One Year Later
Well, it’s November 8th (in this time zone at least), which makes it exactly one year since Starmen.Net’s Do-It-Yourself Devotion announcement. A lot’s happened in the past 365 days, so I thought I’d discuss a bunch of it here. I also prepared a couple of other little goodies so that it’s not just all a bunch of talk 😛 So let’s begin, shall we?
Newer Video:
I’ll start off with some normal update stuff. First up is a newer video of the project. I’ve been focusing on working on the main project, plus I also suck at making videos (as is probably very clear by now), so I asked cool Starmen.Net video-making guy Libra to put something together real quick. And here it is:
(just so you know, the video doesn’t spoil story stuff, but it does have more game footage than usual and more varied stuff than has been shown on this site before)
The video shows the progress that’s been made in the last year (well, technically, the last 4 months but whatever). Not too shabby, I think. Most people probably aren’t aware of this, but most ROM translation projects that get started never get very far and then die soon after, because ROM hacking is such a complicated process. As a result, only a small percentage of ROM translations ever get finished. Many translations even take years and years, for example, I translated the script and all the text for Lagrange Point back in the summer of 2000, but the project is still incomplete. So although it’s been a year for the MOTHER 3 translation now, it’s doing really well, considering. I don’t expect it to take 7+ years though 😛 Within the next year would be cool.
Also, I should point out quickly that many of the item and enemy names in the video are really old ones that I forgot to update. The current items, names, etc. that we’re using now are more accurate and better, honest.
Glitchy Glitchy:
Even though the above video looks all fancy and the translation stuff looks generally nice, the project’s still got a good ways to go, and progress on the major programming problems is still slow, but we’ll get there eventually. Lots of ugly bugs and hacking problems to conquer, such as the stuff seen here:
Then of course, Script Draft #2 and up still need to be done. The actual translation side of things isn’t a problem at all, it’s just a matter-of-time thing. The hacking is more of a “Brownie Brown’s stupid C compiler sucks none of this code makes sense gwah” thing.
Updated Menu Patch:
Next up is something I put together real quick. I really wish we could’ve had a finished full patch for the 1 year anniversary thing, that would’ve been cool. But since it isn’t done, I felt at least something would be good, so I spent like an hour updating the menu patch. A few people found some rare text bugs, so I fixed those. I also added in the translated deposit/withdrawal graphics, I stupidly forgot to add them in the first menu patch. And as a bonus I tossed in the new chapter title graphics in there. Other than that, there’s nothing too different from the first patch, so for most people it won’t make a difference. But it’s there for those who’re interested, and it’s at least better than a stick in the eye 😛
Up Until Now:
Now let’s take a look back at the past year, year and a half and see what’s happened. Lots of interesting stuff in here, maybe. Be prepared for a long story, maybe get something to eat or drink first 😛
Back in early 2006, everyone eagerly awaited MOTHER 3’s release. People outside of Japan hoped and prayed it would be translated and released in <insert country here>. Sometime before the Japanese version was released, Gideon and I were chatting and we started talking about MOTHER 3 and agreed that if there was no announcement of an official translation after a while, or if we knew for certain it wasn’t going to get an official release, that we’d start working on a fan translation of it ourselves. Between then and Nov. 2006, we heard from many of our contacts all sorts of interesting information about MOTHER 3, but time and time again it ultimately turned to bad news. It was pretty clear an official translation wasn’t going to happen. An interview with a Treehouse employee around October 2006 was sort of the straw that broke the camel’s back. It also helped that it was a publically-revealed thing 😛 So we used that and everything else as our signal to begin the Do-It-Yourself Devotion project.
Long before DIYD, though, another group had started a MOTHER 3 translation project. But it was plagued with drama. People only doing it to be internet famous, a lack of any organization and experience, all kinds of BS announcements, internal drama, the list goes on. The fact the project started before the game was even officially released didn’t help either. Man, the ROM hacking community sure didn’t take kindly to that. But for all these reasons and more, Gideon, demi (who also jumped onboard to work his editing magic), and I chose to do things on our own, and keep quiet to keep drama out of it. So that’s why there were two (actually three, harmony had his own translation going at one point) groups for a while.
After the announcement, harmony, being the awesome and upstanding guy he is, contacted Gideon and gave him all his hacking code with his blessing, which as you can tell from current pics, was really well-done and awesome. So we had lots of code already, sweet. Gideon then worked on dumping the game’s script so I could start working on it. Eventually I got a copy of it and started to tear into it. I think the first weekend I got about 15% done, though counting duplicate text, it was probably actually more like 25% as I’d later find out. Work (I translate games, anime, movies, etc. professionally btw, just so it doesn’t seem like I’m a random 1st year Japanese student 😛 ) and other stuff showed up to say hi though, so I didn’t get time to work on the script until a couple weeks later. Gideon said he needed to redump the script for technical reasons though, so I put translation on hold. After re-dumping the script, he also needed to put my translations into the new file though, which was more work. But before I could get this latest stuff, he got real busy with personal life stuff and got out of touch for about a month or two.
So during that time, the project was at a halt. I used that free time to work on my EarthBound 0 Remake Project, and in doing so, got lots of mean people screaming at me about MOTHER 3 😛 But finally I got ahold of Gideon again and he was able to procure the necessary files to continue translation, hurray!
But then all of a sudden, the company I work for got the rights to the One Piece anime and put me in charge of translating it. This was HUGE news and also completely unexpected by pretty much everyone in the industry (not to mention fans) — it came literally out of nowhere. 4Kids had had the rights to One Piece for years , but then suddenly had the show taken away with little warning. Anyways, this completely out-of-the-blue announcement meant there was absolutely no time for any hobby stuff for a while. We had to get through like 60+ episodes in just a few months, because they were scheduled to air really soon. These episodes are actually airing on Cartoon Network now, so check ’em out if you get a chance.
Anyway, because of this lack of free time that nobody could have anticipated, the translation remained at like 25% for a while more. Eventually, my work load started to come back down to more sane levels, but other things took my time.
Meanwhile, reid and people working on the other translation had been chatting (although they were on another team, they were still long-time regulars at Starmen.Net), and their new translator was having similar time issues. Since their team had changed drastically (for the better) in the last year, and because both teams were barely moving along, we decided to merge our groups, sans any drama-type people. Unlike what some people might think, as far as I know, there was almost no drama between the teams beforehand. The fact we were so busy all the time helped make extra sure of that 😛 There shouldn’t be any drama, it’s just a game. We all agreed to this, and so we combined our efforts.
Most everything else after that you can read about in this blog. Shortly after the merge, things slowed down enough for me that I was able to zip through the script and got the first draft done. sblur, byuu, and Jeffman worked really hard getting some excellent tools and hacks completed. Some more cool people joined the team, and things progressed more. But eventually some big hacking hurdles were encountered, and that’s where we are today.
So that’s the story of the history of the project so far. Now you know the tale.
Interesting Events Afoot:
I outlined the progress of the project up above, but actually, there’s even more interesting stuff that’s happened. So much so that I’m probably not remembering it all, but here are just a few of the bigger things that I do recall.
Fans Mean Business
I don’t remember the exact month, but a little while after MOTHER 3 was released, we heard that the really, really high-up people at Nintendo were soon going to consider (in the business sense) whether MOTHER 3 was worth their time and money to localize. Jonk and reidman and some symphathizers working at Nintendo (not Nintendo Power, Nintendo) started to hatch a plan in which they might actually go to Nintendo and hold a kind of informational presentation stating the case for releasing MOTHER 3. The Nintendo guys would try to set it up for us, since obviously you can’t just walk into Nintendo to do stuff like that (the rent-a-cops are vicious). I wasn’t around much during all this, but if I recall, it didn’t work out because in the end we weren’t going to be able to get access to the people who really matter, just some people a bit lower, meaning we’d be preaching to the choir basically. There are actually lots of EarthBound fans working at Nintendo, despite how it might seem. It’s just the people at the top who need convincing 😐
Anyway, the above was what the uberProject 5001 was intended for. Obviously, we scrapped that plan, but it was all converted into the EB Siege and EB Anthology later.
Businessmen Don’t Know Games
Another constant thing we kept hearing from different sources was this interesting piece of news. Though the full details of this weren’t clear to us at first, future information confirmed what we had heard, and added more. Keep in mind that this is only what we’ve heard, and we’re simply passing it on. Don’t have any official proof to back it up, but the fact we heard it from multiple reliable sources makes it pretty believable in my eyes.
Anyway, the story is this. I forget when, it was probably middle of 2006, but we had been told that if we wanted MOTHER 3 to make it into English, that we would need to promote quirky RPGs, specficially Magical Starsign. reid and I laughed and said yeah right, whatever, we’re not promoting crap we don’t care about. It almost sounded like some kind of weird blackmail/bribery thing, especially the way it was said.
Some months later, another source (I think it was the Brownie Brown employee we befriended, I’d need to check old logs/emails) let us know that apparently Nintendo was wary of publishing Brownie Brown stuff in North America, so they had decided to use Magical Starsign as a test. If it did well, then they’d be greenlighted to localize more of their stuff (like MOTHER 3) into English (dunno where Sword of Mana fits into this, since it had been released before. Maybe that was a Square-Enix thing). Apparently that was the deal, so they went and localized Magical Starsign and released it here. I remember seeing the marketing attempts, man it was bad. (Marketing guys, plastering game art on GameFAQs isn’t a surefire strategy, made it look crappier actually) So it’s no wonder it went on to be a blockbuster failure, at only 30,000 copies sold. Man, that test couldn’t have failed any worse, yikes.
People tell me the game was good and unique. It probably is. But whatever exec (or execs) thought up this “test” idea was REALLY stupid. I can only assume Nintendo opted to try Magical Starsign over MOTHER 3 because it was a DS game, and Nintendo was trying to phase out the GBA and make the DS its main focus. Never mind that there was already an established fanbase for EarthBound games here, one that they even helped cultivate themselves by including Ness and EarthBound stuff in Smash Bros. and Smash Bros. Melee, which, together, sold about 7 million copies total in North America.
Now remember, this isn’t something we’re claiming, it’s only what we’ve heard from multiple sources. Please don’t quote it as absolute fact! I personally believe it entirely, but I just know people out there are gonna get the story wrong and mess things up and eventually everything’ll be so twisted that the story will be about Magical Starsign being a zombie Nazi or something. It probably isn’t, but I think it should probably burned with fire anyway 😛
They Know Our Secrets Too
While we’re on the subject of Nintendo, we already know for a fact that Reggie, president of NOA, is aware of the translation project. I’m almost certain Iwata, president of NCL (and main programmer for MOTHER 2 / EarthBound) is aware of it too. Many people below them are aware of the project too. Regular employees are aware of it too, and even look forward to the final patch. Even the (former) Nintendo Power people can’t wait for it to be finished, as documented here. This project’s been something straight out of the Twilight Zone. I’m not sure, but I think reid’s even gotten plenty of magazine people interested in writing big articles on the project when it’s done. This thing is just crazy. But in a way, it’s kind of scary too…
I’m not unknown by higher-ups at Nintendo, I applied for an opening there summer of 2006 on a lark, even had an interview with the chief localizer guy (hi I know you’re reading this, get the jade monkey by the next full moon plz) and even discussed MOTHER 3 stuff a little bit. I didn’t get the position, but they absolutely know who I am, know a lot about me, know all my contact info, etc. etc. Not good. They could throw down the hammer anytime they want (internet naysayers: they’re already fully aware of this, so by saying this in public I don’t think it’s going to change anything). I’m also pretty sure that by working on this translation regardless of that fact pretty much means I’ll definitely never, ever work there now. But that’s fine, I enjoy my current work and love being able to sleep in however long I want and take days off whenever I want. Also lets me work on projects like this when I have downtime 🙂 But those swords are always hanging there.
Not entirely related, but I was told that among the applicants for that Nintendo opening was someone who had written a huge translation walkthrough/FAQ of MOTHER 3. I wonder which of the walkthrough writers it was. I don’t think that person got the job either, but it was kind of neat how they were interviewing EB people. Or maybe they were just toying with them, I dunno 😛
Mmm, Brownies
Let’s see, what else. Oh yeah, the Brownie Brown employee. Brownie Brown was the company that actually programmed and developed MOTHER 3. Early this year someone who worked on the game (who was surprisingly a foreigner, he’s even in the credits) contacted us. He presented a plan to try to officially license MOTHER 3 and translate it into English. I won’t go into the details of the plan, but it was pretty sound, and he and reid did lots of research and planning and calculating and such. What made it actually feasible and not just some dream was that the BB guy was planning on getting a business license, which would open the way for him to have formal discussions with NCL (Nintendo’s Japanese headquarters, often also called NOJ by us dweebs). Some random guy can’t just walk into NOJ (the rent-a-cops there are more vicious) and try to negotiate something like that, it’s gotta be done through a business. Things seemed to be progressing, but money was scarce and BB guy’s visa ran out, so that was the end of that plan.
Even so, it was a really interesting time, and he had lots of neat insight and advice about many things about MOTHER 3. Although it didn’t pan out, it was still an interesting experience, we learned a lot about how the industry works from a publisher’s point of view, and helped cement in my mind that we’re some pretty freakin’ crazy fans.
Virtual Consolation
Another thing we’ve heard from multiple sources over the course of maybe 6-12 months is that Nintendo plans to release EarthBound on the Wii Virtual Console to gauge just how well EarthBound games can really do after more than a decade of it’s famous “failure“. I think it’s the crazy fans at Starmen.Net and their antics over the past 9 years that’ve led them to consider giving it another try. Things are much different nowadays, certainly. (Though after the Magical Starsign failure, I’m starting to wonder) Praise for the game extends far and wide today. So let’s hope Nintendo really is serious about this test. You can bet your face Starmen.Net’s gonna market it like crazy when it comes out, but even without that, I hope it does well. If you’re an EB fan, spread the love and buy your friends Wii points cards to get EB, or use that upcoming Virtual Console gift feature thingajig. One of us one of us
Anyway, information about this EB on VC test thing first came from a pretty inside source, and then months later, when a bunch of the site staffers visited with Nintendo and Nintendo Power employees this past summer. So it seems pretty legit. I can’t recall off the top of my head, but there might’ve been another confirmation before the NOA visit.
In any case, the question on everyone’s mind is, “WHEN is EarthBound coming out on the Virtual Console?!?!?!5” It was originally slated to be released this past summer, but for technical (and lame) reasons it wound up being pushed back like everything else Nintendo does. For those wondering why there was a big surge of staffer activity in the summer, now you know why. And now you know why the EB Funktastic Gameplay is delayed so long too 😛 Latest word says EB is planned to be released before the end of the year, and that it doesn’t seem like there’ll be any more delays. Take it with a grain of salt of course, this IS Nintendo.
But no matter when it comes out, it’ll be interesting to see what the results of this “test” are.
Man, This is Starting to Sound Like a Spy Novel
I don’t remember the details, but I recall people at Nintendo dropping hints and asking the major player(s) subtle questions at business parties and the like about MOTHER 3. Obviously nothing came of it 😐 Still goes to show that even inside Nintendo there are fans willing to do stuff like that though.
More recently, during the latest E3, someone pitched the idea of localizing M3 to Atlus. Said person asked us to provide lots of details and numbers so that it would be possible for Atlus to try to pitch the idea to Nintendo, but I don’t know what came of that all. I assume nothing, probably only stayed in the idea/planning/”hey wouldn’t it be cool” stage. Still, people are trying.
Also, it was announced recently that a bunch of really important people at Nintendo of America are leaving the company. I’m told that one big roadblock for MOTHER 3 was some of these marketing folks. I’m not sure if that’s the case or not, but it’s definitely interesting and worth noting.
Go Go Gadget Siege
Can’t forget the EB Siege, and especially PK Siege Japan. The EB Siege got plenty of people in the industry talking about a 12 year old game and some Japanese game that was over a year old. Gaming media people prodded Nintendo people about MOTHER 3. Nintendo big shots got copies of the EB Anthology and other stuff. Nintendo and Nintendo Power invited Starmen.Net people over and even did an article on them. Nintendo people admit they eagerly await the day the translation comes out.
The Japan side of the Siege has targeted the creators of the series and other important people and companies. Things are still ongoing with this, but equally as awesome stuff sounds like it’s going to happen in the near future.
What will the ultimate fate of MOTHER 3 be? Will it remain unreleased officially? Will the fan translation be the only way to play it in English? Will Jesus and Buddha team up to convince Nintendo to use the fan translation for an official translation? Will Itoi or Iwata use their Japanese magic to get an official translation released? Will EB on VC help M3? Might Lucas in Smash Bros. Brawl help or mean anything? Why did that European gaming magazine get our hopes up with this last year? Will this weird old EGM rumor about an EarthBound compilation on DS come true? Will the MOTHER series ever get more love outside of Japan?
Stay tuned.
That’s a hell of an update. Did you guys get around that text limitation that only let you have 21 characters, or however that worked? There’ve been some pretty wordy dialogue boxes in the last update or so.
As far as the Mother DS comilation goes, I’d much prefer it on the GBA, to be honest (or possibly as WiiWare?)… I love playing M3 on my GBA player with that rad SNES-style Hori controller. But I guess I’ll have to take what I can get, huh?
Oh, and thanks for reppin’ us EB fans so passionately. You guys kick ass.
Absolutely fascinating read.
What a fantastic post. Keep up the good work!
Yup…Lotsa ups and downs, that’s for sure…
First it was the delay and cancellation of the N64 Mother 3, and then the lack of any support for the GBA release on NOA’s part. After suffering through all that, it’s easy for a fan to get furiously frustrated. Why does the Japanese language have to be so different and complex?
And I’ll have to admit, I’m one of those many, many frustrated fans that pace around like a caged lion waiting for that one single opportunity to maul the zookeeper. I want this translation so bad I can taste it, but alas, my arms cannot extend that far beyond the bars. I understand that you still have a lot of work to do, but damn if I don’t want what you’ve already accomplished! *Reach! Swipe!*
But I’ll continue to wait with the rest. After all, it’s only been twelve years since Mother 2/Earthbound. What’s another dozen months, give or take?
…Right?
*Reach! Swipe!*
Dr. Meat: No, the 21 or whatever character problem is still there. Sometimes lines can go longer, but doing so will corrupt memory and other stuff, and while the effects may not be immediately noticeable, stuff does get screwed up. Most of the time even if a line looks fine, it’ll screw things up so that you can’t get into battle later on. And, well, you’ve seen that other video so you know how it is 😛
TheFreak: If it’s any consolation or motivation, it was EarthBound that really pushed me to learn Japanese; I had always wanted to learn it, and had even sort of tried to learn it, but EB gave me that extra motivation. After playing EB I really wanted to play the Japanese version. After lots of hard work, I’m where I am today. It’s always great to study new things, so why not use this as a chance to take up Japanese? Even if it won’t help you play M3 right now, it’ll surely be useful at some point, and who knows, if a MOTHER 4 or something ever gets made, you’ll be ready for it 😛
Notice how the European gaming magazine called Ness “Tess”?
What a fun read, and a great summary of the war for Mother 3. I’m so excited and nervous to see how all this turns out. You folks got one heck of a hobby!
I’ll do my part to get every Wii owner I know to buy Earthbound when it comes.
excellent post
so much to wonder
Nice job on the update. It’s made sense to me all along why Mother 3 wasn’t brought over. It has a console RPG-sized script which would be more expensive to localize than most GBA games and they would have to vigorously market it to gain support outside of its small, rabid fanbase.
$$$ to localize + $$$$ to market = high-risk investment
I also have to wonder if Golden Sun 1 and 2 played a part in a reluctance to consider Mother 3. I don’t recall either one being a smash-hit, despite them being marketed pretty heavily.
Steve: People say that a lot, that M3’s script is really big and that it’d cost lots of money. But I can tell you that it’s no bigger than your average game script these days. It’s really NOT that big of a deal. I managed to get through the script in a month and a half, and that was in my free time outside of real work. Had a a Treehouse translator been paid to translate it, it would’ve taken maybe half that time.
Absolutely no doubt that the Treehouse would have had MORE than enough resources to localize the game without any trouble at all, and for not that much money at all. And certainly not much more than it probably took to localize Magical Starsign. Blame the stubborn higher-ups.
That’s a very interesting bunch of information there!
I don’t think Nintendo will drop the hammer on this project, I mean, look what EarthBound Zero went through. I’m pretty sure Nintendo knows about all of that. They didn’t seem to care then, and hopefully not now enough to stop the whole progress of this translation.
Also, as I have stated to others in the past, I would much prefer you guys translating than Nintendo. Simply put, Nintendo will cut so much of the stronger themes out of the game. Either way, whoever finishes an English version in the end, I’ll be happy. I can always read an FAQ to get whatever parts cut out.
Thank you guys so much for doing all of this work. EarthBound will always live in my heart as one of the greatest games ever, and I look forward to this project being completed everyday. I will definitely do my part to purchase EB when/if it reaches the Virtual Console.
Wow, lots of interesting stuff. It seriously sounds like something out of a non-fiction film dramatization, and I was half expecting there to be a happy ending at the end of the post. But that is yet to come.
Godspeed, Holy Warriors! I truly believe that nothing but good can come from this. (Nintendo screwing us over at the last minute would be a really bad PR move.) Onward to victory!
btw, that grain of salt comic is mine. 😛
Quite an update and a great video as well. It’s interesting that some of the people in this project have been so close to Nintendo and the game industry in general.
If this update were a dromedary camel, I’d ride it across the desert to a world of dreams and sunshine and pancakes.
Really awesome update.
Wow… I love this posts. It answered the majority of the unanswered questions about all of the past attempts to get mother 3 here. Oh, and a DCMC video. =)
Keep on working, and I am glad to see that this project is taking a much more professional tone than most fan translations.
Hey guys, um, remember how you said the higher-ups knew about the translation? And, you know, do you have in mind today being the first anniversary of the DIYD?
Um, well, just wanted to bring forth tonight’s (or today’s?), 8th nov, Smash Bros DOJO update. Isn’t it kind of a reaaaaaly strange coincidence to get Lucas’s moves updated on the dojo ON THE EXACT SAME DAY of the anniversary of the DIYD?
Are they… watching us…? What do you think?
Oh, and mini-spoiler alert on the dojo, let it be said beforehand.
And best of luck and many of the most respectful salutations for all of you guys. You’re indeed legends now for all of videogamehumankind.
“Isn’t it kind of a reaaaaaly strange coincidence to get Lucas’s moves updated on the dojo ON THE EXACT SAME DAY of the anniversary of the DIYD?”
Hehe, not really. I mean, the project is popular, but I really don’t think Sakurai knows/cares enough to rearrange his update schedule for Brawl 😉
Oh man I can’t believe I read all that lol but it was a good read.
I wish nintendo would of translated Mother 3 for us and not magical starsign (which I agree should be burned aswell). 🙁
Fantastic Read.
Enjoyed it alot. Who knew there was so much cool info aside from the actual translation?
good luck with the translation. eagerly awaiting its finish.
Jesus and Buddha teaming up.
that might work, does anybody have Buddha’s number?
nullset: Nah, it’s just 100% coincidence (again), but somehow I knew deep down in my soul that this would happen again. It’s almost funny. Or maybe I have powers. I should solve crimes with them!
amazing post, thanks for sharing.
EB FTW!
Awesome article Tomato, I’ve been wondering whats been going on and you basically answered it all. I hope EarthBound will be available on the VC soon. I got plans to make a big thread about it at the forums I visit a lot and I hope I get a bunch of people over there to download it.
I wonder if Nintendo is letting you guys do all the legwork…to come in and swoop it up at the last minute to not have to waste any resources on it. That would be awesome for us, and awesome for you guys. Keep up the awesome work!
I wonder how your spy novel will end?
Will it end all well or will those Nintendo men chase after you?
Thanks for undertaking such a huge task! Man, this is like some kind of life devotion thing isn’t it?
Best wishes.
‘Mater: As much as I’d love to…(run poorexcuse.exe) I couldn’t even pick up Spanish, and that was a required course in the high school I went to.
If I can’t even learn a language that uses the same freakin’ Alphabet, what chance do I have against one that borrows from China’s own headache-enducing series of brushstrokes? I can go on about my deficiencies, but I’ve already whined enough.
All I am asking for, really, is a patch that covers the first chapter or so of dialogue. Mother 3 actually did a good job with using visuals for the basic menu functions (I’m referring to in-battle, natch), and while I could use that translation FAQ that’s floating around, seeing the English dialogue within the ROM is a much more impressive technical achievement.
I understand that you’re still working out all the kinks, and that it’s a lengthy progress. I’m just saying that if you do one more update to the menu patch, it would be a small example of the finished product.
And a devilishly wonderful teaser.
so does this dojo update mean no ness in brawl/
mato: ”…Or maybe I have powers. I should solve crimes with them!”
lol, “Tomato detective club” episode 1, here we go! ;D
“There’s a character named Ness who has appeared in the Smash Bros. series up until now”
“has appeared in the Smash Bros. series up until now”
“up until now”
D: Could it be…?
what happened to the video it says no longer available
never mind its back
Man, that spoiler in today’s Dojo was out of nowhere. 🙁
Heh, this brings back memories of when I wrote Nintendo Power (via ye olde snail mail) about why Poo had two different spellings of his name in pre-release screenshots of Earthbound. Given how starved we RPG fans were back then, though, I guess it’s not surprising that I still remember that. Only now do I know all the fun things Japanese gamers got to play while we were left with mostly beat-em-up and sports games I had little interest in.
As for learning Japanese, it’s not THAT bad. Try http://www.nihongoresources.com/ and use the kana trainer until you can at least read hiragana & katakana. I finally got to 100% of both after a lot of 5 minute sessions in my spare time. Yeah, then that leaves kanji, but you’re supposed to learn words, not isolated kanji anyhow, or you’ll never use them right 🙂 I find that watching anime makes it easier for me to learn Japanese than lots of French classes ever made French, but your mileage may vary.
I’m continually blown away by your guys’ dedication to the project. I’ve said it once, but I’ll say it again – someone really should make a documentary about this project. I mean, when have you ever seen such drive for one game series?
Who’s with me?? 😀
it seems like the only real spoiler on the dojo is that ness probably won’t be in brawl…which sucks bonkeydalls. but most the stuff about lucas is something that anyone could’ve assumed. i think the only game they’re spoiling is brawl (keep in mind that i’ve never played mother 3).
ps: reggie, you’re a toolbag, eat my shorts
pps: thanks mato!
Looks like Lucas is officially replacing Ness accorging to the Dojo…
RIP NESS…
But, this actually increases my hopes for a localization of Mother 3. Lucas should greatly increase the demand.
For those of you still looking for an import copy of Mother 3, it went back down to $15 at Play-Asia:
http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-67-49-en-70-13ba.html
First let me say I really liked the video Libra made,the in game text looks very good and I liked the music he used in this video and guys the progress on the major programming problems and the ugly bugs and hacking problems are slow now but with time and hard work this dream team will solve those problems and release a great mother 3 english patch.Mato take your time with the script draft 2 and thanks for taking your time to update the menu patch and giving us this major update,I think when this project is finish Mato you can write a book about it.I also hope people understand that translation projects sometimes take years to be finished.
Wow, I met JonK a little over a year ago at a Melee tourney, and I have to say, the mindset of the staff has changed a lot in this time, in some ways. At that point in time, I think everyone had a ton of hope for Mother 3 to be officially translated and released in some form, be it VC, DS, GBA, or some kind of compilation. Everyone seemed to have heard something from the inside, but nothing panned out, I suppose.
I had always hoped some magic would happen, and one day I’d wake up with Nintendo announcing that Mother 3 was due out here, along with Mother, but it doesn’t look like that will happen. Even now, we’re getting “Import” titles on the VC. To me, it seems like Nintendo is getting as close to releasing those two without actually doing it. I mean, Mother is translated, and they’ve got the means to release it to everyone, and Mother 3 has so many options to release with little-to-no risk, it seems, but there’s still nothing from it. Honestly, I’d guess that we’ll get up to the week of the patch release, and Nintendo will announce the game, just to spite those involved!
Anyways, it’s too bad they haven’t announced it yet, but I’m very happy to see that the project is still underway and making headway. I seriously hope there aren’t any repercussions to anyone involved, but if they haven’t done any thing yet, I’d hope they wouldn’t do anything now. No cease-and-desist orders, right? I mean, look at Chrono Trigger Revolution, once that became known, it was shut down, but clearly, everyone knows about this project, so, maybe it’s already in the clear.
Good luck! I’m counting on you all!
Holy God, that was one heckuvan update! I’m pretty tired now actually.
BTW: TEAM JESUS & BUDDHA FTW!!!
BTW#2: I dunno if anyone’s mentioned this, since I haven’t read the 40 comments, but in the Smash Bros. site, Lucas’s moves are up… There was one spoilery thing for me, but that’s probably because I’m still by Chapter 2 in Mother 3… 🙁
Here’s to not-so-much as another year, but to something like a successful hopefully-a-less-than-another year to go! 😀
Looks really, really awesome! N64 m3 music was a nice touch. 🙂
Not to nitpick… but shouldn’t “not to be persistent” be “not to be redundant”?
I love gossip almost as much as I love you, reid, Mother, and Starmen.net, Mato 8)
~Nate/SoreThumb
IDK, I think Ness will be back. They specifically mentioned how different Lucas was from Ness. Also, I think Sakurai would just flat out tell us if Ness was cut since he’s mentioned him twice.
BTW, epic update.
Nturtle: if it were a normal game, maybe. The word is definitely not “redundant”, though. Persistent/nagging/annoying, something along those lines. The signs, the game, the town, or something are talking through the signs, making them seem slightly more sentient than a sign should be. Or someone weird wrote them. Basic rule is that text in Mother games don’t follow normal rules.
Have faith, I believe in you. :3
This is a wonderful synopsis of the history of M3 here in N. America, and I actually read stuff I didn’t know about it! 😛 Definitely glad that things are moving along again, and I can’t wait until this thing’s released! I didn’t know that NOA executives were actually looking forward to this as well — DIYD is more popular than I would have imagined!
The article almost made me feel bad for buying Magical Starsign. =X In my defense it was in the bargain bin at Circuit City and it doesn’t seem to be too bad of a game. For a company the professes to know the market so well, they really missed the mark with this one.
Listening to Tomato’s words about learning Japanese is inspiring… I should try reading through these textbooks! Knowing how to read hiragana, katakana, knowing some words here and there along with some basic sentence structure certainly made playing Mother 3 w/ Spookychee’s Story Translation a lot more fun.
That said, I look forward to playing through the game with the full translation someday so I can understand all the NPC dialog that is currently untranslated, and with the the added bonus of no censorship since Nintendo’s not touching it (though I’d love it if they did officially release it so I could own a hard copy).
I see. I guess I underestimated the weirdness of Mother 3. :p
Thanks for the prompt response!
Ohhhhhhhh crap. The patch is just about one of the worst translations I’ve seen. the new one is VERY BUGGY, and need fixing IMMEDIATELY. just look at the character descriptions!! I don’t not like what you’ve done, but thats a major glitch
Well, I know its not a full translation, and only certain things were possible. It’s not the names, its the bugs
Do you have pics? I tested out the patch beforehand and there were no such problems. Did you apply the patch to a fresh Japanese ROM?
I think my question got lost on the last story’s thread, but just out of curiosity, Mother 3 doesn’t have some of the same bugs as Mother 2 did, does it?
Specifically, your HP & PP can’t go over 999 (which causes a graphical glitch in Earthbound/Mother 2), can it? Does that apply even if you do something like abuse rock candy (assuming Mother 3 even HAS rock candy, let alone a way to abuse it)?
Then the final question: if anything like these are found, would you consider patching Mother 3 to fix them? Given that you appear to be playing level 99 characters with only 600ish HP, I’m guessing it’s no on all counts, but I’m just wondering 🙂
Every time I play through Earthbound, Ness has an HP over 999 and I have to endure weird, glitched HP graphics and I always wished they could’ve fixed that.
Mother 2 on the VC is exciting… why is it taking so long, though. I thought it would be here by now.
Mother compilation on the DS is also pretty cool sounding. I just hope they don’t make the touch-screen controls too difficult or change the games too much. I need it to be in English, though, so I can read it with a Jap-Eng dictionary.
Hey, I worked on the translation for M3 as a part of the Mother3.net team before the merge. I don’t care about any of the previous translation work we did being in the game, but I was really really hoping you’d include some of the Don’t Care names we came up with.
I’m not sure how big of a request that is for the coders, but if it won’t take much time could you please consider it?
-Ixis
Wow, thinking about Magical Starsign makes me feel icky. It’s like they could have just as easily released Mother 3 to do the same test. Of course, I really don’t know what I’m saying, I just feel icky…
Nice summary, though, Mato. It was nice to kinda relive the effort up to this moment 😀
As always, keep up the great work everyone.
Well, I found a bug or two in the text, though they are minor:
http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r154/LUIGI074/M3MenuPatchBug2.png
http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r154/LUIGI074/M3MenuPatchBug.png
Both those I got when navigating through items in a boss fight (some spoilers, but not too big). It could be that I applied the new patch to the older menu patch. I’ll try it out on a fresh Japanese ROM and see if the same thing happens.
Nice work, but try not to distract yourself too much on the menu patch :P.
Oh, nevermind. The problem was that I applied it to the ROM with the first menu patch. Applied the patch to a fresh ROM without any menu patches and it works fine now.
i’ve always been both a nintendo fan and a huge earthbound fan , but when all this M3 buisness started i kinda lost all faith in nintendo and became more of a earthbound fan , they’ve become blind to the plight of the people that made them what they are by playing their games .
i’d also just like to say the whole M3 translation team are officially heroes , even if the project is halted by nintendo lawyers , or a meteor , or something , idk but anyways the amount of work you’ve done is greatly apreciated by us all .
Can’t wait till its done guys . hopefully before christmas , then we can give up on that silly holiday and celebrate the birth of M3 in english , cause honestly , what cool games did we get cause jesus was born ? none .
If you are ever unlucky enough to get shut down, I suggest that you quickly send all of your data out across the internet to anyone who wants it and store it in places like Megaupload and Rapidshare and all those other filestorage places.
if for some reason nintendo does stop this project, i would hope that you guys would “not” leak the patch in it’s current or completed state and claim that it was an accident…no matter how awesome that would be for us fans…so i sincerely hope that you “don’t” do that…i mean, we need to show nintendo the same respect that they have shown us…right? 😉
i hope were u going to u get to there(meaning finishing translation) but either way im intrigued by this update and lets hope they reconsider
ROCK ON!!!
I just thought about something- If Nintendo is going to put EB on the VC to “test” the American audience, will you wait to see what happens as a result of that or are you going to keep on translating M3 until Nintendo, if ever, gives an official word on it?
Keep up the good work. I can’t wait for it get done.
if I could some of the stuff u guys could do I would help muchy……too bad I suck at programing -_- keep up the good work ;_;
[…] Mother 3 Translation Project turned one year old yesterday! Looks like they’ve made quite a bit of progress, although it’s still […]
Ugh, I forgot to turn that off. Sorry about that, you can delete that last post.
Anyways, keep up the hard work, I’m really looking forward to the completion of this project and appreciate all you guys are doing. We’ve all been waiting so long!
Sorry, the descriptions were in english but glitched, the rom was an direct original, I can’t say where I got it. I did accidentaly use a program called phaser on it before I knew what phaser was. it turned to a different type of ppf
I cannot wait to get it done. By the way, shouldn’t “One of us…” be “Blue. Blue. Blue…” ?
Is Mother3 really this… humorous? I always expected it to be a lot less light hearted than Earthbound, but there’s a lot of grave jokes, and Hinawa calls Lucas manly…
This shows how much effort is put in this project, you won tons of awesomeness points!!
But I have a question that I think it may be not too related to the translation, but the final patch will solve the can’t save problem for the flash cards??? because I searched every corner trying to have a real solution to that. and it’s kind of fustrating to lose all my data, even when I’m too anxious to play with the menu patch.
Sorry If this question had appeared a lot. But I truely want to play mother3 in my DS and spread the word of this game in my country (chile)
Greetings!
MOTHER 3 (both the original and menu patched versions) saves perfectly fine for me on my flash cart; does your flash cart client support save patching? That’s most likely the problem. If it doesn’t, you’ll need to find a client that does. The EZ4 client definitely does.
I think it can’t…
thanks anyway!
Now to search that save patching-thing
Keep up the great work guys. It is very much appreciated.
Lucas = Bash
Duster = Kick
What about Kumatora and Boney?
I assume Punching/Biting?
Wait, so your working on a Mother 3 translation AND you helped make One Piece an acceptable English dub? You have made it into my top 50 greatest people ever list.
Maybe they will do what was done to the naruto rpg for gba and make it into a ds game for america… but probably not… thats why were so lucky to have you guys translating it.
Wow- one year! Congrats guys you’ve been making some awesome progress. I know very little about programming but I can only imagine how tough it must be to hack a game like this.
Stuff like the menus are looking much better now, I’m glad you’re taking the time to perfect them.
about the 21 character thing…what if you made a newfont that was twice as wide, and then make each character a combination of two letters, that way you could use twice as many characters. the downside would be having to rewrite the script with your new frankenfont (unless you developed a program that would replace certain combinations of letters with their matching frankenfont characters). half way through though, you’d probably have figured out the problem anyway. just food for thought.
Roan: The problem is your ROM. You either tried patching an already patched ROM, or your patcher messed up or something. Hundreds of people have tried the patch with no problems, and I even tested stuff myself.
A Fan: I don’t know, I don’t think anyone’s HP or PP ever goes above 999 in the game. You’d have to hack the game to make it happen, and we’re not gonna do extra work just for people who’re already screwing with the game 😛
Ixis: Possibly, but I can’t say anything for sure. I don’t even think I have those files, since I think Dr. Fedora retranslated all those non-script files from scratch for m3.org way long ago anyway. And then we’ve since redone them from scratch again. But if they’re decent, yeah, I’ll consider em.
Harold and
kumarHunter: If it happens, then I’ll do as they ask, so as to avoid getting sued. But if they do wind up doing that, that’d be like ultimate PR poison , and it goes without saying that another group would take up the task and go more underground with everything. But they’ve had more than a year to do stuff, and so many people obviously know about the project, so I think there’s nothing to worry about.Moulinoski: We’ll only stop the project if Nintendo announces an English-version MOTHER 3, if Nintendo asks us to stop, or if the world ends.
Kasumi: Yeah, it’s humorous. If you’ll recall, EB’s text was always like that too. The Japanese text on the graves are all really bad puns based on the word for “grave”. Most of the English translations shown for those graves are sort of placeholders for later, though the one about acting gravely works pretty well as *almost* a direct translation, so it’ll probably stay. The game is sad and stuff too, but it’s MOTHER, of course it’s gonna have humor 😀
Kousuke: I think long ago sblur developed a way to fix the ROM so it’ll work for some flash carts. I’m pretty sure it’ll be included in the final patch, so it should hopefully work on most carts, but naturally I can’t guarantee it. The menu patch was made from scratch (and I don’t know how sblur fix works) so you’ll want to check stuff like this if you’re in need of a temporary fix. If anyone else here knows more, please enlighten us 🙂
Lincoln: Bash and Bite. Salsa scratches. I think there might’ve been some other stuff that went unused.
Hunter: byuu suggested the idea a long while back. It’s possible, but probably not feasible, given that there’s so little font room in the 8-bit character set, which I think we’re *already* going to use for dictionary compression purposes. I think it’d be best to fix it properly rather than use duct tape to hold things together. Especially if sometime down the road people wanna make their own hacks, or if people want to translate it into other languages.
In the crazy event you ever do need to do that thing about making a double-character font, I should mention that it’s not too hard to generate all the common di- or even tri-grams given a text file with all the text. In Perl, I’d just chop it into x-character segments, do a ++$hash{$chars}; for each then do something like print join ‘\n’ sort keys %hash; at the end. You probably have plenty of good programmers that can handle that level of thing, but I might as well mention it because it’s a solution I often end up coding in Perl 🙂
You guys are just awesome. I admire your persistence.
[…] recently posted a one year update on The (Unified) MOTHER 3 Fan Translation page. The massive article details the history of the […]
I have to say Magical Starsign is pretty damn boring. It’s a shame it was used as a barometer for anything.
Anyway, thanks for the hard work.
[…] ROM. Best of luck, team. The western world’s (rabid Nintendo fanboy base) is counting on you. One Year Later [Mother 3 Fan Translation, via DS […]
maan
the way u wrote it all
sounded like u were just being a critic to nintendo
sounded like u were all mad about that idea of working there all along
man
don’t be hating
¬_¬
I know how nintendo knows of the fanlation of mother
remember mother3.org april 1st joke?
at least 5 people THAT I KNOW e-mailed nintendo about that, I bet a lot of more people did taht.
and guess what
most people gave out that you all were translating the game and one said the website address…
at least
they are not like squaresoft
that when find out that some fans are doing something with their stuff, they make them stop it and cancel
:s
I am sure if Nintendo is aware of the project he they know who tomato is
its not like it hard to find out about Clyde
[…] For those who haven’t heard about this project, the co-founder of Starmen.net (an Earthbound fansite) began this project as it became increasingly aware that an English port of Mother 3 was never going to happen. You can read the full history HERE. […]