Played Mother 3 - for the first time in probably a decade

[Niggs Monaghan]

>Man, what a good game, I should play it again
>Haha, what a fun family-oriented game
>Oh right it's really sad in the beginning
>Actually an incredibly red pilling radicalizing story but with the message that the human spirit is strong and will overcome
>Tfw
What did Shigesato Itoi mean by this?

Also I can see why it'll never be released in America anymore. They missed their window where it would have been alright to have heiling pigs, kids taking hallucinogenic mushrooms and "haha fags are child predators, get it?" jokes.

I'm also really appreciating that timeless translation/localization the fans made. So well translated that some of the jokes are just complete non-jokes in English. Gives it that quirky old video gamey, Earthbound feeling.

 

[Niggs Monaghan]

Oh yeah and 3/4 view Boney is so funny looking

I'll add some more thoughts and things I find funny/interesting as I keep playing if anyone gives a shit.
The sprite work in this game is really great for GBA. The animations were so smooth.

 

[anliteralidiot]

I really enjoyed the rhythm mechanic, and the message about laughing, even when shit is bleak.

 

[Brain Power]

I hate that I got it spoiled while looking for completely unrelated shit. Completely ruined the fun.

 

[Niggs Monaghan]

I really enjoyed the rhythm mechanic, and the message about laughing, even when shit is bleak.

I'm so fucking bad at the rhythm thing. I have good rhythm IRL for songs but the heartbeats are so weird and I can never really hear them unless the enemy is asleep.

I hate that I got it spoiled while looking for completely unrelated shit. Completely ruined the fun.

That sucks. I'm pretty sure I got a whole lot spoiled for me too back in the day.
Idk what it is about the whole Mother series but it attracted very autistic/obnoxious fans, unfortunately... I'm noticing a similar thing with Smiling Friends fans re:social retardation and spoilers.

 

[Fagnacious D]

They should have used the term "Fairy" instead of "Magypsy". It would make more sense and be funnier.

 

[Peanut Butter in Peril]

Been a hot minute since I've played Mother 3. An excellent follow up to Earthbound, even if it never did make to Western markets. It would be nice to see those games remastered and (re)released. Unfortunately you'd have to get the big N to give a shit about anything not Mario or Zelda and somehow prevent current year sensibilities from molesting the charm out of them.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

I haven't played it since the fan translation first dropped. I will probably play it again eventually, but unlike Earthbound I never felt too compelled to replay it.

Unfortunately you'd have to get the big N to give a shit about anything not Mario or Zelda and somehow prevent current year sensibilities from molesting the charm out of them.

What NoA would do to Mother 3 would make TTYD HD look based by comparison.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

Been a hot minute since I've played Mother 3. An excellent follow up to Earthbound, even if it never did make to Western markets. It would be nice to see those games remastered and (re)released. Unfortunately you'd have to get the big N to give a shit about anything not Mario or Zelda and somehow prevent current year sensibilities from molesting the charm out of them.

I don't think so. My gripe with Mother 3 is that it takes a lot of the buildup in EarthBound, all the Pokey "revenge against Ness" (though to be honest, that came upon suddenly in EarthBound too), all the weird shit like the Apple of Enlightenment and the otherworldly forces at play, and then throws all that out the window for a story of its own. The problem is that said story isn't well-fleshed out or developed, and comes across as one of the most incomplete, poorly-paced Nintendo games ever.

As a result I can never decide between "Mother 3 is overrated trash" and "I can't judge Mother 3 because it's not the game Itoi promised and it is only half of what's there". It's kind of like judging The Thief and the Cobbler on what was actually released in 1992.

 

[Arcade Gannon]

My gripe with Mother 3 is that it takes a lot of the buildup in EarthBound, all the Pokey "revenge against Ness" (though to be honest, that came upon suddenly in EarthBound too), all the weird shit like the Apple of Enlightenment and the otherworldly forces at play, and then throws all that out the window for a story of its own.

The Apple of Enlightenment foresaw the destined events of Mother 2, up to Giygas's defeat. It had no purpose after that, and was probably left abandoned by Porky and the aliens.
Ness is probably dead in Mother 3. If Porky didn't kill him, he would have died in the collapse of global human society.

"I can't judge Mother 3 because it's not the game Itoi promised and it is only half of what's there".

I think Mother 3 told the story Itoi wanted to tell. What do you think was missing?

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

I think Mother 3 told the story Itoi wanted to tell. What do you think was missing?

A lot was cut from what I recall, not just in terms of content but presentation and such, it was downscaled across the board from an ambitious game down to something more simple. I think the broad strokes are there at least.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

I think Mother 3 told the story Itoi wanted to tell. What do you think was missing?

Both content and presentation were cut. Whole chapters, whole sequences (apparently only Chapter 1 was actually in a semi-finished state in the N64 version and there's stuff cut there too). Even if you knew nothing about the development cycle and what was mentioned in interviews, having the story explained to you in a giant wall of text while Satie's Gymnopédie No.1 plays, it should clue you in on the fact that there's something missing.

 

[Locker Boy]

You blessed yourself with true kino my fren. It's bitter sweet that the only way to play it in the west is through emulation. Although, I don't think my heart could handle Mother 3 being thrown through the current year DEI slop machine to be more "acceptable" to a western audience.

 

[Coolio55]

I hate that I got it spoiled while looking for completely unrelated shit. Completely ruined the fun.

That sucks but on the grand scale of things I don't think it's actually such a big deal.
MOTHER 3 is a really *really* fucking good game, even if you know what happens. It's all about the little details.

 

[The Lawgiver]

You blessed yourself with true kino my fren. It's bitter sweet that the only way to play it in the west is through emulation. Although, I don't think my heart could handle Mother 3 being thrown through the current year DEI slop machine to be more "acceptable" to a western audience.

If you go to game conventions or computer shows there's used copies sometimes with the english patch manually hacked into the cart or repro carts with the english version on them. The former I missed a shot at getting but a few years ago before lockdown hell I got the latter. Never got around to playing it on them but from what I've heard it's better than emulation in terms of experience.

I hate that I got it spoiled while looking for completely unrelated shit. Completely ruined the fun.

I got spoiled back when it came out and the only footage of it was online gameplay in japanese lmao. People thought it was gonna be released int he US but then it wasn't even translated with the reason being "shifting focus away from the gba" IIRC. Meanwhile the DS had a GBA port and GBA games kept coming out so basically it just got fucked similarly to the original NES earthbound minus there being a translation ready to go.

 

[Rome's rightful successor]

You can't bring up Mother 3 without that one very special moment that all gamers never forget.

 

[The Lawgiver]

You can't bring up Mother 3 without that one very special moment that all gamers never forget.
View attachment 6116908

Sometimes I wonder how exactly unused sprites and flashback cutscenes from the final stretch would look if they had time to implement them before release. I know there's vids trying to approximate it but still.

 

[Niggs Monaghan]

Being Flint is suffering.
Your wife dies, your good son goes missing and the only way to find him is by following directions from your kooky retarded father in law.
She's been buried in the ground only a few hours and he's already starting this shit.

Something about this does feel relatable though.
Just when you're in one of the worst times of your life the only person you can rely on is acting like a retard. I guess he's dealing with his daughter's death in his own way.
The maygpsies... I'll probably have a more concrete thing to say about them later.

A couple of them having a sort of elf-like disdain for humoids being based despite living short lives, even for children, comes as a shock even for Alec.
Even a human feels something for a baby animal, even if it only lives a few years. Though I guess not all of them, especially the monkey-haters. Speaking of monkey-haters ...
Fassad introducing money to Tazmily. A lot of this game is making me feel brain-rotted with Terminal Onlineness but the comparison to troons and Jews is just there. It's just there.
The introduction of fear and doubt and technology to a high trust society is truly an evil thing.
So the part I left off at is when Wess joins Duster to go back to Osohe castle. I don't have much to say about the castle/Duster part besides that it's very fun, I'm enjoying it, and Mind of a Thief is one of my favorite all time songs.

 

[Postmodernist Disaster]

Also I can see why it'll never be released in America anymore. They missed their window where it would have been alright to have heiling pigs, kids taking hallucinogenic mushrooms and "haha fags are child predators, get it?" jokes.

In adition to that, Moon Channel (Yes, we know the guy is probably pozzed as hell by now) did a video early on his channel on why M3 cannot be released in the west to this day. Although thankfully he didn't go into a lefty tangent about the game's contents and how it'd too problematic for modern DIE sensibilites, he did made a good point:

Most of the game's OST, just like Earthbound is very derivative or even directly sampled at times some well known western bands like the Beatles, Beach Boys, etc. However the main difference between EB and M3 is that M3 is directly derivative from some of those songs the composers took inspiration from. Therefore Nintendo was probably afraid of releasing the game in the US just for record labels to dogpile on them the moment the game went live.

Why didn't they made a different OST then for an internation release then? Probably it'd too much effort and time consuming for a game that still wasn't well known in the west at that time, in a console that was about to be phased out in favor of its successor and wouldn't have sold much anyways.

Tl:dr: The OST was bordering on ripoffs from some well known artists in the US and it presented too much of a risk for Nintendo to secure a western release for the game in an already old console.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

The introduction of fear and doubt and technology to a high trust society is truly an evil thing.

Yeah, for the "HURR DURR CAPITALISM IS BAD" thinking, isn't also the idea that immigration/replacement also bad? Basically, you have "others" move into an area and start the calling the shots. There's a theory that this was an analogy to Americans in Japan after World War II, which wasn't quite "immigration" but they made some rather radical cultural changes, which a lot of people were unhappy about.

The problem is that for whatever themes are in the game, they tend to get washed out by the game's lopsided structure and midwit interpretations. In fact, given the massive faggotry that infests the Mother 3 fanbase, I'm surprised that some troons aren't making their own attempt at "re-localizing" the game.