How come this game was the pinnacle of nerd culture for like 15 years? Everything about it feels poorly written and awkward compared to it's contemporaries.
How come Mother 3 was the pinnacle of nerd culture for like 15 years?
How come this game was the pinnacle of nerd culture for like 15 years? Everything about it feels poorly written and awkward compared to it's contemporaries.
It is. Everything about it is tone deaf and odd, especially the ending. If everyone's alive at the end, then the entire sequence just feels pointless.
I am so fricking glad that there is at least once place on the internet which doesn't go along with these homosexuals and pretend that Earthbound is the greatest thing ever. Even if it is just caused by contrarianism.
I always enjoyed playing it but yea the fandom is pretty cringe
I loved the first 2 games at the time of this when it was released and was super eager to play it. Bought the original copy shortly after release at a con and then a translated repro a bit later and I gotta say, yeah its a let down, but still ok on its own.
Its one of those games where I am sure you would like it a lot more if you played it with no prior expectations and it would be a fun little RPG, but as being the "true sequel" to EarthBound, it just feels way too different.
I did like the idea of the world of Mother 3 being "transformed" into the modern settings of Mother 1/2, but I dont feel like that idea was played with enough. That being said, i feel like this and 2 have elements that they do better then the opposite, so neither to me is superior to the other.
EarthBound was at least mostly complete, though. Most of the reports and screenshots of Mother 3 indicate that even the GBA version was heavily cut down, though I do wonder how much there was supposed to be in the final version when compared to EarthBound. There was so much from EarthBound, from the Apple of Enlightenment, the Starmen, Buzz Buzz, but removing all that for "Here's Pokey from the last game, except this time there's an entirely unrelated dimension with a sleeping dragon and crossdressing demigods. Here's Andonuts too for some reason. Oh, you want to know more stuff from Mother 2 and how it relates to this game? Frick you!!"
Mother 3 shows indirectly that Pork/ey is obsessed with Ness for some reason, which indicates that you might've been able to piece together how it connects to Mother 2 (or Mother 1 for that matter), but it doesn't. Instead it dumps most of its story in a single text block and a story "twist" so obvious that by the time it's stated outright, Flint sounds more disappointed than surprised. Plus the entire sequence at the end just feels pointless if everyone is revived.
i am sure at the very least that cut final boss with the psycho visuals was suppose to be some kind of return of the essence of Giygas manifesting in the heart of the Masked Man, especialy going off the highly likely assumption M3 is taking place in the bad future seen in the opening of Earthbound and mentioned by BuzzBuzz where Giygas's psychic influence would still be permeating the world outside of the Nowhere Islands and the events Porky cause act as a "doorway" for it to begin to reach in and manipulate the evil in the hearts of those living on the island who secluded themselves from the rest of the world. Thats probably my biggest cut content I wish would have been added, it would have been a fine implication wrap up to the series without outright saying "HERES GIYGAS AGAIN", but still more neatly trying the 3 games together.
>Plus the entire sequence at the end just feels pointless if everyone is revived.
I feel like the plot actually was supposed to have everybody die for real at the end, but Nintendo complained to Itoi that he couldn't end it like that and so he added that tacked-on bit where everybody says they're perfectly OK.
On a similar note, the original Mother just ending with nothing but credits after you beat the last boss feels a lot more like something Itoi would have done than the forced "Happily Ever After" ending they put into the localized version that never came out.
But Mother 1 and 2 had fine stories? And neither one was an overly convoluted jumble of concepts and themes that resulted in a messy, rushed, unnecessarily edgy final product.
>On a similar note, the original Mother just ending with nothing but credits after you beat the last boss feels a lot more like something Itoi would have done than the forced "Happily Ever After" ending they put into the localized version that never came out.
Mother 1-2 GBA kept all the gameplay and ending changes made in the proto version, why would Itoi allow that if he intended the original version to not get a run button, a harder Mt. Itoi, different dungeon and over world layouts, and an extended ending? It is no secret the first Mother was rushed to hell and back with very little bug testing and play testing in the final phase.
I agree, I think it's clear Itoi approved of the extended ending.
The only question is, did the American developers purely add it? Conceptualizing, planning, scripting, programming, everything? Or was it done with involvement from the Japanese developers? It would have to be the latter since it has a unique music track; composed by the same composers for the original game. They didn't have an American compose just the ending track. I tried to look this up but didn't find info on the wiki or starmen, I'll try earthboundcentral which I had forgotten about for a moment.
What American developers, I’m lost.
I think the idea was that the NES version made some changes, besides the censorship which was obviously just for NoA standards, that Itoi et al saw as slight improvements/QOL changes/stuff they wanted to do the first time but couldn't fit into the initial version of the game (not exactly sure which is most accurate, could be a mix of these things). E.g. the original Famicom version didn't have enemy (and maybe item?) descriptions, but Itoi had the guy who adapted the script for English write those in, possibly based on suggestions from the original team in Japan.
So I'd guess the ending was something the OG crew for the game came up with, maybe based on the concern that players wouldn't see it as the good ending? Think I heard something about how international/English releases were often in development early enough that the original team in Japan that worked on it would still be together and could implement any necessary changes.
>players wouldn't see it
meaning essentially just cutting to credits in the Famicom version
>and I gotta say, yeah its a let down, but still ok on its own.
The planned Nintendo 64 version wouldn't have been a let down. Shigesato Itoi said when it was first cancelled that if they ever remade it that it would be a "vignette" compared to the original version.
>Miyamoto: If we were to do it over again we’d have to start from scratch, wouldn’t we?
>Itoi: Well, even if we work on it again I have no intention of turning it into something so big again. It’d be a vignette.
yomuka.wordpress.com/2013/08/18/earthbound-64-cancellation-interview-itoi-miyamoto-iwata
Everyone has seen the trailer for the N64 version, it would have been great. I think one of the biggest blows the GBA port took was the entire tone. Itoi was going for something more "somber" and "dark" and I think that the GBA port is as commendable a job as could be for what they had to work with, but the feeling could never be the same.
the N64 version would have been amazing, even if it had flopped, purely because it was a next level 3D adaption of the series moving on from 8 bit to 16 bit to early 3D. Just being able to see the Mother/Itoi style in 3D would have been a treat.
Yeah, and the fact we got a trailer of it which looks as good as it does really is a testament to the fact it would've worked and have been great. The interview makes it clear the game was substantially finished just to make it that much more of a shame things went the way they did. I think Mother 3 on GBA is a great game, but only as good as it could be for a GBA game. The N64 version would've been much greater.
>Why the frick didn't they let him do it?
Read the interview linked there.
It explains everything. And it's Shigesato Itoi, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Satoru Iwata all together. It really goes in depth, it's too bad more people don't know about it.
While the entire narrative is still there in the GBA game, I can't help to think the N64 version was much grander in scope. It would be cool if a development build leaked one day.
The only thing about EB64 is the graphics don't age as well as the GBA version. I think the Mother 3 we got looks great and matches the aesthetics of the rest of the series.
Why the frick didn't they let him do it?
This really just seems like a huge gaming tragedy. Especially since the guy never worked in games again in a major way after. I'm not even an earthbound fan
Really? I always thought it was pretty good, gameplay is alright I guess, music is great, visuals are ok, atmosphere and dialogue are top notch, and the story is good... For a kids game!
Problem is people keep pretending this is some ultra deep shit when I don't think it is, it's basically made to be a simple RPG, somewhat of a disney or ghibli movie in the form of a GBA game, nothing as deep as people make it out to be
>How come this game was the pinnacle of nerd culture for like 15 years?
several layers of niche self-importance
>nintendo only
>sequel to a terrible SNES game
>japanese only, then fan patch only
not that it's bad; it's just revered by people who either don't know any better or think they're superior simply for having played it.
I enjoyed my play through of Mother 3 but I can't help to think that the enemies are weird just for the sake of being weird. Am I missing something?
dragon quest has weird monsters and mother is supposed to be dragon quest without the swords and sorcery setting
DQ's enemies are weird but they still fit the world and atmosphere of the game, whereas a lot of the enemies of Mother 3 looks like they just pulled them out of their asses by complete random.
Mother 3's monsters are almost all chimeras so it makes more sense that they're weirdos than Earthbound.
Earthbound was marketed heavily enough that it left a cultural footprint in its time. It was quirky and distinctive enough that it was memorable for those who played it, even if they didn't like it. But the relative inaccessibility of the rest of the series gave those games an additional hipster quality. It was a perfect storm of appealing to all the wrong types of obsessive people.
Earthbound is better than Mother 3. Mother 3 tried way too hard to be emotional.
(1/2)
Mother 3 abandoned what made it worthwhile outside of its art style. The series was always a Dragon Quest clone but with a different setting Mother 3 opting for a magical island the animals becoming Chimeras and adding in a couple paved roads and cityscape later just acted as a formality to both turn it into just every other JRPG and something vaguely resembling Mother 1-2. The common trend at the time seemed to be separating parts of the game into a chapter system each ending with some really bad purple prose scrolling across the screen and the writer I'm assuming Itoi less someone else made this decision was really up their ass with this plot: Oh iF yOu NaMe LuCaS's MoM yOuR mOm YoU'Ll Be SaD wHeN sHe DiEs DERP", it was pretentious garbage so was the 3 chapter introduction with constant character switching and chapter 3 having you play as a monkey who must collect shit to give to a dung beetle to level up faster in addition to grinding as a metaphor for in and of itself grinding, you're actually grinding for literal shit to beat up a wolf with a cactus. Things are hopeful around chapter 4 but for the attempt at humor anytime you vaguely go off the beaten path sometimes you have to deal with dialogue about invisible ants you dare not step on. The game doesn't really start being fun or overly forced until around either chapter 5 or 7. Chapter 6 all 3 minutes of it was really up its ass by the way, going left and jumping for your mom, going left just like on a black ending screen HAHA SO FUNNY AND QUIRKY, THIS GAME HAS SO MUCH PERSONALITY, DOORKNOBS AND SHIT. Chapter 8's setting being mostly cardboard I will say was brilliant though it's a perfect representation on this game being a shoddy imitation at Mother
(2/2)
I get it, "YOU JUST WANT MORE OF THE SAME THING", sure but I wouldn't mind the setting shift so much if there wasn't a bunch of annoying stuff attached, I don't care if the island is Magicant or something similar, I don't care it’s an alternate dimension that I have to spend 10 minutes hearing about at the end of the game from a character that never spoke before being expected to feel anything from this outside the annoyance of waiting for this exposition to finish while fricking Erik Satie’s Gymnopedie No.3 plays as if this was some high art My Dinner with Andre shit. The vapid fanbase for this game is an elitist exclusivity club on par with people claiming Sonic CD is the best one when it was only playable on a Sega CD because only these enlightened chosen ones played if much like only people downloading roms with a translation patch are touching this. This isn’t a bad game or RPG just don’t prefer it compared to the rest of the series and think it’s highly overrated due to the mystique surrounding it not being officially translated. Nintendo would frick up and don’t think more people would give a shit out this game outside of a niche of dedicated fans that think Mega Man Legends 2 is a triumph in storytelling
don't reply, it's the mother 3 spammer who spams the same threads across 3 different boards and constantly samegays his own threads.
I have a feeling it’s the same guy who spams anti-Half Life threads.
>How come this game was the pinnacle of nerd culture for like 15 years
the pinnacle of nerd culture now is undertale.
the more things change, the more they stay the same
SJWtale hasn't been relevant for a couple years now.
Do any of you gays know if, in the fan translation, one of those trivia card items brings up the iconic "this game stinks" line. Can anyone confirm if thats in the original jap version or just something the translator threw in to replace something else?
You can see all the translation changes here
http://mother3.fobby.net/or/
It was a disappointing, disconnected, baffling waste of time even for Earthbound fans.
Thank God I’m not the only one. It has some memorable moments, but man it sucks compared to EB.
I used to be into EB as a teen because it's kind of babbys first obscure game, but the fact is that the MOTHER series as a whole is a little shit.
The first one is unironically okay. It had a pretty unique story, the world is massive and nonlinear, and it can be pretty challenging
The second is I would say par for the course. It's not a masterpiece like most pretend it is. It came out pretty late in the SNES's lifespan and it has very little to show for it. No sidequests, no secret bosses, pretty linear, fairly ugly graphics.
MOTHER 3 is kind of the same. The problem comes when people start acting like M3 is somehow a masterpiece of storytelling. It isn't. It's literally just Star Wars on an island and Darth Vader is your brother, not your father.
>The second is I would say par for the course
MOTHER was a great game for its time but I don't see how Earthbound isn't superior. There seems to be a minority who think MOTHER is better than it, but it improved on it in just about every respect. I think as a game MOTHER has a few things over Earthbound, like the impressive nonlinear world, but Earthbound plays so much better and as Itoi has said the vision for his game was really realized for the first time, taking advantage of the SNES hardware to do things the NES could not.
>The problem comes when people start acting like M3 is somehow a masterpiece of storytelling. It isn't
I agree, MOTHER 3's story gets overrated. It has a cult fanbase, cult fanbases overhype and overpraise everything they get attached to. (look at how some people talk about indie games it inspired like Undertale or Lisa)
But I think you go too far in the other direction in what reads like a dismissal. It certainly has among the best stories of any RPG on the GBA. Does that mean it's a masterpiece of storytelling in some universal sense? Of course not, but for what it is I think it's a very thought-out, well-written game.
Part of the problem is I think people are desperate. They have trouble accepting that video games don't really provide a medium for profound storytelling because they're invested in them. And it seems like potential is there—which it is in a sense, being it's an interactive audio/visual medium that contains every other. (art/design, music, cinema, literature.) But in practice even the best games will get overhyped as being artistic masterpieces, while they are what they are. I think mostly they'll just continue to be an entertainment outlet, and we'll just get more experiments here and there from indie developers and avant-garde studios and game directors. (I put Itoi in that category since he only got involved in games to realize his vision with the first MOTHER, which got two sequels since it was popular.)
I think there’s a lot of unnecessary obsession with the question of “are games art”, which to me always seemed a pointless distinction. They are an art form in a literal sense, as you said being a kind of conglomerate medium of various more “pure” arts the same way film is, but at the same time being art doesn’t necessarily mean said art is of any quality. Black folk drawing graffiti of their name on a building are creating art even if it’s garbage. A more interesting and frankly impossible to answer question (right now) is whether any games will stand the test of time and be considered classics in centuries to come.
>nerd culture
>poorly written
>awkward
yes
you all should know that a good chunk of japanese mother fans absolutely loathe 3. the fan translator even had a post on his blog about what japanese fans generally think of it. some said it was absolutely a sob story garbage.
>the fan translator even had a post on his blog about what japanese fans generally think of it
Do you have a link or a lead of any kind for that blog post, where you found it or what the title may be? I just searched the fan translation website's blog (mother3.fobby.net) and Tomato/Clyde Mandelin's website legendsoflocalization and didn't find it. I also searched Google for these websites along with "what japanese think of mother 3" and again, nothing.
https://earthboundcentral.com/2012/10/mother-and-japanese-fans/
https://earthboundcentral.com/2013/04/mother-3-and-japanese-fans-revisited/
Nintendo aren't known for their RPGs, nintendo fans are known for being hipsters, so they praised an rpg from a non rpg developer and pretended it was so sad or whatever. Character deaths come off as almost comical with how sudden they are and how invested the game expects you to be.
>nintendo aren't known for their rpgs
What?
>Everything about it feels poorly written and awkward compared to it's contemporaries.
source
>Lucas has lines but Shitoi forgets and makes him silent
>Duster is silent until chapter 5, where he has to remember a personality he never had
>Kuma is raised by the magypsies and a princess, but these plotlines never mean anything
>every magypsie but Ionia and Fassad are throwaway characters and copies of the same quirky drag queen shit
>Game expects us to feel bad for Hinawa and Claus after 5 minutes of screentime at the prologue
>Flint disappears until the final act
>Porky is rehased from Earthbound but with none of the personal connection he had to Ness
>Shittoi couldn't come up with another character so you get your dog instead
>character development is put on halt once again in chapter 7 to collect sticks
>Alec is reddit personified
>Salsa is the WORST section in the game and exists totally to introduce a bland pure evil anragonist
>Pigmasks are incompetant and wholly unthreatening compared to the blandest of enemies
>DCMC is a retread of the Runaway 5
>Wes is a completely contradictory character, one moment verbally abusing Duster and twerking his ass in the next
>Leder exists as an exposition dump and serves no purpose than to reveal the most inconsequential plot twist in the history of gaming
I agree with you on almost everything, but you're downplaying how amazingly paced the start of the game is, I think it's perfect.
If I have to add one criticism to your list is that only a 5yo or a very stupid person wouldn't realize that the masked man is claus the first second he shows up, having the "twist" at the very end is such a waste of a plot element, the revelation should have happened at the 6th needle during the battle with MM.
I hate how some people go out of their way to explain why you shouldn't like a game
It's okay to not like something as long as you don't get to the point where you try to shit up every thread about it with memes instead of criticism.
This board is 49% why you shouldn't like something and it's the worst ever, 49% why you should like something and it's the best ever, 1% general posters pretending they have something to discuss instead of just admitting they are bumping the thread because they want to chat and be a part of something, and 1% normal posts.
T. Manbaby
you're going to shit when you find out some people actually make a living explaining that, and then attach a number score underneath the explanation
Does anyone else think this game tried to be too "mature"?
KYSASAP
Also the 2 fans that mother has in Japan seems to fricking hate Mother 3, most of the critisism come from the story wich they consider to dark and cliche, another point is the game play wich no one seems to explain what they hate about it.
It's really fricking good. I've played video games for 31 years and it's not often I find a game that has captivated me as mother 3
I'm kind of a mother gay though so feel free to disregard my opinion
I'm envious.
I found it 5-6 years ago. I'm sacred to look up prices these days