There were a bunch of complications when it came to the development of Mother 3. Mother 3 is a Japanese game that was released for the Game Boy Advance on April 20th, 2006. The game was also in development for 12 years due to development delays. Shigesato Itoi, the creator of the Mother franchise, created 3 Mother games, listed here: Mother, Mother 2 and Mother 3. The first two Mother games were renamed to “Earthbound” because it was localized outside of Japan, this is another story for Mother 3 because the game wasn’t released outside of Japan, but it had gained some good reviews and eventually turned into a Bestseller. Recently enough, it has been talked about more and has been played by many people. Since the game wasn’t released for the U.S., Clyde “Tomato” Mandelin and the Earthbound community made an English fan translation, basically making it possible for people around the world to play the game. The community’s history and their work in developing the English translation is cited on this link.
Originally Mother 3 was going to be released for the Nintendo 64 and many other consoles. But, since the GameBoy Advanced was later released in 2001, the developers decided it would be better to move the project to the Game Boy Advance for more advertising. There are still videos with images and visual concepts, such as characters, enemies, battle layouts, and the original design of how the world was going to look on the N64. Scraping out the plans for the original consoles caused the delay, making the development take more years to finish. The game’s concept was going to be a 3d RPG platformer game, with the same RPG fighting mechanics when you have to go into in-game battles from the final release. There are drastic changes between the tone and mood of the game, it seems to have the same concept and story altogether. There’s more information on the Starmen.net website about the game’s features that were presented to the public during the demo. However, after the final release, Mother 3 still had unused content. Like any other video game, they have scrapped content such as battle backgrounds, unused dialogue, and sprites that didn’t make the cut. Most scrapped ideas were probably too controversial when it came to Nintendo’s advertising. The topics that occurred throughout the game were the usage of drugs, crude language, and mature themes, which some were kept in the game but had to be toned down, which further explains why the game wasn’t localized to the U.S.
What’s the game about? Mother 3 takes place on an Island called the “Nowhere Islands” where a town called Tazmilly Village is located. It Is known to be a very peaceful and tranquil village. Hinawa and Flint, Lucas’ and Claus’ parents let them play outside with some dragos, some calm peaceful creatures. The island has many unique creatures, similar to the dragos which seem to be almost identical to dinosaurs. Tazmilly is pretty well known to be a peaceful village, so villagers highly doubt there’d be any sort of danger. As in the first chapter of the game Flint’s friend, Thomas, runs to his home to warn him about the fire that had been set in the Sunshine forest. He comments on Flint’s choice when he locks the door from his home and questions why he locks his doors at a village as safe as theirs. There are various playable characters in the first few chapters in the game, for instance, you have to play as different characters in certain chapters. Mother 3 takes place thousands of years after the previous game, Earthbound, meaning the story is connected. Playing the game yourself can help improve your understanding of the characters and references, but even if some players haven’t played the earlier games, they can still play the game with no problems because they can understand as they progress. The story is very well made and very thought through, which is why its one of my favorite games.
