Now that Earthbound has been confirmed for the Wii U Virtual Console, it's opened the doors for plenty of speculation. Specifically, could this mean that we'll finally see an official localization of Mother 3, the sequel to the cult SNES hit? Probably not, but it's worth thinking about.
Earthbound fan Clyde Mandelin took the entire Japanese script of Mother 3, which launched in Japan on the Game Boy Advance, and translated it back in 2008. The result was an accurate fan translation of the game that let North American players enjoy the adventure. Now Mandelin is offering up his rendition of the popular RPG's script to Nintendo, absolutely free of charge.
"I realize that localizing a game this size can cost a lot, so if it’ll help in even the slightest, I’ll gladly offer to let Nintendo use my text translation files for any use at all, completely for free," wrote Mandelin. "I’ll even edit the files to fit whatever new standards are necessary (content, formatting, memory size, etc.), completely for free. I’ll even retranslate everything from scratch if need be. Just whatever it takes to get an official release out."
It's obvious that Mandelin is willing to go the extra mile to ensure that we get Mother 3 outside of Japan. It would certainly be great, and with titles such as Ys: The Oath in Felghana receiving fan translations and then being launched using said translations, it's not a complete impossibility. I won't keep my hopes up high, but it would be awesome if Nintendo at least considered the offer. If anything, here's hoping this pushes Nintendo to think about releasing Mother 3 in North America someday.
[Fobby]
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