More Fixing and Initial Playthrough

16 years ago by Mato

Just a small status update. Still going through the game, fixing context issues, polishing things up to fit context/direction better, etc. etc. It’s coming along great, it’s getting pretty exciting seeing things finally coming together with so much polish.

Right now, I’m about 15 hours in, I’d say maybe I’m 3/5 of the way through the game. I think for most people, the game will last in the 20-30 hour range the first time around. I think I clocked in around 32-35 hours the very first time I played it in Japanese. It’s about as long as EarthBound I’d wager, only it doesn’t feel like it when you look back. Anyway, I hope people will take their time when the patch is finally out, it’d be no fun to rush through it ๐Ÿ˜›

Anyway, almost no issues encountered in the last few days, nothing that kills the game either. Only two things really. The line that’s shown when an item is stolen is messed up and won’t be easy to fix (this is because it’s actually 2 separate lines and one hard-coded thing), and the other bug I’ve only gotten to happen once and can’t reproduce it however hard I try. I know what caused it, just very very very bad luck/timing. It instantly fixed itself perfectly when the text refreshed during a scroll though.


I’ll try to finish this initial playthrough this weekend, after which I’ll move on to finalizing all the non-script stuff, like items, enemies, battle text, etc. Then I go back to hacking, bleh.

Anyway, short story is so far so good ๐Ÿ™‚

Posted on Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 at 1:25 am by Mato, filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments and pings are currently closed.

213 Responses to “More Fixing and Initial Playthrough”

  1. Kaos said 16 years ago:

    It’s coming along well!

    I can’t wait until it’s finished. You guys should get a medal for doing all this.

  2. Nico said 16 years ago:

    Always good to see that there aren’t any game-stoppers (although it sucks when one of them is going to be hard to solve).

    Keep up the great work Mato, JeffMan, and others!

  3. Alfonso Alfredo said 16 years ago:

    From now on, my favorite item is the Made-You-Look.

  4. spicebean said 16 years ago:

    Man, I can only imagine how much of a pain Chapter 6 is gonna be.

  5. Realn said 16 years ago:

    I somehow checked this site the within a few minutes of the update. I feel special.
    Anyway, good to hear that there are few glitches popping up. I know you’ll figure out those two you mentioned because you rock that hard.
    I figured that I’d just add my voice to the many others commending you for the great work you’re doing. Good luck making more magics happen.

  6. "Snake" Plisskin said 16 years ago:

    Thankyou for all your effort. I swear to sacrifice millions of lesser Edible plants in you’re honor
    (pleeeeeese click on my link.

  7. mantendo said 16 years ago:

    woooooooooooties for looooooooooooooooooties

  8. David said 16 years ago:

    W00! Update!

    Glad to hear things are going well. Hope those bugs are fixed easier than you fear.

    Those 2 sentences make me feel like I’m writing an email… to someone that might not care as much about my words of comfort as I hope :p

  9. Zade said 16 years ago:

    Woot! New update. Glad to see that it’s looking so good already!

  10. Brian said 16 years ago:

    YES!!!! Im so happy that it’s almost done!!! Keep doing a great job Mato and the rest of the gang and I cannot WAIT till its over so i can play the rest in ENGLISH!!

  11. David said 16 years ago:

    3 woo[t]s in a row?

  12. SkyGriever said 16 years ago:

    Great everything is smooth, hope we can get this soon. I’m really looking forward for this to come out. Keep up the good fight Mato.

  13. Charles said 16 years ago:

    WOOT!
    Keep up the righteous work, Mato!
    I have at least five friends that are totally jazzed about being able to play Mother 3 at long last because of my showing them your translation project.
    So much so that several of them actually got out and played Earthbound.

    You’re really spreading the love, keep doing what you do.

  14. hadoken_zero said 16 years ago:

    so awesome…
    this is looking so cool.
    keep up the good work!!!

    cause if you dont….
    (raises fist)

  15. Alfonso Alfredo said 16 years ago:

    @”Snake” Plisskin: You must have a lot of time on your hands to make an intentionally blank page.

  16. A Fan said 16 years ago:

    I’m surprised the mouse didn’t steal your Peculiar Cheese. I mean, after that incident with the tank…

  17. danielz said 16 years ago:

    sweeeeeeeeet x9

  18. Jamian said 16 years ago:

    Mato, I must admit I love every single update you ever make. They are so informing and I wake up each day to check if there are any new ones, then quickly look before sleeping. It’s very enjoyable to see after all this time now you are finally playing the game, and it being in good condition is a sign you and all the other important people working on it haven’t slacked.

    You said the project was about 90% done total a couple of updates ago. Where do you think you are now percentage wise? Are you much closer then before on getting the rest of the checklist crossed off? Thanks in advanced. <3

  19. KoolKojoS said 16 years ago:

    Uhhh Mato….why do you post so late at night, unless your time-zone is THAT different O_0

    Well anyway, nice job Mato, you must be really devoted to us fans to actually spend part of your life just to play a game!

    I commend you, nintendo should hire more people like you!

  20. MidnightCeltic said 16 years ago:

    Mmmm. I love me some Antidote ries. Oh and Magic Tartsole a. Anyways, Good job and have fun.

  21. Habiib said 16 years ago:

    You’re so close to finishing!
    Go! Go! Go!
    Ganbatte!

  22. "Snake" Plisskin said 16 years ago:

    I did not make that website I thought it was hilarious though

  23. Hyperstar96 said 16 years ago:

    AWESOME!!! I can’t wait to play through it!

  24. PizzaPasta said 16 years ago:

    You’re right about the game seeming shorter when you’re finished.

    I finished it in about 30-35 hours in Japanese as well (and that’s with me not being able to read a thing). I also erased my save file a couple times on accident (don’t ask) and the last time I did it I was really close to the end. I found that playing through it again didn’t take too long and made the game feel incredibly short.

    Keep up the good work, man!

    Oh, and feels good man.

  25. ALX said 16 years ago:

    Pizza pasta could either be incredibly delicious or insidiously disgusting.

  26. Vagn said 16 years ago:

    Ya cheese, tomato sauce, veggies, sausage, beef. That all sounds really disgusting in pasta. ๐Ÿ˜›

  27. StageProps said 16 years ago:

    Cheese and sauce on pasta is not disgusting; I don’t know WHAT you’re talking about.

    Great work Mato, we’re all pulling for you.

  28. Garukon said 16 years ago:

    I was wondering, with this new altered version, will Codebreaker/Gameshark/Game Genie/Action Replay codes still work for it?

    I mean, the Japanese version’s codes should still work, right?

  29. Zero to Hero said 16 years ago:

    SO CLOSE!!

  30. Chrissy Ramone said 16 years ago:

    It would be really depressing if people tried to speed through the game after all of your hard work. =[ They wouldn’t even read people’s text after all of your hard work. Hopefully, all the speeders were playing the japanese version because they wouldn’t read it anyways! ๐Ÿ˜€

    Americano Logic!

    I hope you sleep regularly during those long hours of playing and maybe you should pray to the One Legged Umbrella demon for help. =] Could never hurt! It might just help and he will grant you the power to freeze everyone except your mighty computer and you!

  31. Adam said 16 years ago:

    GOOD JOB DUDE! Keep it up and keep having fun ๐Ÿ™‚

  32. TheMetroidMan said 16 years ago:

    Great work! Its getting closer and closer, I can’t wait!!! I was wondering if you handed off those “lines” that you said would you KNOW would need to be revised to Demi yet? That way by the time you are done all the non-script changes and hacking he might be done too since he is super busy?

  33. Shuri said 16 years ago:

    Garukon: Yes. You’ll still get the Jap version but altered so that the text is English. Values like HP and Max HP will still be in the same addresses so any Jap gameshark/action replay codes will work for this.

    …At least I think that’s how it works, I’m no programmer. One less question for Mato to answer so he can continue working on this beautiful project, yay!

  34. Arashi said 16 years ago:

    I don’t care how long/short the game seems, I’m gonna play it more than once

  35. 62t said 16 years ago:

    Mato already mentioned in the last update are Action Replay code. Since only the text is being changed the existing codes should work

  36. "Snake" Plisskin said 16 years ago:

    62t they should work but the reason is different since the game uses the same build as the untranslated version the codes should work. For example almost all Super Mario World hacks (based on the same region of the game) The codes from the normal game are interchangeable. PS visit the link

  37. EmpoleMew said 16 years ago:

    I know people who are waitong for this translation, but I doubt they’ll actually play it. Their loss. I can’t wait to show off my English Mother 3 cartridge at school when the patch is out. And gloat to that one kid who thought Mother 3 didn’t exist.

  38. A Fan said 16 years ago:

    All this talk of Max HP & PP makes me wonder: did anyone ever make a patch that fixed the graphics after your HP goes over 1,000 in Earthbound? Because you could easily get up there at high levels, even without rock candy abuse…

    I seem to recall hearing that M3 does *not* share that particular bug (due to lower HP/PP caps), too, but I can’t remember.

  39. Old West said 16 years ago:

    I canโ€™t wait to show off my English Mother 3 cartridge at school when the patch is out.

    That’s not how it’s going to work…Unless you plan to make a fake one, in which case, you’re proving nothing to him/her.

  40. Alfonso Alfredo said 16 years ago:

    @”Snake” Plisskin: It is pretty funny.

  41. Mother3bound said 16 years ago:

    hurray i cant wait im about to have poo join my team in Mother 2 so hopefully by the time 2’s over i can maybe start 3! (wishful thinking) Great job. Click my link too and let me know if it works ๐Ÿ™‚

  42. themaskedmuffin said 16 years ago:

    Dear Mato (or Jeffman),

    How is Jeffman doing?

    Sincerely,

    Austin

  43. "Snake" Plisskin said 16 years ago:

    EmpoleMew: I knew a kid who would go insane if you mentioned the word Mother. So I was talking about this game and he strangled me:)

  44. Nobody said 16 years ago:

    So what did Magic Tart steal? a”!”?

  45. SAM-E-BOI said 16 years ago:

    Awesome progress Mato. I’ve got a couple questions though. First, how many side-quest type things are there in this game? Second, are there any optional end-game bosses like in the final fantasy games? And last, how woud I make this work if I were to purchase an ItouchDS?

  46. Nobody said 16 years ago:

    Your hp can go over 1000 in earthbound? My ness got to level 99 and his HP didn’t even reach 900.

  47. Anon said 16 years ago:

    The mouse stole a magic tart. what’s messed up is that magic tart is before stole a.

  48. Mato said 16 years ago:

    SAM-E-BOI: Questions like that best go on the message board. There are a few side things you can do, but nothing as complicated as Final Fantasy games. There are a few optional bosses you can fight too. I have no idea what an ItouchDS even is, so you should take it to the message board, see the flash cart/card topic I guess.

  49. Nobody said 16 years ago:

    @ Ramone: It would be alot easier to speed through the game with the patch because It does not have the slow downs and bugs that the original had and it will be less confusing in case speeders don’t know what to do.

  50. Nobody said 16 years ago:

    @ Anon:I know! That was a joke!

  51. Mato said 16 years ago:

    themaskedmuffin: He’s busy moving/packing/vacationing or something, I dunno. He’s not on his main computer though so it’ll be at least a few more days until he’s kicking hacking butt again.

  52. Nobody said 16 years ago:

    @ “Snake”: I refer to this game as Earthbound 2.

  53. otherhand said 16 years ago:

    Boob Wizards II is clearly the best name, remember?

  54. Old West said 16 years ago:

    I think a “Stupid Joke” forum should be set up on the forum so people stop posting so many in the comments section. >:|

  55. Crono801 said 16 years ago:

    “Snake” Pliskin, by far the most hilarious thing is how much the number of hits on that website has shot up today; I’m assuming it’s almost entirely from someone pointing it out here.

  56. Arashi said 16 years ago:

    How old are you in Tomato years?

  57. Nathaniel said 16 years ago:

    Woohoo!

    Are there weapon descriptions? The one for “Better Stick” should be…

    “Not the best…”

  58. Mato said 16 years ago:

  59. Can0fMean said 16 years ago:

    there is your answer! ๐Ÿ˜€

  60. Spam Man Deluxe said 16 years ago:

    Hey Tomato, I apologize if you’ve answered this and if you have just ignore it, but how is Demi status wise? Has he gotten the stuff he’s suppose to translate and has he started and all that jazz?

    Other than that, Keep up the good work but don’t overdo it!

  61. Mato said 16 years ago:

    No, he’s going to play the game when there’s a stable beta in a few weeks. He hasn’t played the game yet (well, besides the very beginning) and that’s how I’d prefer him to handle those lines. Can’t get eyes any more fresh than that, y’know?

  62. Mat said 16 years ago:

    Man oh man oh man.

    I cannot wait to play this. You guys are the bestest.

  63. Spam Man Deluxe said 16 years ago:

    Oh okay, I follow ya, appreciate the answer! I’ve been wondering how that was going to work.

  64. CoryS said 16 years ago:

    Yayyyyyyyyyyy I promise we will do a full play through and do every quest and read every sign.

    Because that is probably one of the best things about Earthbound. The world it puts you in. ๐Ÿ˜€ tyvm again

  65. Midna said 16 years ago:

    Wheeee this looks more awesome all the time.

  66. A Fan said 16 years ago:

    > Your hp can go over 1000 in earthbound? My ness got to level 99 and his HP didnโ€™t even reach 900.

    Yup. Just make sure you don’t hit 99 before you complete the boss at the end of the sound stone. You get massive stats from that, but the vitality can only take effect once you level.

    This is a real pain if you’re fighting the Major Psychic Psychos for those damn pendants. Though I hate to get more than 3 of them just because I like Poo to have all the “of Kings” stuff and nothing else. Said pendants *are* incredibly awesome at weakening all elemental attacks except lightning, though, and do point out why the “of Kings” set is less than perfect.

    It’s fun when Gigas’ elemental attacks do like 6 damage to you at the end, though ๐Ÿ™‚ Give someone who can restore people to life the Franklin badge and you might as well be invincible.

  67. mike k said 16 years ago:

    To fill the space until Mother 3, I have been playing a lot of games from a few years ago that I never got around to playing at the time. So far I have done Mario Sunshine, Mario and luigi superstar saga, Legend of zelda Wind Waker, Super mario bros 3 (although that one is quite old), and right now I am playing Pikmin 2. I have played so many great games in the last few months. I dont know why I felt the need to say that.

  68. MotherLover123 said 16 years ago:

    ^ He has great taste in games.

    Love to hear how well things are coming, Mato. Can’t wait for the next strawberry-colored window ๐Ÿ™‚

  69. M.x said 16 years ago:

    “Well, it’s better than a plain stick.”

    I LOL’ed. Refreshingly honest item description; very Itoi-esque. Great writing/translation ‘Mato.

  70. Mato said 16 years ago:

    Actually, Chewy gets the credit for the item descriptions. I haven’t really looked through them, but what I’ve seen in-game so far has been really awesome work on her part ๐Ÿ™‚

  71. Alfonso Alfredo said 16 years ago:

    As time goes on, the quality and fun of Nintendo games goes down and down. When Nintendo first started out, they made sure that their games were high quality because they had to make a name for themselves.

    They had their golden age in the SNES era, with games like Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, and, of course, Earthbound. When the Ninteno 64 came out, people were excited about 3D graphics, but it resulted in a complete lack or RPG’s for the system. The GCN gave us good games once again, like Baten Kaitos and Tales of Symphonia. The Pikmin games were fun, too.

    But the Wii has to be the biggest disappointment I’ve ever seen from Nintendo. If you want to buy a Wii, only get it for the Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and Super Mario Galaxy. The Virtual Console is a waste of money (without Earthbound) and another disappointment. If you look at Nintendo’s website now, all you’ll see are games like Summer Athletics, We Love Golf, and (ugh) Guitar Hero 3.

    And then I heard about the Mother 3 Fan Translation. It’s good to hear that some people are still dedicated to RPGs like this one. I guess what I’m trying to say is this: if Nintendo doesn’t start making games like Mother 3, they’ll go out of business. You can only make so much money selling golf games.

  72. Reanzet said 16 years ago:

    my GOD one misses a lot when one leaves for 6 weeks(and no internet access, boo)*insert generic praise garbledeegook here*

    Does playing through the game make you feel accomplished? Seeing all the hacking you’ve gone crazy over actually work must feel good!
    side note: can you actually ban people from the blog?

  73. Mato said 16 years ago:

    To be honest, not really, it just feels like more work. But oh well. I think the feeling of vicariously playing it for the first time with all the new players will be good though.

  74. bloodynose said 16 years ago:

    Hey mato, what happened to everyone else who was going to be helping the project. I know demi has his new commercial game but even he is still helping. Demi’s original announcement on his site says you’d be the main translater and Gideon doing the hacking. Why did Gideon drop out?

  75. Mato said 16 years ago:

    He was to be the hacker originally, but then it got way too complicated, more than anyone imagined. Plus he’s got 5000 projects of his own. He’s said he’s interested in editing, but I rarely see him around so I don’t know if he’s really got the time/desire for it anymore.

    I don’t think people realize how crazy one needs to be to hack this game. Had this been some no-name game, it would probably never ever everrrrrr be fan translated, just too difficult. Kind of like how Magical Vacation 1 never got fan translated, I hear it had very similar programming to this too. In this case though, we have two things: 1. it’s not a no-name game and 2. Jeff and I ARE crazy.

  76. M.x said 16 years ago:

    I’m impressed not only by the progress made, but by the very fact of this blog itself.

    As a bystander to the project, I was ready for the kind of obscurity and inveiglement which usually accompany small, fan-based efforts like this… Having not only an open, honest depiction of the work being done (no gimmicky progress bars!) but also insights into the process of both hacking and translation continues to be a treat.

    It’s been a long wait to play this game, but I gotta say, all your work is making it a fun one.

  77. Zade said 16 years ago:

    I agree entirely with Mx. This blog itself has been an enjoyable experience (at least for this reader), and one that has made me respect the work put into other fan-translations that I’ve used.

  78. Monsuco said 16 years ago:

    Mato, if you weren’t crazy before the hacking began, surely you are now. Programming is powerfully hard on your brain. (Shoot, I couldn’t get Java, and you must be doing this in something like ARM Assembly and decompiling with a hex editor and no original source code, though I don’t know how rom hacking really works)

    As both a geek and an Earthbound lover, I respect you tremendously for being willing to do so much work for so little personal gain (and unlike working on a FOSS project, you probably can’t pad your resume’ with this, as while it is technically legal, employers aren’t looking for rom hackers).

    I have been playing through Mother 1/Earthbound Zero and it is good but not great (gah toooooooo much leveling up and soooooooo many random encounters but still good for an ancient NES game anyways). Earthbound/Mother 2 was incredible, and it looks like Mother 3/Earthbound 2 will totally rock. If Itoi keeps making better and better games as is the trend with these three then mother 4 should be so increadible it will somehow change my life, and possibly cure at least one form of cancer. Of course, Itoi doesn’t want to make more games (though last I read Mr. Saturn was in the fishbowl), but if he changes his mind, I imagine Mother 4 will still be out and translated before Duke Nukem Forever (and cancer will likely be cured by the time DNF is out :P)

  79. RAIDERX said 16 years ago:

    ๐Ÿ˜€

  80. Vagn said 16 years ago:

    As far as I know Ioti has no plans for Mother 4.

  81. Shuri said 16 years ago:

    As we have obviously seen thus far. After the Mother 3 translation is complete, the Mother fanbase will grow to an even greater size. The fans will become more and more hungry for a sequel and will realize that no matter how hard they try they can not make one that is faithful to the way Itoi made them therefore they will clone an exact duplicate of Itoi who will make Mother 4, which will be so awesome that all wars will immediately stop because the soldiers will want to play Mother 4 and life will be good.

    It’s fun to dream.

  82. Jabberocky said 16 years ago:

    Alfonso Alfredo: You forgot Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. That was a dang good game.

    But I’d agree with you on most points. (although there are still a few others worth buying, depending on your gaming tastes)

  83. Alfonso Alfredo said 16 years ago:

    I was just naming off some of the most popular games for the systems. I would have liked to credit a few more, like the Metroid series.

    Also, I’d like to say that the Mother series is my favorite because:

    Earthbound is more fun than any other game
    Mother 3 has the best story of any game
    Mother has the best graphics of any game

  84. mother3isgood said 16 years ago:

    I bet 48 PP that the errors in the pics there will be fixed. ๐Ÿ™‚

  85. Mato said 16 years ago:

    Umm, yes, the point of finding errors is to fix them. Though the right pic probably won’t get fixed, too rare and too difficult to fix.

  86. Lei said 16 years ago:

    Very clean and professional, I’m getting very excited. ๐Ÿ˜€

    BTW, I love Mother item/enemy descriptions. So humorous.

  87. Arashi said 16 years ago:

    No need to really worry about the right bug if it’s only gonna happen to 1/100,000 people and it fixes itself anyway.

  88. Carl said 16 years ago:

    Out of curiosity, what caused that rare glitch in the right-hand screenshot? Is it related to that hashing algorithm you were using to refresh the text graphics only when the text actually changed?

  89. autobzooty said 16 years ago:

    It’ very encouraging to me to see how hard you all are working to make this a clean project. You really are being very professional about this, and as a fan of Earthbound, it makes me very happy.

    :}

  90. Reanzet said 16 years ago:

    couldn’t that rare case be fixed with a frame refresh/redraw every so often? Really, I have no idea what I’m talking about, but I heard something about you taking that out to optimize things. Maybe you could put it back in, but it could refresh less often or something…perhaps this is why the original programmers left it in.

  91. Mato said 16 years ago:

    Carl: No, because that text there isn’t sprite text.

    Reanzet: Nothing was taken out, not sure what you’re talking about at all. I know what the problem is, but fixing it would require an insane amount of work, and I’ve only gotten it to happen that one time.

  92. Mother3bound said 16 years ago:

    lol. wonder what mato looks like.
    There was a time when i wondered what howard stern looked like and i was like WHOOAA dude that is one ugly person.

    Not saying mato is ugly. just sayin.

  93. Carl said 16 years ago:

    I think Reanzet was talking about the same thing I was. You modified some of the game’s code so that text is only redrawn when it is actually changed, whereas the original game refreshed it constantly even when it hadn’t changed, correct? Since you said in the update the the problem resolved itself when the text was refreshed, having the game refresh the text every once in a while (but not as frequently as the original game, since that caused the slow-down problem in the first place) would ameliorate the problem.

    Of course, since you’ve explained that this problem isn’t cause by that issue, this is all moot, but that’s what I understood Reanzet to be saying.

    Anyway, what DID cause the problem, if you don’t mind explaining? Is it something you could explain to someone who wasn’t familiar with the game’s code?

  94. Mato said 16 years ago:

    The constanty-refreshing text is sprite text only. Non-sprite text is only drawn once.

    It’d be too much work to explain what’s going on. In simple terms, basically it was just a case of really bad luck and bad timing. If it happens, it will only happen with really long item names and if you try to rush real fast through a shop menu. But like I said, I tried to make it happen on purpose many times after that and never got it to.

  95. Jamian said 16 years ago:

    Mato, if you set up turbo buttons, can’t you duplicate it again? I guess that’s a stupid question if you’ve tried as hard as possible to duplicate it already.

  96. "Snake" Plisskin said 16 years ago:

    Please just let tomato work don’t worry about one trivial glitch

  97. Carl said 16 years ago:

    Who is keeping Tomato from working? This blog has a “comments” area so that readers can discuss its entries. As Tomato talked about said glitch in this entry, I assume it is open for discussion.

  98. Otte said 16 years ago:

    Don’t worry about people rushing, because you can bet I will spend hours just pottering around and absorbing the sheer Englishness and Motherness. I will talk to everybody and enjoy your translation thoroughly, I will :O

    …I’m not really sure whether you should be pleased about that or not

  99. Nobody said 16 years ago:

    I would like some city fries right now…

  100. Some Person said 16 years ago:

    Greedier Mouse is the Mother 3 version of the Spiteful Crow, I see. (What’s a “Magic Tartstole a”?)

  101. Mato said 16 years ago:

    Can someone go fix this? It’s very annoying that they claim that I’ve specifically named a month, which I never did. Also, according to that, I claimed in July that it would be out in September. What really happened was that I said in July that it would take at LEAST three months. September is two months from July, so wtf. Then there’s all kinds of other issues there, but it’s pretty lame to begin with.

    It’s not a good idea for people involved in an article to edit articles themselves, so I won’t. But it sucks how even Wikis that aren’t even Wikipedia’s main site are so full of BS and know-it-alls who know nothing ๐Ÿ˜

    EDIT: BTW, I hereby estimate the game will be done in the last 1/4 of the year. So you can quote that instead of fake quotes pulled out of buttland.

  102. Bubble said 16 years ago:

    Fixed.

  103. Mato said 16 years ago:

    Don’t forget the sidebar though ๐Ÿ˜‰

  104. Bubble said 16 years ago:

    Even more fixed.

  105. Mato said 16 years ago:

    Doesn’t seem to be, but oh well. Whoever’s in charge of that wiki smells.

  106. Pimpshi said 16 years ago:

    Yeah, one moment it still said September, the next moment I refreshed and it said “the last quarter of 2008”. Hopefully people aren’t changing it back or something stupid…

    Man has this come a long way…the light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter!

  107. Bubble said 16 years ago:

    You’re right the errors are still there… hmmm. I didn’t create an account to fix that though. Let me see if that makes a difference.

  108. Bubble said 16 years ago:

    Well, I created an account and it appears to be OK now. Maybe they have caching issues? Super fixed?

  109. Arashi said 16 years ago:

    maybe you just have to refresh a couple of times. Anyway, the last quarter of the year, huh? Awesome. Imagine a Halloween release.

  110. ALX said 16 years ago:

    ^^^I dunno, pizza hut had a pizza pasta and it was pretty grody, but I suppose it could be done better.

    Anyways not important. What’s important is that we are ever closer to playing mother 3 with a reasonable level of comprehension.

  111. Juan Love said 16 years ago:

    Tomato I just wanted to say that I am very appreciative towards you in translating this game. I remember when I heard of the release for the N64 and how it got delayed and finally I heard nothing of it until recently, when I popped in an SNES emu for my PSP and started playing Mother 2 again. So I thank you very much and I will definitely be playing Mother 3 over and over. Again I thank you very much and encourage you to take your time, dude.

    Juan Love

  112. seedvt said 16 years ago:

    Are you guys actually called “The Translation Team”?

    (or so it says on the wiki)

  113. Education said 16 years ago:

    I’m sure I speak for all of the fans here that we appreciate that you and Jeffman are taking your time to translate this game. It’s so awesome that you guys are doing this so that everyone can enjoy this game and so we can read and understand this masterpiece. Mato and Jeffman = Win

  114. Mato said 16 years ago:

    No. That would be a stupid name. The disclaimer says “The Translation Team” because it’s a generic term. Wiki people = bleh.

    The Translation Team actually sounds like a horrible superhero team concept. It would be fun to see how bad that would be ๐Ÿ˜›

  115. GhostSonic said 16 years ago:

    “The Translation Team actually sounds like a horrible superhero team concept. It would be fun to see how bad that would be ”
    I disagree, it sounds like a nice concept.

  116. seedvt said 16 years ago:

    I can see Mitch making a mini series of the “Translation Team, led by Tom Ato”

  117. Mur said 16 years ago:

    mato i added a section for you in the wiki ^^ and i edited a bunch of the text to have funny pictures (just look for the box with the arrow pointing out)

    so enjoy *still updating it*

  118. Reanzet said 16 years ago:

    a tad late, but Carl was right about my comment. but could you make it so that the shop text redraws itself every so often? if not, ignore me :]

  119. Mur said 16 years ago:

    i updated a lot of the pictures but i need to goto sleep so have fun with what you have and check it out :p

    http://earthbound.wikia.com/wiki/The_Unofficial_Mother_3_Fan_Translation

  120. Mato said 16 years ago:

    Reanzet: I appreciate the sentiment, but you’ll have to trust me that I know what I’m doing. If it was that easy, I’d already have talked about it or pointed it out to the team.

  121. Crass said 16 years ago:

    I hope this has been a fun play through for you, I understand you think yourself crazy, but I’d still like to think you’re getting the gamer enjoyment out of playing and not just the creator enjoyment

    I know you didn’t create the game but I’m sure you understand

  122. welsh-wuff said 16 years ago:

    looks like things are really comming together well ๐Ÿ˜€ im looking forward to giving this a whirle, thanks so much for translating it :3 hopefully that other site will finish mother 1+2 so the 3 can go nicely together in english for GBA.

  123. Olive said 16 years ago:

    I can’t wait to play *-*’

  124. Germ said 16 years ago:

    I envision The Translation Team as an anime with main “super” characters spewing random languages during every action-packed scene with random language subtitles to match (or not match as this case might be).

  125. Vale Silverblade said 16 years ago:

    Man, I wonder.. Will the title screen be changed to earthbound 2, or still stay as mother three..
    Anyways, I didn’t expect to see such sneaky little.. Misspellings?

  126. Mato said 16 years ago:

    See the FAQ page.

  127. Vagn said 16 years ago:

    It will remain as Mother 3 and might have a subtitle that says Earthbound 2.

    Mato for your sanity maybe you should take a short hiatus from this blog to clear your mind. I know that a bunch of internet know-it-alls would drive me crazy too.

    Oh and *generic praises* .

  128. Anthony said 16 years ago:

    Mato,
    I’ve seen a couple of your realisation and I’m impress. Event with all you’ve done, that a bunch of internet know-it-alls try to tell you what to do… I’m a programmer and I know how hard it is to hack a game like that. I’d like one day to learn how you do all these things… But the translation part, well, I’ll never be able to do that… I only know like 10 words of japanese and my english and so so :P. Maybe to hack a game like that you need to know japanese so maybe i’ll never be able to hack a game… You’re doing a real great job and let’s agree that everyone can’t wait to play this game. But we can wait, thats the only thing left to us now and it,s not the hardest part for us to wait. The hardest part is left to the hacking team…
    Thanks for reading my comments!

  129. Nobody said 16 years ago:

    You should release the translation and then make another onee with earthbound 2 title graphics (It’ll probably be really hard, because no matter how much changes I make to a game’s graphics, it will always revert back.)

  130. MrPopo said 16 years ago:

    >EDIT: BTW, I hereby estimate the game will be done in the last 1/4 of the year. So you can quote that instead of fake quotes pulled out of buttland.

    Last quarter. Awesome, just in time for peak here at Amazon. So in between bouts of getting paged from software blowing up, I can save the world from evil!

  131. eddward said 16 years ago:

    I like how the great stick is described in game. It reminds me of Disgea when I first saw those item descriptions. Short sword: A sword that’s kind of short. Rock fist: Loses to paper a lot. Lobster claw: Goes great with butter and lemon.

  132. Drรผ said 16 years ago:

    Nobody: NO

  133. ForteMP3 said 16 years ago:

    I am wondering, has the Block 0 issue been found and squashed yet? I know that’s one thing everyone’s getting headaches over…

  134. A Fan said 16 years ago:

    I think you mean Block 0 *issues* ๐Ÿ™‚ The whole block is a pain in the ass, to hear Mato tell it.

    Last I remember, many (but probably not all) were fixed and there’s more to test (which would be part of this playthrough).

  135. Game Over said 16 years ago:

    So…The project is finally close to being done. Horray. My sacr….Nothing…I wish you all good luck in fixing everything and getting it out the the patient but still impatient masses…

  136. Eldiran said 16 years ago:

    I only check this site every few months, but I’m waiting eagerly for the result. I just had to say, great job on all the work you guys have done, and thanks very much.

  137. azsxdc said 16 years ago:

    I can’t wait!! I still have yet to beat the game. I was up to chapter 4 before my computer died, so I was going to download the menu patch tonight, but looking at this, I’ll have to wait and see if it comes earlier than expected, might not be worth getting the menu patch at all!

  138. Impossible said 16 years ago:

    I seem to remember Mato posting something about this recently, but I can’t find it now. How many unique visitors has this site had now?

  139. Jabberocky said 16 years ago:

    Hey, the last comment was 8 hours ago…that’s gotta be a record or something. O_o

    Usually this place is flooded!

  140. JKrigelman said 16 years ago:

    We were and you messed it all up.

  141. Mato said 16 years ago:

    Impossible: 357,732 at the moment. ~15,000 menu patch dloads thus far too.

  142. mike k said 16 years ago:

    Dude, every day I get more and more excited. The next few months should be insane. So many great games are coming out. Just in the fall we can expect Battlefield Heroes, Spore, and hopefully this. Also, click on my name to play the crappy game that I made. And no matter how much you dislike the game, give it a good rating.

  143. PureRok said 16 years ago:

    Happy birthday to me and great job Mato.

  144. Game Over said 16 years ago:

    Lot of people are waiting for this! Wait…Is it possible for you guys to somehow put your names in the credits or something? That would be pretty cool…

  145. Nenacu said 16 years ago:

    Well, it looks like everything is still coming along nicely. Mother 3 is so close, I can almost taste it. You and your crew should know this Mato. You are gods.

  146. A Fan said 16 years ago:

    I thought they said already that it was too hard to hack themselves into the credits. But maybe they can put their names on the anti-ebay/disclaimer screen they mentioned putting at the start.

    Anyhow, no matter what, WE’LL always know who to give credit to for this fine hack ๐Ÿ™‚

  147. Triple10X said 16 years ago:

    Any idea how you’re going to send out all of the emails to those who signed up? Just wondering, as it seems that will take a lot of planning to figure out.

  148. Nenacu said 16 years ago:

    It’s probably just a robo-mailer Triple. It sends out the same message to everybody on the list when they say go. Spam e-mails work the same way sadly.

  149. Drรผ said 16 years ago:

    Thank you, Mato . . . you know what for ๐Ÿ˜‰

  150. Mato said 16 years ago:

    Actually, not really.

  151. gBev said 16 years ago:

    Does the EB Wiki page for the translation look good to you now, Mato?

  152. bob said 16 years ago:

    I have a question. On your to-do list you mention testing on various platforms. That means you try it on different emulators and flash cards right? Are you going to test it on all the popular flash cards/emus before releasing the patch or are you going to release the patch then start testing then provide a list?

  153. Zach said 16 years ago:

    please make my babies.

  154. Yokai said 16 years ago:

    lol @ mato’s last comment. hehe

  155. Mato said 16 years ago:

    bob: Various people on the team have access to various kinds of flash stuff, so it’ll be tested on many of them for sure. We know some flash carts might have saving problems and stuff like that, and we’ll be including instructions on how to fix those in those rare cases. For the most part, though, you can test the Japanese ROM or the menu patched version on your cart to see if it works or not. If it works, then you’ll probably be all right with the final version.

    And yes, there will be a big huge document explaining what carts/cards are good/recommended, how to fix saving issues, etc. I’m counting on some people at gbatemp to cook that stuff up, hopefully they’ll be able to get something really good and informative and thorough.

  156. "Snake" Plisskin said 16 years ago:

    VBA for mac has the save problem

  157. Monsuco said 16 years ago:

    I have no idea about how to do the e-mails if your ISP is picky but if not, surely somebody with your mad programming skillz could simply write a script or python program or something. As for the patch, if it is moderately large (bigger than a couple megs) you might want to use Bittorrent to help distribute it. I am sure plenty of people would be willing to help you seed. I certainly would, it is the least I could do. (Actually the least I could do is yell “Yay” so YAY!)

  158. Zade said 16 years ago:

    I’m sure plenty of options have been thought of and that the team will have a proper and fine plan by the time that blessed time comes that the patch is released.

  159. Mato said 16 years ago:

    I was just gonna put it on a free Geocities site.

    Incidentally, the zip file will be 1-2 MB.

  160. Shaun said 16 years ago:

    Yay small download!

  161. Mato said 16 years ago:

    Heh, actually, for a ROM translation patch that’s pretty big, especially considering that’s the zip size.

  162. Elrich2k3 said 16 years ago:

    Free Geocities site? I haven’t used one in a long time, but they used to run out of bandwidth really really fast..

    You should also upload it to a/various free filehosting services [RapidShare, MegaUpload, etc.], and a Torrent would also be a little more reliable.

    Or, you might have been joking. It’s late.

  163. Mur said 16 years ago:

    It would be nice to have a torrent of the patch

  164. honeymustard said 16 years ago:

    @Elrich: Hmmm.. I wonder..!

  165. Triangle said 16 years ago:

    Dudeeeee of course he’s jokingggggggggg

  166. pauyasfyla said 16 years ago:

    That is pretty dang big.

  167. A Fan said 16 years ago:

    Yeah, MegaUpload, RapidShare & the like tend to be easier than a Geocities site these days. Or so I understand ๐Ÿ™‚

  168. Perfect_Chaos said 16 years ago:

    Here’s an idea. The people that put in their e-mail get the patch one day earlier than the people that didn’t.

  169. t26 said 16 years ago:

    I wont worry too much. Within a few hours they will be all over the place.

  170. Vagn said 16 years ago:

    I’m sure they’re gonna host the patch on this site guys ๐Ÿ˜›

    After all that is where the menu patch is being hosted. Mato was just kidding.

  171. Reanzet said 16 years ago:

    again, late because of lack o’ internet. I trust ya, and i wondered if it was considered already. seeing as it’s such a rare glitch, its not necessary anyway. thanks though

  172. Drรผ said 16 years ago:

    A certain “NO” went missing. Ring any bells, Mato?

  173. Jon said 16 years ago:

    Torrents are the way to go, more users = less bandwidth on sites.

  174. Eyedunno said 16 years ago:

    I would think a torrent PLUS a fixed link or three (with a recommendation to use the torrent for speed and bandwidth conservation) would be the way to go.

    Anyway, that stealing text hack looks like it’ll be a little hard. Kind of reminds me of programming text adventures in GW-BASIC as a kid. Also, now that I think about it, programming text adventures in Japanese seems like it would be ridiculously easy. You could have things like ้’้Š…ใฎใ‚ฝใƒผใƒ‰ใ‚’2ใคๆ‰‹ใซๅ…ฅใ‚ŒใŸใ€‚ with the only thing the computer has to change being the numeral. ๐Ÿ™‚

    Then again, if you used proper counters (like 2ๆœฌ instead of 2ใค), it would be a bigger pain than an English text adventure. So, hrmph, I don’t know.

  175. Nobody said 16 years ago:

    1-2 megs? It’s gonna take a while to get that on to my gaming computer (which does not have internet).

  176. Nobody said 16 years ago:

    This site has a glitch, sometimes, the website gets cut off when I’m scrolling down and there is nothing but red space. Anyone know why?

  177. Can0fMean said 16 years ago:

    Yeah, just wait 1 minute and it will load. If it doesnt, refresh.

  178. Mato said 16 years ago:

    On the last chapter finally. Clock’s at 24.5 hours. I guess I’ll probably finish closer to 30 hours than I though originally.

    Anyway, good progress is being made and man I forgot how tough some of these later boss battles can be.

  179. SAM-E-BOI said 16 years ago:

    WHOOO!!! BEAT THEIR ARSES MATO!!!!

    Just felt like doing that. But seriously, great job Mato, keep up the good work!

  180. apteryx said 16 years ago:

    Excellent, I love tough boss battles.

  181. Exp HP said 16 years ago:

    I am a tough boss battle.

  182. TheMetroidMan said 16 years ago:

    Mato I don’t know how long the last chapter is, but do you plan on beating it tonight? It would be cool if you made an update about little things you thought were neat and some stuff that still needed tweaks. Take your time man and thanks!!

  183. Mato said 16 years ago:

    No, I doubt I can beat it tonight.

  184. Bret said 16 years ago:

    Gosh Mato what kind of RPGer are you? Can’t beat less than 6 hours of game in one night? Sheesh!!!! ๐Ÿ™‚

  185. apteryx said 16 years ago:

    I used to be that kind of gamer. When I was 14. It sucks getting old and having responsibilities. Like getting up at 6 for work.

  186. Zade said 16 years ago:

    Bah, I had to get up at 6:00 every day to get ready for college last semester and I was still up all hours of the night playing games.

    Sure I came close to having a psychotic break but it was worth it!

    (not that I’m suggesting ill of the great Mato, as I know he has actual work to do on top of having an actual life, both of which I thankfully lack. =D)

  187. Game Over said 16 years ago:

    I have a bad feeling…When I get the patch I am going to stay up for days trying to beat being the way I am with Games…

  188. MotherLover123 said 16 years ago:

    I have a curiosity question.

    (taken out)

    Oh, and if you do decide to address this comment, I have one more little query. Why, in the original Japanese version, are there English words at times. I think some examples of this are the “knock knock knock” and even the title screen. If I’m wrong, let me know. But if they had some letters in Japanese for games released here, I would have no idea what they would say…

  189. Mato said 16 years ago:

    Sorry, if you’re too scared to go to the spillover board, then I dunno what to tell you. Expect r.

    As for your other question, you could probably write an entire graduate thesis on that phenomenon. Quick answer is that they teach English in Japanese schools, as required classes. And it also gives it more artistic flair in their eyes. Many other possible reasons, but I’m not the guy to ask and I bet there’s been lots of papers written about it.

  190. Mato said 16 years ago:

    Final area of the game, 28+ hours right now. Getting really late though, so I might just save it for tomorrow/today.

  191. XXXW0 said 16 years ago:

    Oh boy this is going to be good I can tell. Mato finish this up and take a break then have a nice (insert whatever you want here). You’ll deserve it!

  192. MotherLover123 said 16 years ago:

    K, well that helped a lot to clear up my thoughts.

    Thanks and keep up the good work ๐Ÿ™‚

  193. mike k said 16 years ago:

    Almost done beating pikmin. I put pikmin 2 on hold because I never beat pikmin and my step brother brought pikmin over the other day.

  194. Mato said 16 years ago:

    Blargh, found a nasty bug during the final battle. Block 0 related of course. And it makes the game unfinishable. Will have to mess with in the morning.

  195. Jay6 said 16 years ago:

    Maybe Block 0 is like a final boss >_>
    You can beat it! ๐Ÿ˜€

  196. Magus said 16 years ago:

    Block 0 IS the final boss.

  197. Habiib said 16 years ago:

    The secret is to fill Block 0 with zeros.

  198. Shuri said 16 years ago:

    To beat Block 0 you must pray 0 times.

  199. kevindubrow said 16 years ago:

    ^ Very hard task.

    Good luck with the bug!

  200. MidnightCeltic said 16 years ago:

    Ouchies, It’s fine up to the final boss? I’d ask if it’s what I think it is, but that’s kind of spoiler-ish. Anyway, good job and good luck!

  201. Near said 16 years ago:

    Mother 2 was much longer than mother 3,IMO.

  202. Demolisho said 16 years ago:

    I’m very anxious, if you were to release the beta right now, I’m sure we’d all be very happy. We could report problems even *wink wink nudge nudge*.

    I really don’t want to learn japanese or wait ๐Ÿ™

  203. Near said 16 years ago:

    You know,theirs a brilliantly written Story walkthrough for Mother 3,combined with Mato’s Partial translation patch and you can pay mother 3 and understand the story.

    Of course thats only if you want to experience the greatness in Japanese.

  204. Demolisho said 16 years ago:

    I can’t do that, I tried it and I read ahead. Unfortunately I’m too enthralled by reading and the first chapter was ruined for me. So this translation is all I have.

  205. Arashi said 16 years ago:

    god, Block 0 stopping you from beating the game? That’s like ripping out the last page of a book

  206. no said 16 years ago:

    not really. the last page is still there, but in this case it’s got a padlock preventing you from turning to it.

  207. someone said 16 years ago:

    Block 0 and his evil cohort, that sparrow, strike again causing the patch to explode. Yes, I believe the sparrow is the problem to. Good luck Mato (and you lessser known members)

    Just a question for fun. If mother 3 was 3-D would it have the crappy camera angles be the final boss.

  208. Vagn said 16 years ago:

    Don’t ask Mato to release the patch early. He’s stated many times he wont release it till it is finished. It isn’t finished, so it isn’t going to be released. Stop pestering the poor guy.

  209. Jay6 said 16 years ago:

    Sounds like that bug in Earthbound if you had a pirated copy of it. When you get to Giygas, part way through the battle, it just freezes, and deletes all your save files.

  210. Schlupi said 16 years ago:

    The last bug you found… is on the final boss battle?

    How ironic ^_^

    I know you hate doing Block 0 stuff, too…

    Well, I continue to thank you for your hard work, Mato.

    And of course, when I get a Paypal (which wont be for a while, but still…) I want to know where I could donate to you.

  211. Mato said 16 years ago:

    I appreciate the thought, but like it’s mentioned on the FAQs page, we don’t accept donations. There are other ways to show your support though, so check out the FAQs page.

  212. TheBird said 16 years ago:

    whoever first programmed this game should be forced through the hell you guys went through

  213. Linkdude20002001 said 16 years ago:

    Lol. I thought โ€œbetter stickโ€ said โ€œbatter stickโ€. A batter stick is definitely better than a plain stick. I bet it’s cake batter. ๐Ÿ™‚