The Pixels

Elemental Video Game Critiques

MOTHER 3 (2008 localization patch) [GBA]

14 min read
Like the Zen-est of trees falling in the forest, MOTHER 3 does make a sound, surely, for those with ears to hear and emulators to play it.

Mother 3 fan translation - Wikipedia

Welcome to the World of MOTHER 3

 

 

Like the Zen-est of trees falling in the forest, MOTHER 3 does make a sound, surely, for those with ears to hear and emulators to play it.

And like the cat in Schrodinger’s thought experiment, MOTHER 3 exists at once in two states. There’s the official Japanese release for Game Boy Advance in 2006 and the fan translation patch released two years later, by which time ROMs and emulators were widely available. No time-space paradoxes or bothersome corporate interests can impede anyone who might want to play it. All you need is the device you’re reading this on.

At this point, I’ll just let the cat out of the bag: I played MOTHER 3 when the unofficial localization was first released, and I recently played it in English version 1.2 on the 2DS Virtual Console with some homebrew help. But I don’t worry much about Nintendo coming after little old me, considering they’ve been well aware of the localization since its release and permitted it tacitly all along. Knock on wood.

“Nowadays, people are always looking for consistency. Take, for example, a place lined up with nothing but bonsai trees. People would find it strange if there were suddenly a rose among them. But this MOTHER 3 WORLD of mine, including its logo, is the essence of inconsistency.”
Shigesato Itoi

For me, MOTHER 3 occupies that contested territory between the real and the imaginary, the actual and the possible, with a combination of grit and grace. The primary meaning of its title screen logo, letters half shiny metal and half rustic branches, is simply what’s there on the surface: the duality between nature and technology. But it also speaks to the long struggle to make the game a reality at all (much less playable outside Japan). The rough materials of willpower and ingenuity finally saw the game’s development through to completion over a decade after fans had started clamoring for it, following up the bizarre saga of the canceled EarthBound 64 with the eventual release of a truly worthy conclusion to the beloved franchise. Equally important, this logo sets up the prevalence of duality itself as a pattern or schema within the game. The twins Lucas and Claus, two of the central characters, are the clearest example, but there are many others. That very duality sows the seeds for its own transcendence by the ending–about which we’ll say no more here, to spare anyone worried about spoilers for a decade-plus-old game (and/or further dialectical shenanigans).

From the outset, MOTHER 3 has to break into the stable equipoise of the previous two games in the series, MOTHER/EarthBound Beginnings and MOTHER 2/EarthBound, classics on their respective consoles. In a sense it is a counterweight, all on its own, that can stand up against them both. It builds on the tradition of its predecessors’ comfortable gameplay and timeless themes. In ways large and small, MOTHER 3 addresses loose ends opened up by the ending of EarthBound. But it also represents Shigesato Itoi’s decision to turn his personal storytelling language of words, images, and music towards concerns that were much less prevalent in the earlier games. The very nature of progress comes into question, juxtaposed against the tried and true friendships and family relationships that have shaped a whole world of meanings for players across the series. For all their similarities, this third adventure arrives at a very different result. And to all appearances, a final one.

The Long and Winding Road

The story of MOTHER 3 is told episodically across a prologue and eight chapters that vary widely in length and content. Each of the three opening chapters (“The Night of the Fire,” “Thief Adventure,” and “The Mysterious Peddlar”) takes place almost simultaneously, revolving around a critical interruption in the peaceful world of the game. Each puts us in the role of a different main character, joined by a mixed bag of allies, so that we can’t tell who will stay in our party long-term. Only in Chapter 4 (“Club Titiboo”) do we retake control of Lucas, who has been all but absent since the brief prologue. The chronology jumps ahead by three years at this point, with significant changes to the environment. Processing all this is quite a whirlwind, but the game’s second half is at least as full of twists and surprises.

Keeping the dramatic structure established on this larger chapter-by-chapter scale in mind, though, the movement from scene to scene matters more in determining our immediate experience of the game. Scenes of intensity and intrigue are juxtaposed with the most inane and boring patter, but by and large these moments do entertain, and with hindsight they ultimately come together to make a compelling whole. At times, MOTHER 3 relies unusually heavily on cutscenes to tell its emotional story. Players have to adjust to the whiplash between free-flowing gameplay and methodical exposition up front, or we won’t be likely to stick with it long enough to be drawn in. If we do stay with the story, some of the bewildering narrative choices in the opening chapters might start to make sense. They reinforceItoi’s message of accepting and even welcoming whatever and whomever we encounter on our journey.

I remember being pretty unimpressed on my first playthrough, but I also remember rushing more than I should have. Deeper messages were largely lost on me. I was more interested in what MOTHER 3 might illuminate as far as EarthBound’s story than in seeing what the game might have to show me. I was listening for echoes of my favorite game–and there are plenty–but not really hearing what this one has to say for itself. This go-round, I talked through the game with a friend as we played. Not so much recapturing the old days playing SNES all summer as reconstructing (a fraught term in the world of MOTHER 3, but I mean it in a good way), as best we could, our relationship with Itoi’s work in light of its total impact (those conversations are all freely available). This time, in place of feeling nonplussed, I felt pleasantly challenged. Recognized and weirdly known, belonging (though that could be delusional), and implicated, even, in some of the fan-service and rug-pulling that Itoi seems to be up to here.

Anger or disdain, even disgust, might just as naturally be in store for players who aren’t terribly big EarthBound fans, or who don’t get Itoi’s worldview. As transmitted via his quirky sense of humor and even stranger feel for pacing, the story beats of MOTHER 3 don’t always land without some rough edges. Players who get their hopes up too much going into MOTHER 3, even a fan like myself, looking for clear evidence of progression or improvement upon the previous games, might be setting themselves up for disappointment. In the measure that we love EarthBound we might reasonably fear the likelihood of being let down, and we surely shall be if we misapprehend MOTHER 3 by failing to grapple with it on its own terms.

But what’s strangest and most incredible of all, Itoi has built the game around precisely these conflicting emotions.

Official Artwork of MOTHER 3

Just endure it for a little bit!

Almost as if daring the critically-inclined player, MOTHER 3 undercuts practically any attempt to take it seriously. It actively stymies even the characters themselves when they’re in the throes of rage or grief. Notable moments come early in the game. When Flint, the father of the twins, receives a life-changing message, it is couched in the most stunningly inappropriate delivery. His outburst at this point is literally cut off with a blow to the head. When he sets out to rescue one of his kids who has gone missing, his father-in-law tags along, interrupting at every other step with reminders to take it easy, advice which seems totally out of place given the circumstances.

But Grandpa Alec perhaps knows more than Flint or the rest of us do about the sort of world this is. His powerful friends, the Magypsies, similarly present a mix of humor and pathos. Named for offbeat musical modes, such as Phrygia, Ionia, Doria, and so on, they are ambiguous in other ways, too: male and female, mortal and immortal, aloof and generous. The Magypsies are less helpful than Alec’s confidence might lead us to expect; or at any rate the ways in which they help out are not immediately clear. During the early chapters they fail to meaningfully intervene on Flint’s behalf, and for long stretches of Lucas’ journey, they are entirely absent. McGuffins and secondary conflicts string us along without much mention of the mysterious forces that have set everything in motion. As the endgame comes into focus, however, the Magypsies in their very hiddenness point towards this world’s version of the Eight Melodies of MOTHER and EarthBound. The game really begins to open up at that point, both in terms of freedom of movement and thematic coherence.

One significant exception proves the rule. Throughout the game, hot springs function like beds do in most JRPGs. Resting there recovers HP and status. Itoi puts his own spin on this by requiring the player to wait five seconds, in-game, rather than simply skipping through text to that effect. It’s a subtle but characteristic move, as the creator is on record saying, from the first trailers for MOTHER, that he wishes players to take their time. (Much like Alec’s words to Flint). Now and then, though, there will be someone else in the hot spring with your party. At one point, when Lucas is alone, it’s one of the Magypsies. The screen goes dark and a dubious transition ensues, with energetic text from Ionia, after which Lucas pops up from under the water profoundly changed.

A number of commenters and videos purporting to analyze the game seize on this and a handful of similarly awkward moments to explain why MOTHER 3 has not been officially released outside Japan. I expect the truth is somewhat more complicated. In fact, I suspect that explanation gets it backwards: the episode at the hot springs is a symptom, not the cause, of the game’s regional exclusivity. Along the same lines as Lucas’ awakening, whenever a character learns a new PSI technique in the normal course of leveling up, the game’s dash functionality is temporarily disabled, because they are “feeling feverish.” As a result of natural processes of maturation (Itoi suggests menstruation or teething as real-world analogues), realizing their new ability has to manifest with a physical accompaniment: sweating and exhaustion for the character, and another slowdown likely causing confusion or frustration on the part of the player. Considering the hot springs, PSI, and Magypsies as complementing one another in service of Itoi’s idiosyncratic vision of MOTHER-hood, it seems entirely possible that withholding a global release was intentional all along: the ultimate delay of gratification, demanding that fans the world over sweat it out and exert themselves to play the game at all.

If we accept that MOTHER 3 as its own game with its own agenda and go along with the big swings in tone and feeling from scene to scene, abiding with the welter of characters and points of view from chapter to chapter, we, like Lucas, stand to learn our own forms of Lifeup and PK Love.

 

 

The 8-bit Review

visuals Visuals: 8/10

MOTHER 3’s graphics smooth out some of the clunkier sprite work of Itoi’s prior games, lovingly preserving the visual language of a bygone era. As far from the uncanny polygons of the EB64 demo as they are from the more lifelike renderings made possible even at the time of release, the game’s visuals borrow something of the vibrancy of the clay figurines of the EarthBound player’s guide, while keeping to the 2D mode of gameplay. Standouts include the Sunflower Fields and Tanetane Island sequences. Other sections of the game can feel a little empty or repetitive, confronting us with long corridors and train tunnels, but this is almost certainly another example of Itoi being weird on purpose.

Chapter 6 - WikiBound, your community-driven EarthBound/Mother wiki

audio Audio: 8/10

Musically, MOTHER 3 borrows themes and stylistic elements from near and far. Versions of favorites such as Pollyanna, Snowman, and the 8 Melodies all make an appearance. The sonic landscape is full of personality, embellished with bright and distinctive sound effects varied by setting, often in surprising ways–caves and particularly the Chimera Lab somehow manage to be much eerier than the haunted castle. The numerous enemy encounter motifs receive further variation by tying their rhythms into the gameplay. Inserting our own musical notes into the battle soundtrack with each combo attack is a brilliant conceit that comes across terribly on emulators. Or so I’m told.

narrative Narrative: 9/10

The story here is a truly mixed bag. Without letting any Schrodinger-cats out of this one, MOTHER 3 follows the general narrative contours of the JRPG genre and subverts the rules and player expectations in (paradoxically) many of the ways you’d expect from Itoi. The passage of time necessary for growing up, plus a time-traveling foe; a journey around the world, self-contained on a couple of islands; senseless violence, and battles that can’t be won by fighting–we undergo frequent shifts in tone and have to hop nimbly over plot-holes alongside our heroes to see what the next revelation might be. Why do frogs take the place of phones for saving the game? Why is no one curious about that needle glowing like a Master Sword in the courtyard? What happened to Magicant? We just have to go along with not knowing. On the other hand, in many instances, both at the start of the game and near the very end, we simply sit back and watch as cutscenes inform us about the mysteries of the plot and the characters’ backstories. In each case, though, the silliness and gravitas somehow combine to work, at least for me. The joyful variety of dialogue and events unfolding in the course of the game, taken as a whole, more than repays the long wait (both in-game and historically) for MOTHER 3 to make good on the promise of the series.

gameplay Gameplay: 7/10

Simple innovations on the base gameplay go a long way to making MOTHER 3 more fun, objectively, than most JRPGs of the era. We can dash, at long last (though a run feature was added to the localization of MOTHER, eventually released as EarthBound Beginnings; in both MOTHER and EarthBound, teleportation is a workaround for running). Now dashing into things can trigger events. Sneaking by enemies or attacking them from behind allows for a level of choice in how to proceed; once you’re powerful enough, your party simply runs right over them. The battles integrate rhythm elements, albeit without providing much in the way of instruction. Considerable luck or practice is needed, particularly given the lag on emulators, to score decent combos in battle. But still more tantalizing is the suggestion, based on an unused Kindness stat and Consider battle option, that more approaches to battle might have been possible at some stage of development. Taken together with the twins’ penchant for befriending animals, we might imagine all sorts of ways this could have been used. Still, in exploring and learning about the various characters, a number of different lenses come to bear on classic JRPG conventions and themes.

challenge Challenge: 6/10

For all the challenges offered by the battles, there’s little in the way of difficulty in MOTHER 3. It all comes back to a very simple solution: grinding. The plethora of save-point frogs (though some are amusingly camouflaged), healing items and hot springs, make leveling up easy. To counteract some of this tendency, dashing over enemies does not yield free experience points. Boss battles occasionally spring on the player unexpectedly, too, but only in one or two cases are these any significant distance from a save point, so you shouldn’t ever lose much progress (to say nothing of the help afforded by save states). Artificial difficulty is introduced in emulation due to the combo timing issues mentioned, but then again, PSI attacks and other special abilities don’t rely on this mechanic at all; at no point is it requisite. The only real challenge of the game might be knowing where to go first once you’re finally let off the rails of linearity towards the end, but the relative toughness of enemies in different areas should be enough of an indicator.

accessibility Accessibility: 5/10

From the outset, MOTHER 3 seems designed to poke and prod the player, and not always in pleasant ways. Fans of EarthBound may be put off at times. Then again, I don’t know if someone who isn’t already a fan of the series would be willing to take it, much less even be able to make much of the story and humor without the context provided by past games. My theory that the game was never intended to be released outside Japan might be going out on a limb. Would Itoi really include material so divisive that he dared Nintendo to make it palatable without compromising his vision? Did he trust that the dedicated community of fans would produce their own translation in short order and players would be able to access it that way given the chance? In all likelihood, he didn’t give it that much thought. But that’s what has in fact happened. Playing the game at all presents a moral quandary; sticking with it demands a bit of a trust fall, or a leap of faith. Thinking about what it may mean and what Itoi is up to is no easy feat. But I prefer to think it’s worth it.

uniqueness Uniqueness: 8/10

I don’t play that many games and the ones I do play tend to be either inspired by or directly in line with the MOTHER series. But even I know there’s no shortage of weird, creative stuff out there. So when I say MOTHER 3 is highly unique, I guess what I mean is that its special brand of weirdness is recognizably yoked to a meaningful purpose, grounded in qualities of wisdom, courage, and friendship that get revived and reiterated time and again by Itoi and his games. It stands in a tradition you can trace all the way back to the dawn of console JRPGs. And for all the pop culture threaded into it, this is also a tradition that points beyond itself to deeper cultural values–including ways of questioning those values to keep them alive.

personal grade Personal: 9/10

I’ve grown to love this game, but it hasn’t been easy. I had to let go of some preconceptions I had on first playing, face up to some latent prejudices in myself, and take account of how much time has flowed in the interim. How much I have and haven’t changed. I’m still not completely happy with MOTHER 3, but it’s a “mirror” for the player. Upon reflection, it’s much more than the curiosity I took it for, some vestige of Itoi’s stubbornness to deliver a third game. Maybe I won’t ever be content with a sequel to EarthBound, not even one that does follow up on its open-ended ending, because in my view that’s the work left to all of us. Rather than simply playing another game purporting to answer those questions, we need to strive to answer them for ourselves. But if MOTHER 3 is Itoi’s own attempt to do so, we owe it an audience.

Aggregated Score: 7.6

 


 

Wesley Schantz coordinates the Video Game Academy, writes about books and video games, and teaches in Spokane, WA.

 

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