Cognition Dissemination: It’s Never Too Late to Localize Mother 3
Remember all of those jokes about a Mother 3 localization from Nintendo midway through the last decade? They were largely taken as the company having a little fun with the audience that still wanted an official localization, despite the by-all-accounts fantastic fan translation for the Game Boy Advance version being available. I say “largely” because not all of them took it that way, those who wanted to see an officially Nintendo-published western version that could have found an audience that doesn’t bother with emulation. As it turns out, there were serious plans to localize it at one point.
Former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé has been on the press tour to promote his new book, Disrupting the Game: From the Bronx to the Top of Nintendo, dropping small details about the insider info contained in a bunch of chapters in interviews along the way. While speaking to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, Reggie clarified that localizing the GBA version didn’t make business sense because software support was transitioning from it to Nintendo DS when it originally released. After the Japanese version arrived in April 2006, it would have taken several months to localize and release outside the country. This was a time before Nintendo commonly released simultaneous worldwide titles, particularly for those outside their flagship franchises. Reggie clarified that it had nothing to do with the more risqué content it contained despite its “cutesy” aesthetics.
That’s not all. Reggie also mentioned in the book itself that he was in active discussions with former Nintendo Japan president Satoru Iwata about releasing the game digitally for 3DS and Wii U. These discussions notably happened around the time the aforementioned jokes were made — the infamous Robot Chicken meme was provided at E3 2014, when 3DS and Wii U were Nintendo’s main platforms. These discussions ended when Iwata tragically passed away in the middle of 2015, though Reggie noted that the Wii U’s performance didn’t help there either.
It’s all unfortunate that this didn’t happen, though it’s nice that Reggie now has the opportunity to be candid about matters that occurred under his tenure as NOA president. But there’s an important point to make here: It will never be too late for a Mother 3 localization.
In the time since the game originally released and its subsequent fan translation, Mother 3 has only grown in popularity, which it’s largely maintained. It’s a testament to the effect it left on players and communities when a fan team wanted to make their own sequel after it appeared that Nintendo and creator Shigesato Itoi said the series couldn’t continue. (That fanmade Mother 4 since became Oddity, which may or may not be dead.) But there might be another version of Mother 4 coming, not to mention the several other indie games inspired by the Mother/Earthbound series.
There would still be serious buzz if Nintendo announced an official localization of Mother 3 for Switch between this month and the next one — “E3 Season” as some people still call it. It’s unfortunate that Reggie isn’t there personally to rally for it, and especially unfortunate that Iwata is no longer there to communicate with; but others like producer Shinichi Kameoka are just as enthusiastic about their continued desire for a localization.
It might be too late for a straight port of the original Mother 3 to generate the level of buzz Nintendo might want for a new release, depending on how they want to provide the game for purchase and their potential expectations for it. They’re not averse to releasing digital-only games on Switch, as localizations of the Famicom Detective Club games can attest. A remake, however, would generate all the buzz they would want, to the point of enticing most who played the fan translation in order to experience it in a new way. Whether Nintendo would go about this will depend on how they’d want to sell this after investing so much into translating the text.
Nintendo has also previously rereleased old games to digital markets, localized for the first time. They surprisingly did so for Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, the first game in the series originally released on Famicom/NES, worldwide in December of 2020. They also previously did this with Earthbound Beginnings, a localization of the first Mother game released for Wii U in 2015, which Reggie mentioned served as a way to test the waters for a digital-only Mother 3 release. It’s not too late to revive those plans.
I wish the chances of this happening were higher than they are. Chances are none of the staffers still rallying for a Mother 3 localization at Nintendo have the seniority and pull that Reggie and Iwata did. An official release outside Japan would still be fitting for what remains as the Mother series’ swansong, unless Itoi shocks everyone with a sudden twist.
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Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
