left it inaccessible for many players outside of Japan. One might think that a translation effort wouldn’t be that hard, but series creator Shigesato Itoi revealed in a recent interview that it’s a lot more complicated than it sounds.
After years of silence on the community discourse involving Mother 3’s English translation, Itoi finally weighed in on the topic for the EarthBound, USA documentary, saying he would "love for people in the U.S. to play Mother 3."
"I've talked about it with Nintendo before. Apparently, they were presented with the offer to use the translation, but they said it wasn't quite as simple as that. I think it'd be really interesting if they took up the offer," Itoi elaborated. "But doing it with software, I believe there'd be a chance to make something that would be better than what the company could have made on their own."
"Usually, when I'm done with something, I'm done with it for good. You can't give up on projects you are in the middle of, but when you put an end to something, it's best to just leave it alone. The older you get, the more stories there are for you."
Nintendo’s Business Needs Prevented Mother 3’s English Release
Historically speaking, Itoi hasn’t been the only prominent member of the EarthBound dev team to speak out about the game’s lack of English translations. Shinichi Kameoka, Mother 3’s producer, in an interview with Nintendo last year said that he’d "also love to see Mother 3 released in the U.S. and Europe." He also noted that he continues to wait for the game’s worldwide English release to this day.
Despite the creator and producer expressing support for an English translation and Nintendo reportedly receiving an offer to do so, what’s preventing Mother 3’s English release?
Former Nintendo president Reggie Fils-Aimé provided our best answer to that question in a 2022 interview with Bloomberg. In it, he stated that the decision to not localize Mother 3 was "based on the business needs and the business situation at the time."
Fan Attempts at Localizing Mother 3
Disappointment aside, North American fans of the Mother series - EarthBound to everyone outside of Japan - have shown great impetus and undertook the difficult task of translating the game themselves. Led by Clyde "Tomato" Mandelin, a professional game translator who’d previously worked on Kingdom Hearts II, the Mother 3 fan translation team took around 2 years and thousands of work hours to complete the project.
The venture was a lot more difficult than initially anticipated, as the game simply wasn’t coded for an English translation. Mandelin and his crew ended up having to hack the game data to make the English translation of the game’s manuscript fit - an effort that Young, the crew’s public relations officer, likened to "teaching someone another language by slowly altering their DNA bit by bit, through trial and error".
The localization patch was released in October 2008 after a 2-year effort by Mandelin’s 5-man crew. While this fan project does prove that a translation was possible - with a small crew, no less - it also proves it isn’t as simple as running the game’s script through Google Translate. Mandelin had to rebuild the game’s code from the ground up to accommodate foreign characters, and we presume an official translation would entail just as much, if not more, manpower to accomplish.
The ball is in Nintendo’s court now. Only time will tell if they’ll act on the opportunity to translate one of their most awaited English releases, or if their business needs will prevail once more. You can always whet your appetite using the fan translated version for the time being.
Sources:
Nintendo's lack of Mother 3 localisation was business decision, Reggie Fils-Aimé insists
Mother 3 producer wants to see the game have an English release
