EB fans rock + other little updates
Things are still moving slowly this week but still have some things to report on and talk about.
First — and I should really add this to the FAQ page — there will be no way to get the final English translation patch to work on an official MOTHER 3 cartridge. Game cartridges are (for the most part) all read-only memory (ROM), meaning that it’s impossible to alter the contents of the cartridge. The only way to play the final translation will be via emulator, or by using what’s called a “flash cart” or a “flash card”, which will allow you to play the translation on a real GBA/DS/GB Player. Detailed discussion of these devices will lead into pirate land though, plus I don’t know much about them, so please consult your local search engine for more details. Just know that there is NO way to put the translation on an official cartridge, unless you’re an electrical engineer with lots of money to spare. Owning the offical cartridge MIGHT fix any moral issues one might have with playing a fan translation, though.
Next up is progress. Not much has happened this week — everyone on the team has busy lives in the real world, and school’s started up for a few people on the team, too. Usually projects like this will have at least one person with lots of extra time, but oddly enough that’s not the case for this one. This is all being done in our spare time, so I’m kind of shocked at the progress made in the last month and a half. In any case, I’m hoping to try to prioritize things and keep things going. Don’t wanna lose our momentum here π I hope to get a lot of work on Draft 2 done in the next couple weeks, though I’m swamped with real life translation work, plus I’m already really busy trying to put together stuff for Itoi and other people in Japan. We’re all so busy.
Oh, forgot to mention that last night, we hit 5000 e-mail notification signups. In like only 6 weeks or so. What’s surprising is that we haven’t even been actively advertising the sign-up thing, like we would have with a petition, yet we’re getting the same numbers (or even better numbers) than we did with any of our petitions. Man, Nintendo constantly drops the ball when it comes to EarthBound/MOTHER games.
Like I mentioned before, I like to shoot for a couple updates a week — and not only to show progress and keep people informed, but also because it helps keep me constantly reminded about the progress of the project. It helps keep me (and probably us) focused.
Been thinking about it, and I’ll probably not post so many pics of the main script in action for a while. I’m already trying to avoid entire sections of the game altogether, and most of the text in the game messes up when the line-length-extender is on, so that really limits what screens I can and can’t take. I have just a few more after this, and after that, I’ll probably not post any more main script pics until more hacking has been finished in that department. There’ll still be menu pics, battle pics, etc. as work on that gets done though.
The MOTHER 3 for $14.90 sale ends in 1 day and 17 hours from the time of this post. So don’t delay if you want a real copy to call your own! Incidentally, Starmen.Net only makes a few cents off of each purchase made through that link, the translation team gets nothing of it. No money is (or will be) involved with this project.
Here are some random links for people who are bored today π
- Itoi’s “Welcome to MOTHER 3 World” site (Translated)
- MOTHER 3 Love Theme (from Itoi’s site)
- A remix of the MOTHER 3 Love theme (not sure who made it)
- Another good remix of the MOTHER 3 Love Theme (by Sephy)
- EarthBound 64 Preview Video
- Some more even earlier EB64 footage
- MOTHER 3 Commercial #1 (only watch this one, the other ones got tiny spoilers!)
- Cool video for EB fans
- Some of the stuff Itoi says here applies to nowadays too π
- A cool EarthBound thing me and Kevin translated months ago
- Reggie talks about MOTHER 3 (sorta)
- A good EB article, almost sounds like *my* story :O
Hopefully that’ll keep people busy this lazy Sunday afternoon π OK back to work I go!
Looks like you changed Boney’s name. Were the other screenshots older? They’re all in hiragana or katakana for that one guy.
Looks like the larger letters like y’s are still getting clipped, though. Hope the hackers figure out a way to fix it all soon!
The character name boxes still do need lots of hacking, but for characters you name, the names show up right (though their VWF doesn’t work yet). In fact, in the video on the sidebar, you can see that Lucas’ namebox has his correct name too. The NPC names are all translated, but it’s because of hacking issues that they don’t work just yet.
EDIT: And yeah, I’m hoping we can make things like that y look less ugly by moving the text up one pixel. Same problem is with the name boxes in battle.
Cool, but the large characters like “Y” needs to fix.
Cool,cool stuff. This update beats most of the things that has happened this sunday, but on the other hand, they always do. Keep up the good work!
These screenshots make me want to make my first PK-Call’n, but, as others have said: it’s Sunday. π
That flash thing was awesome. It gave me goosebumps.
I am psyched. So i’ma play through mother 1 and 2 while i’m waiting for this to be finished. Keep up the good work, i always look forward to these updates.
brilliant as usual mato keep up the good work
Oh yeah, in the movie, what IS that thing? A shark? A kangaroo? A sharkaroo? A kangashark?
A Fan: Check out Itoi’s preview site π http://starmen.net/mother3/mother3world/
More specifically to answer your question, see: http://starmen.net/mother3/mother3world/monster.html
I’m glad I found this blog today, otherwise I would have missed out on that buying opportunity. I’m usually stingy with my money but I made an exception to support Mother 3/etc.
Also, I wanted to share this info I found on Play-Asia while I was ordering my copy:
http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/1858/playasiazc1.gif
Don’t get your hopes up though, it’s probably only so popular because of the offer that was going on this week.
Heh yeah, we’ve been watching various charts and stuff for M3’s sales on PlayAsia. It’s really incredible that people will import a game they can’t even read because they love the series that much. When you consider the people who don’t know about PlayAsia’s stuff, the people who still refuse to buy it because it’s in Japanese, and just your more casual players, it really feels like the game could have sold pretty decently had it been released in English.
It’s only charts like this that number munchers at companies understand though, so I’ll just add that one to our growing collection π
Good screen shots,its also good to know that all the npc names are all translated and thanks for all those good mother links.
Man, im gonna play the hell outta this game (which i snagged yesterday)with a translation walkthrough when i get it in the mail THEN, im gonna play through your english version when its out THEN, im gonna go back and play through my actual mother 3 cart again, this time with all storyline knowledge fresh in my mind. Can not wait.
Hah! I got it right with Kangashark! Now I just can’t wait for that magic .IPS file.
I’d try to play it in Japanese, but I fear that I’d spoil all the plot while missing all the fun nuances of the game. And that’s assuming I could handle much more than battle. There are no less than 12 books on Japanese right behind me (5 dictionaries, one for particles, one for kanji stroke order, and three general ones; a textbook; a grammar reference; a kanji memorization book; a kana writing practice book; and three different books to explain how culture interacts with the language) but the last game I tried to play in Japanese confounded the hell out of me. I feel lucky if I understand 5% of the words without looking them up, and those are just the ones I can easily read (i.e. in hiragana).
Eeep! How do people learn this? I feel like I could spend 20 years reading and have trouble getting past γγγ«γ‘γ …
Does anyone know the name of the song in this link:
http://kevin.fobby.net/smnet/mother2flash/mother2.html
And wheter I can find some sheet music?
Thanks
Why don’t you just make the g, p, y and q letters one pixel shorter? It would make a bit more sense rather than just hacking the game even more so that the letters will be moved up by one pixel. And I personally don’t think that the game has to have a 100% accurate Earthbound-Font.
That would at least be the way I would make it, if I could ever hack any game like that π
Oh, and something I wanted to ask you guys:
Will you release your tools for translating the game after you finished translating it?
In order to make translations to other languages of course. I’m from Germany, and I would like to see someone translating it in German (although I have no problem in understanding the English language).
V-King: Yeah, from the very start I’ve always had other-language translations in mind, but it’s REALLY too early to say anything for sure. There are lots of technical problems and there might not be any font space left (Jeffman can maybe talk more about that), plus the current English script just baaaaaaaaarely fits into the ROM, so we still might have to do compression and other stuff. So things could get more complicated.
I’d really like to work with other translators to create translations into other languages, though. Hopefully we can make it happen.
Geez, quit bugging the team about font errors! People keep pointing it out like they’re informing the team about it. Do you really think the team can work on this for hours at a time and not notice something blatantly obvious like y’s getting cut off? They obviously know about it, but it’s clearly a lower priority than game-crashing bugs!
The team has been kind enough to post frequent progress, which is doing something I haven’t seen very many fan translators do. I would hate for them to shy away from that because they’re tired of writing, “It’ll be fixed in the final version.” The FAQ says it best:
“I noticed something weird in a screenshot!
The screenshots posted on this site are development screenshots and not the final version. The point of them is to show the progress of the hacking. If you see something in a screenshot that doesnβt seem right, weβre probably already fully aware of it and donβt need to be notified about it.”
Nuff said.
None at all? So I can’t even delete all the data on the Mother 3 cart and then upload the patched ROM? Because I can get a flash cart, but it would be way cooler on the actual labeled game
Writing data to Read-Only Memory = I-M-P-O-S-S-I-B-L-E
You could just take apart your mother 3 cart and try and squeeze the innards of a flash card inside of it. I’ve been thinking about doing this myself but think i will settle for just making a sticker for the flash cart IF i can actually get one. Besides, tearing apart this game would probably make me cry. Just be sure that its a flash cart whose save functions dont require battery charge up. Apparently, half of em need to be linked up to the pc through usb every few days to maintain save files and yeah, i dont think standard gba carts have fat usb outlets on the side so unless you wanted to lose your save every 2-3 days, choose wisely…if you were going to do all that crap i just talked about.
You’d probably end up with a $200 piece of dead circuitry if you tried any of that, but be my guest. It’s a freeish country.
I’d be happy if I could just play the game in english
Awww that animation you guys did the translation work for is so adorable and sweet. Since I didn’t see a link anywhere in the credits or whatnot, do you remember where it came from originally? I’d love to see some of their other stuff if they have any (even if it’s not in English! It’s not like language barriers have stopped EB fans in the past,haha.)
Anyway. Keep up the wonderful work, guys.
Oh yeah, PS:
q335r49 – The music that plays in the animation would be “Home Sweet Home.” (I think the instrumentation is slightly different from the game version but that’s definitely what the song is.) It plays inside Ness’ house. Deadally has a 2-part sheet music for it posted here: http://starmen.net/fanmusic/gallery.php?ret=nothing&box49481FirstLetter=D
I can’t help but observe that letters [in the dialogue of the translation] such as “y” and “g” are slightly cut-off at the bottom. I hope you guys aren’t going to disregard this; the text is legible, but noticeably imperfect. D:
I’m watching the mail… I got a brand-new copy of Mother 3, an EZFlash III flash card, and a shiny new Gameboy Micro on the way. I cannot wait! Thank you all again so much!
Thanks carrie! I love discovering these new old songs — its a guilty pleasure to be sure
Yeah, the comments about the font stuff are getting tiring. I can only repeat myself so much π Plus it’s even in the FAQ.
Carrie: http://www.geocities.jp/ao_n2003/poco/home.htm
Mato: Every time someone asks about the font stuff, just deform another letter of the alphabet. That’ll…accomplish nothing, but I’d laugh my ass off!
Yeah, if you want the full impact from the story when the translation is finished, don’t even try to play it in japanese. You can definitely understand some basic things going on. There’s a rather big event that takes place very early on, and it’s pretty easy to figure out what happens by seeing some names pop up in the dialog and by characters reactions. That is one thing they really did a good job on – conveying emotion even without understanding of the text.
If you don’t mind, by all means, play. And you can mess around for a little bit at least, just don’t progress the story TOO far. Hmm… Just stop at the ‘campfire’ part, if you don’t want to be spoiled. You can play around with little consequence until then, but if you see a campfire with a lot of NPC’s nearby, just STOP.
OK, I think that’s pretty safe. Trying to avoid mentioning anything.
I have no moral issues with playing on a ROM without owning the official cartridge. Nintendo made the decision not to translate the game to the US, so that’s money, profit, that they will not make.
Zete, how about the Mother series in general? Wouldn’t you want to at least support that? If everyone from North America took your stand, there’d be no chance of another Mother game coming here.. Ever. We all should do what we can to suport this game, and if shelling out $20 is all i have to do, I really have no problem with that. Not to mention that it’s unquestionably illegal to play the ROM without the official cartridge. If you love the game then you should show your support by buying it.. It’s only $20, seriously.
fakestarboy: I doubt shelling out for the import version really gets a message to NOA, but it is certainly nice from a moral standpoint.
BTW, Mother 3 is back up to around $49, but it’ll probably drop again.
Either way Steve, it shows support for the series. Localized or not. That’s really what I was getting at.
This is terrific. I’m looking forward to the day when I can break the news on this one. π
Hey, Mato, I almost forgot.
Promise you’ll try not to change Leo-Leo’s line “I’m one bad dude.” That line is nothing but awsome and win. : D
Wow, that M1+2 video was a joy to watch! It really isn’t a fluke that the Mother games are so wrenching and powerful; Mr. Itoi systematically sets out to attain that effect. I find this sort of emotional discussion far more intriguing than that of most behind-the-game videos, which tend to showcase the more superficial aspects of video games.
I agree. Really shed a little light on Mt. Itoi’s difficulty level, as well…
Neat. I’d add my email address, but I’d rather follow this from start to finish and get the patch on its day. I’m dedicated like that.
naturally i’m tempted to screw over NOA on this one (it’s only fair), but i don’t want to spread such sentiments around just in case nintendo decides to shut the project down. i just wish there was a way to give monetary support to the people who are actually translating it. i’ll probably buy a copy BUT….it’s not like they need the money at this point now that they started marketing games to idiots (which is where the money is). seriously, COOKING MOMMA? WTF! even the new zelda seemed too easy (great game though). sorry, had to blow off some steam.
Cooking Mama is a third party game! Plus it wasn’t that good (the wii version) and I assume didn’t sell well. However I agree with you about the general difficulty of games being at a stupefyingly low level. The best example of that is Super Paper Mario – it raises the question, are they TRYING to make these games retardedly easy? At least Metroid Corruption, while mostly easy, has multiple difficulty levels (tho I still think the “veteran” setting should have been the default).
Anyway, I played through the first chapter of Mother 3, and it doesn’t look like it will be a breeze, although healing items are perhaps too easy to come by in some parts of the game early on.
Is Mother 3 all that hard? I never have much trouble in RPGs, but I save frequently and I always get plenty of extra levels while I’m searching for secrets and hidden items. But maybe that’s just my obsessive play style. I know that some people are crazy and do things like low level challenges, where they try to beat the game without fighting any fights but those they absolutely have to. See http://tasvideos.org/ for the Final Fantasy 3/6j run if you want to know what I mean. Those guys are nuts.
A Fan: If you want some “trouble” in an RPG, find a copy of Dragon Quest on NES (or the remake on GBC). Start the game, get some equipment, walk as far from the castle as you can, and weep. π
I found Mother 1 to be pretty hard, but I unknowningly did things completely out of sequence. Mother 2 handed me my ass more than once. I usually got nailed in Onett by getting too close to the arcade way too soon.
No idea on Mother 3, though.
I really love the progress of this.
It sucks I can’t make PK Call’Ns since I am foreign US.
Mexican mail sucks too and some envelope art I made never arrived according the staff. ):
At least it’ll stop people from putting the translation onto a cart and then selling it on Ebay and acting like they made it.