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Mother 3; or when fans give us what companies refuse to...and other examples of devs being IDIOTS

VGEsoterica

Member
I do NOT know what Nintendo's issue is. How much do fans have to ask for a game to be brought to the West until they will listen? Wouldn't Mother 3 with an official translation packaged up nicely on Switch NOT make them some tasty cash? Because Nintendo seems to treat Mother 3 like it's some lost game nobody seems to give AF about, which could not be further from the truth. Literally they could just license the epic fan translation and not even do the work themselves.

So basically...sometimes developers and publishers act like they have their heads planted firmly up their asses and can't see the sunlight or the obvious logical thing to do starting them in the face.

So that's where fans come in...giving us what NintenDONT...Mother 3 in English. Sure it's been out awhile but its always fun to celebrate fans bringing such a great experience to us when the developers / publishers just refuse to do.

But GAF...what are other great examples of devs / companies refusing to give people what they want. It can't just be an exclusive problem to Nintendo even with the whole 'Project Rainfall' deal on Wii

 

justiceiro

Marlboro: Other M
If the fan translation is available for free for anyone to enjoy, and since switch is modable to the point you can get a GBA emulator on the thing to play the game, why Nintendo should bother? Aren't you able to enjoy a game unless it's popular? Or maybe you are resenting Nintendo for not tucking mother franchise at night like all the other cool franchises?
 

VGEsoterica

Member
If the fan translation is available for free for anyone to enjoy, and since switch is modable to the point you can get a GBA emulator on the thing to play the game, why Nintendo should bother? Aren't you able to enjoy a game unless it's popular? Or maybe you are resenting Nintendo for not tucking mother franchise at night like all the other cool franchises?
lol tucking it in?
 

EverydayBeast

thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
Nintendo’s release schedule is tight last year a 2d Metroid was their most important game this year they’re stinking things up as their fans throw hissy fits over hardware.
 
What is this cult mania with this game, there are many games that never got localized but they get not this much of begging. If they were gonna do it they would have done it already, it seems they don't want do it but beggars still are begging.
 

Porcile

Member
It's a pretty dark and bleak game. I just remember being bummed out the entire time I played it. It deals with death and things like depression way waaay more than you would ever imagine a game like this to. Wonderful story and world but I think they realised that there isn't really a mainstream audience for this game in the West, and you know, maybe there isn't actually.
 
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VGEsoterica

Member
It's a pretty dark and bleak game. I just remember being bummed out the entire time I played it. It deals with death and things like depression way waaay more than you would ever imagine a game like this to. Wonderful story and world but I think they realised that there isn't really a mainstream audience for this game in the West, and you know, maybe there isn't actually.
see its some of these themes / subject matter topics that make it feel worth the official port west to me
 
Angry Video Game Nerd Ep about Earthbound was how I learned of the series. Marketing failed to edumacate me.
I dont know if the older game ports would do any better in the US but I suspect a remake or new entry modernised would.
 

VGEsoterica

Member
Angry Video Game Nerd Ep about Earthbound was how I learned of the series. Marketing failed to edumacate me.
I dont know if the older game ports would do any better in the US but I suspect a remake or new entry modernised would.
Earthbound died in North America due to some very poor marketing
 

hemo memo

Gold Member
Nintendo knows the cost to import would not be worth what it would sell for in the US. It isn't stubbornness it is math. They run a business.
Just because they run a business doesn’t mean what they are doing is always right. They were too stupid that fans had go push hard with operation rainfall for them to bring Xenoblade Chronicles to the west. Now it is among their biggest titles. It took them a year and a lot of uncertainty from fans that Fire Emblem Awakening is coming to the west.
 

Dr. Claus

Vincit qui se vincit
Earthbound sold poorly in the west so Nintendo moved on from it. Why would its sequel do any better?

Earthbound flopped at its launch, but it has grown a massive audience in the west to the point where it has become a meme with how common and consistent people ask for Mother 3. The landscape has changed tremendously since the early 90s. Social media alone has changed how we learn and consume info about new, high quality games that come out. Mother 3 would sell *extremely* well.

Not to mention this is the same company that randomly decided to translate and port Mother: Beginnings in the west. Or the first Fire Emblem.
 

Northeastmonk

Gold Member
Bahamut Lagoon, Treasure of the Rudras, Far East of Eden, and Front Mission 5 Scars of the War. Scars of the War is a wonderful game with a cool art cover. I’ve read/heard/watched content about Far East of Eden. It came out on Xbox 360, but only in Japan. All those games I would have owned. I own Scars of the War, which has its own English fan translation. Most of them have English patches.

I think we’ve lost whatever made Working Designs so amazing because developers/publishers don’t want to bother with it. We do get the first Front Mission remade, but Scars of the War was forgotten. The 360 Front Mission and Left Alive don’t even come close to that experience. Maybe they’re just too niche and their value gets overshadowed by mainstream, light hearted anime styles of art in JRPGs. The big picture is that they’re not important enough to take action or invest into making them playable in today’s market. Working Designs isn’t even talked about anymore. Gaijinworks barely scratches that itch and that PSP port of Lunar made the world map a giant menu.
 
It’s a small niche that’s currently serviced just fine without Nintendo’s involvement. Would end up being another example of fans badgering a company for a release and then not supporting it. They shouldn’t waste their time.
 
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VGEsoterica

Member
Bahamut Lagoon, Treasure of the Rudras, Far East of Eden, and Front Mission 5 Scars of the War. Scars of the War is a wonderful game with a cool art cover. I’ve read/heard/watched content about Far East of Eden. It came out on Xbox 360, but only in Japan. All those games I would have owned. I own Scars of the War, which has its own English fan translation. Most of them have English patches.

I think we’ve lost whatever made Working Designs so amazing because developers/publishers don’t want to bother with it. We do get the first Front Mission remade, but Scars of the War was forgotten. The 360 Front Mission and Left Alive don’t even come close to that experience. Maybe they’re just too niche and their value gets overshadowed by mainstream, light hearted anime styles of art in JRPGs. The big picture is that they’re not important enough to take action or invest into making them playable in today’s market. Working Designs isn’t even talked about anymore. Gaijinworks barely scratches that itch and that PSP port of Lunar made the world map a giant menu.
Working Designs nailed it back in the day
 

VGEsoterica

Member
Just because they run a business doesn’t mean what they are doing is always right. They were too stupid that fans had go push hard with operation rainfall for them to bring Xenoblade Chronicles to the west. Now it is among their biggest titles. It took them a year and a lot of uncertainty from fans that Fire Emblem Awakening is coming to the west
this is very true. And we'd have never had Xenoblade otherwise

Sure fans aren't always right...but they aren't always wrong either. Imagine a world in which Mother 3 was sanitized a touch, given an official translation...and it sold well? Could end up with the number 4 getting thrown into the mix
 
I wonder how many Mother 3 english repro carts have been sold over the years. Wouldn't shock me at all if it's managed to outsell some legitimate releases Nintendo had for the GBA.
 

Rayderism

Member
Why don't they just put the fan translated ROM on their e-shop? It's not like they haven't used pirated ROMs before.
 

anothertech

Member
Responses are ludicris lol

It's ok guys. Some people like things others don't care about. You don't have to defend things that haven't happened lol

I too would like an official version. But alas, we live in the current reality of this life simulation. The timeline where Nintendo actually has the most powerful hardware and all their shit together is a few jumps away.
 

AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
I feel like if Nintendo were to actually go to the lengths of translating Mother3 themselves they would proceed to charge you an arm and a leg for it. Just play the fan translation, I'm gonna be doing that at some point.
 

Shut0wen

Member
Theres no way in hell mother 3 would make money, reggie gave us a perfect and logical explanation as to why it never has been released and and with todays political climate its never gunna happen, probably cost them more fixing these issues then the profits theyd make off it
 

Shut0wen

Member
Responses are ludicris lol

It's ok guys. Some people like things others don't care about. You don't have to defend things that haven't happened lol

I too would like an official version. But alas, we live in the current reality of this life simulation. The timeline where Nintendo actually has the most powerful hardware and all their shit together is a few jumps away.
Reggie explained why its never been rereleased, has nothing to do with nintendo not wanting to or anything to do with profits just that its a morbid kids game which has men in drags which wouldn't go down with the kids these days
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
Earthbound died in North America due to some very poor marketing
Earthbound died because it was a 1994 game looking like a 1991 game. Coming a few months after Super Metroid and a few months before Donkey Kong Country, and with the first Mother game never being released in America, EB would have moved very small numbers even if Nintendo had somehow managed to market it right. And even the best marketing in the world would have clashed with the game’s reality, its poor technical quality and its distinctive Japanese zaniness. There was no place for this series in America in 1994.

Of course, the first two Mother games looked like crap on purpose (Mother 1 was a 1989 game looking much older than that), but that was completely lost on western audiences.

Releasing Mother 3 officially in any state or form would be the perfect damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation for Nintendo.
They keep the Magypsies as they are? The Twitter activists are gonna go nuclear.
They change the Magypsies to something less likely to cause outrage? The hardcore fans are gonna call them cowards, and the Twitter activists are gonna call them cowards too for shying away from “representation” that they’d go nuclear on if it was kept in.
The official translation would also get checked line for line, word for word by the nerds who’ve played the fan translation to death, and you can bet your ass they’d find so many things to bitch about. AM2R is a good precedent for this kind of stuff.

That said, Nintendo are exactly the people who’d announce the whole trilogy in English tomorrow if they fancied it.
 

Vandole

Member
I've always thought the reason Nintendo didn't drop their legal teams hammer down on the translation or sites that offered up the game, is it's their way of saying "go ahead and play it." I know their options are limited, because technically it was just a translation patch, but Nintendo goes out of their way to stop projects they don't like, and I'm sure they could have done something to put the brakes on it had they wanted to.

On another note, for anyone who hasn't played the translation, go out and do it. The the game is a masterpiece. I say that as someone who wasn't a tremendous fan of EarthBound at the time.
 
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