(NOTE: Don’t miss the update below this one)
Jeffman (and I assume Exophase?) worked through the night and got battle text variable width font working well 
There are still difficult issues to work out with the battle text, mainly right now we can only have 44 characters per box (which isn’t enough) and I guess the level up text is crazy now. Very cool nonetheless!
The hacking side of things is still looking to be pretty tough, but possibly not for too much longer. More info in a bit.
First though is this. sblur 8-bit-ified the [ITEM] control code that’s used in the main script, meaning that item names now appear properly when you open gift boxes and in other situations where item names are displayed in the main script. That might not sound like much, but it definitely helps a lot when going around trying to test/play the game 
Here’s a before and after!
Sometimes the littlest of things can have such a big impact.
A couple things to discuss, but progress-wise, not much has happened.
First, check out reid’s interview here:
These are full of info. Check them out! Do it!
OK, anyway, about this project.
Very tired today, but wanted to show/talk about a couple things real quick.
Nothing too much to report at the moment. I went through a little more of the first draft script, it’s now standing between 92 and 93%. I’m pretty busy this weekend and early next week though, so that last bit will probably have to wait to be done at the end of the week. Most of the text left is Chapter 2 stuff and stuff at the very end of the game.
Hacking-wise, I can’t remember if I mentioned it earlier or not, but we’ve enlisted the help of a really awesome guy to help with stuff. For now he wishes to remain unnamed. But anyway, his hacking powers are formidable. Also, Dr. Fedora is busy with school and work and has decided to step away from the project, but I expect we’ll still see him around often. Stuff like this is hard to actually “quit” from At the very least, much of his hard work and suggestions will be used in the final translation.
Things are still coming along well. I’ve been a little distracted these past few days but will be coming up to the 90%s of the first draft soon. My sleep schedule’s suddenly gone even more berserk lately too. Need to get that in proper order. It’s already 5:30 in the morning, yikes.
Anyway, I usually strive for 2 updates or so a week. Nothing too particularly new to show this time, though some hacking breakthroughs have been made already, and it looks like some of the hardest stuff is in the process of being hacked up excellently.
A lot of people have asked about what this project’s goal is — for some reason some people think it’s to create a text file translation. It’s not, it’s going to be a patch you can apply to a Japanese MOTHER 3 ROM to turn everything into English. You can then play this on your emulator… or if you have the right equipment, you can even play it on a real system! That includes the original Game Boy Advance, the GBA SP, a Nintendo DS, a DS Light, a GBA Micro, and even the Game Boy Player accessory you can attach to a GameCube, which lets you play GBA games on your TV. Lots of options there!
To sort of demonstrate this, I made a short video of a very early version of our translation running on a GB Player. The main script routine still hasn’t been 8-bit-ified yet, so all the main text in this video is still in Japanese. But as before, lots of battle / menu / items / music player stuff has been hacked somewhat. Again, it’s all very early. But anyway, this video shows stuff working on a real system.
(NOTE: This video is stuff from the very beginning of the first chapter of the game. There are no real big story spoilers, but view at your own discretion of course.)
Welp, MOTHER stuff has finally, officially been revealed in Super Smash Bros. Brawl! Yahoo! For more info, visit here! Right now it’s just the Franklin Badge, which is in all three MOTHER games, but the badge was important enough in MOTHER 3 that it was an extra goody you could get if you preordered and got the MOTHER 3 Deluxe Box way back when
This was actually the news I was hinting to a few days ago. We got a crazy awesome secret info radar known as “r.e.i.d.m.a.n”, which probably stands for something but I dunno what. It picks up secret signals from Japan. Suffice to say, it’s a sure bet MOTHER 3 stuff is going to be in this game. Even without inside info, it’s already been confirmed that there’s MOTHER 3 music in the game, and even MOTHER 3’s main composer is a main composer for SSBB (and for Melee too, incidentally). Itoi has also stopped by Nintendo’s Japan headquarters recently for stuff. Also, the Franklin Badge shown is the MOTHER 3 one, with its white background, as opposed to MOTHER 1’s gold background.
Boo. Nothing really mind-shattering in this update. Most of the progress in the past few weeks has just been in the translation department, so there’s really not much new stuff to show. Showing the same old battle pics gets old quick. Still, hopefully we’ll have some more hacking done in the near future. This project page is pretty boring without new visual media
MOTHER 3 is the sequel to MOTHER 2 (also called EarthBound). It is a GBA RPG that was released in Japan in April 2006. Nintendo has made it clear that they do not intend to translate the game, so we, the fans, have begun our own translation.
It is done. See here.
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