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The Mother GBA Translation: Tomato is a Crazy Mofo

Posted by Bob Mackey

No, not that Mother translation. I'm talking about the first Mother: released in Japan in 1989, translated by Nintendo of America, abandoned, discovered, and re-released by the ROM hacking community in 1998 as Earthbound Zero. Mother was also ported to the Game Boy Advance along with its sequel (AKA Earthbound) in 2003; unfortunately, this game fell victim to Nintendo's policy of Earthbound fans not having nice things. Fortunately we have dudes like Tomato, whose amazing hacking/translating skills will one day give us the privilege of playing the first Mother on the go. Here's a video of his progress so far:

Of course, this isn't quite as monumental as the Mother 3 translation--after all, an English script for this game already exists--but Tomato plans on making quite a few interesting changes this time around. And here they are, taken right from this blog post:

Some of the things you can expect from this retranslation:

* A retranslated script. The EB0 ROM has a good number of changes and mistakes/issues with plot details. The EB0 script is also very dry, because of limited resources. This retranslation can allow for a lot more text, and censoring/changes won’t need to be done.

* Expanded text boxes, allowing for more dialog text at one time, meaning the text will be nicer and easier to read.

* Expanded battle text boxes, allowing for more text than before. I still need to actually edit the text to use the new space though.

* I added an “Easy Ring” to Ninten’s basement, for those who don’t like to grind for experience and money. The item, when equipped, doubles the exp and money you get from enemies. It makes the game much less of a chore.

* Things like the status screen are a little fancier and more verbose.

* You can use the L Button in this game much like you can in EarthBound. It makes talking to things/checking things a little quicker.

* I plan to make a few changes with the font and the window borders to be more like EarthBound.

* Many of the little EarthBound / MOTHER 3 connections will be left intact in this translation, so fans of the series will surely enjoy that. The EB0 translation changed a lot of things, which broke some of these connections.

* Translations into other languages will be incredibly easy to do.

Mother isn't exactly the most modern game, but I'm considering playing through it again aftering seeing the changes Tomato plans on making. This is a project that's definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Related Links:

The Reason Why Mother 3 Never Came to America
Earthbound and Back Again
THE MOTHER 3 TRANSLATION IS OUT

+ DIGG

+ DEL.ICIO.US

+ REDDIT

Posted Dec 08 2008, 11:00 AM

Filed under: fan project, mother 3, translation, mother 2, bob mackey, mother, rom hacks

Comments

Demaar said:

Oh wow, that's pretty rad. Guess that's another thing to wait for before I play Mother 3 then...

December 8, 2008 9:16 PM

About Bob Mackey

For a brief period of time I was Bull from TV's Night Court, but some of you may know me from the humor column I wrote for Youngstown State University's The Jambar, Kent State University's The Stater, and Youngstown's alternative newspaper, The Walruss. I'm perhaps most well-known for my bi-weekly pieces on Something Awful. I've also blogged for Valley24.com and have written articles for EGM, 1UP, GameSpite and Cracked. For all of my writing over the years, I have made a total of twenty American dollars. It's also said that I draw cartoons, which people have described with words such as "legible." I kidnapped the Lindbergh Baby and am looking to do so again in the future.

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