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EarthBound Fans Take Matters Into Their Own Hands
Reid Young writes "EarthBound fans have waited 11 years for Nintendo to release the game's sequel, Mother 3, which came out in Japan in April 2006. However, following a recent announcement by a Nintendo employee that it almost certainly won't happen, the fans are taking it upon themselves to get the job done by organizing a fan translation with some of the finest names in ROM hacking. Is it ethical? Does Nintendo even care?"
I'm too busy playing my never released in America fan-translated Secret of Mana 2.
Some people encrypt by using rot-13 twice. I prefer the more secure method of using rot-1 a total of twenty six times.
It probably isn't legal by a strict definition, but you'd have to have a pretty twisted sense of ethics to have an ethical problem with this. Nintendo hasn't released it in the US in over a decade and has indicated that they probably never will, so who could the fans possibly be hurting by translating it themselves? One might argue that everyone who wanted to try it out would be _more_ ethical if they imported a japanese copy of the cart before playing the translated ROM, but given that Nintendo has taken steps to try and prevent imported games from working (though admitedly pretty lame attempts for the NES and SNES) and that any carts you could get ahold of at this point would almost certainly be used so no money would be going back the original creators anyways, i think that argument doesn't hold much water.
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Don't misunderstand me, the people behind this patch are GOOD at what they do. I have NO doubt that they will come out with a high-quality translation, but I also know that there's at least one other group already translating it, and I believe they're really close to finishing it. I wish them both the best of luck, I can't wait to play the game.
They can be found here.
As someone who never played the game (my parents would only get me mario titles for my snes) would it be worth busting out the still working SNES and finding a copy of it or grabbing the ROM?
Basically, would a 23 year old who loves RPGs love this game today?
I keep telling myself I'm not the desperate type.
If I write a book in French why should I care if someone translates it into English for another country and then lets people have it for free. I'm not losing anything (because I never would of done it any way) and if anything I'm gaining more fans.
I say screw Nintendo and let these guys work. It'll do Mother more good than bad.
I like muppets.
I mean... localisation is basicaly a "throw more money at it" type job. It doesn't take an incredible amoun of internal ressources: you just need a few internal people to make sure the job is correct, but it is a job that DEFINATELY can be outsourced, and is often better off that way. Outsourced here not meaning china/india/whatever, but meaning external companies.
When a game is as popular as Earthbound, or SD3 (the sequel of Secret of Mana, I just can't spell the name), I don't quite understand why game companies resist localisation so much
Its literally a matter of spend X amount of money, and return a nearly garenteed profit.
So why the bloody hell not?
I hope the Virtual console brings some never before seen in north america games, because we missed out on a lot, and playing hacked up ROMs, even if it was legal, often doesn't cut it. Dejap does good stuff, but there's just so much they can do.
If you're going to be late reporting something like this, can you at least wait a little longer so that it can be released before they catch wind and send a Cease and Desist letter?
Seriously.
...but is it art?
In response to the post asking if people would enjoy the original Earthbound today, I have to give an emphatic yes. The graphics are old, yes, and the inventory management is a tad clunky, but other than that, it's still a great game. Just one piece of advice: read everything. There are TONS of great jokes hidden throughout the series.
If you have an old SNES, you might be able to get an Earthbound cart on eBay (try to get one with the player's guide still intact, if you can!). Otherwise, the zSNES emulator and an Earthbound ROM (it's easy to find with Google... ROMnation or someone will probably have a copy) are your best bets.
Man, I still remember when I first played that game. I read Nintendo Power slavishly, waiting eagerly for any hints of when we'd see the game (same for FF II and III). A local video store did me a personal favor and pre-ordered the game for me so that I could get it ASAP. It wasn't more than a few months after mom was killed that I got to play it, and its quirky humour really gave me some much-needed cheering up.
The ethics are arguable, then again Japanese gaming has already profited from fan translated material, (FFIV, Rockman & Forte, Tales of Phantasia, etc) and I don't even have to mention the anime industry.
"When a game is as popular as Earthbound, or SD3 (the sequel of Secret of Mana, I just can't spell the name), I don't quite understand why game companies resist localisation so much"
Well, I can. ^_^
You have many more additional costs besides just paying the translators:
1. QA time to test new localised builds.
2. Marketing costs to sell new product. Both print costs, additional costs associated with art changes for your new market, and the payroll costs of your marketing department.
3. Sales people have to actually go out there and sell it when they could be selling something else.
4. The cost of the physical product. (This is usually non-trivial.)
5. That you're spending money that you could have spent on another product that you think would be more successful (ie, opportunity costs.)
6. Customer service/tech support additional hours.
7. Cash payouts to get better reviews (well, okay, maybe not this one... ^_^ )
Yeah, as one might guess from my screenname, I'm a pretty big fan of the game. I played it on an emulator my senior year of high school, and it blew my mind. After that, I just so happened to end up learning Japanese, so I've been able to play Mother1+2 for the GBA and the new Mother3 in the original language and mostly follow the plot. (Well, sometimes I have to look stuff up, but I get the gist for the most part...) Still, I'll be pretty disappointed if Nintendo never releases at least EarthBound 0 and EarthBound for the Virtual Console of the Wii. It's always more fun to play a text heavy game in your native language. I've already bought the games once for GBA but I'd be willing to buy them again for the Wii. In other words, I'm willing to shovel money into Nintendo for basically nothing. And I'm not the only one either. Starmen.net have gotten 30,000 people to sign a petition for the various games. Not to release them in English is just foolishness on Nintendo's part.
So, my hope is that by threatening to put out a patched ROM, Starmen.net will scare Nintendo into actually releasing a translation themselves, but my worry is that Nintendo will just sue Starmen, kill off a really great fansite, then continue not picking up the freaking free money all of us fans are trying unsuccessfully to shove into their faces. Ugh! C'mon Nintendo, get it together!
Satoru Iwata doesnt' care about white people.
mother3 is a GBA game that came out this year. its the long awaited sequal to mother2 (known as earthbound on the snes)
i think the way the article was worded, people are reading it as this game is 11 years old.
Just pay the guys for the translation job, and add the game to the Virtual Console line up. It's a no-brainer. It may actually get a few people to buy a wii.
They had a version of EB that was going to be released for the 64 and then later for the 64 DD. I don't know what ever happened to the game, but you can search Google images for "earthbound 64" and find a load of images released from its development. Sad nothing ever came from it. Looked like they made some decent progress on it before it disappeared [along with the DD].
Earthbound 64 basically became Mother 3 for the GBA. It has the same characters, and as near the same plot as I can tell without playing either one. The Mother team never did 3D before, and they couldn't get things going fast enough, so they scrapped it and waited.
I rented Earthbound when it first came out, loved it, then bought it. I still play it, too. It's a great game. I would love to see Mother 1+2 and Mother 3 to be released here, but I guess I'll have to just use emulators for Mother 1 and 3
Thats why I don't get it (unless they plan on sticking it on Virtual Console). These 2 games have an extremely high demand. So does others like KH2:Final Mix. I'm not talking about localising Hello Kitty Island Adventure here. I'm talking about a Earthbound or Secret of Mana sequels. No matter the costs of localisation, the return would be substantial... Obviously they DO have a reason, but sometimes I'm wondering if they're good (I mean, look at Sony. Companies make stupid marketing mistakes all the time).
.. as some rom-hackers have done. There are several completely script-changed roms out their. My personal favourite has to be the MK2 hack that changes Shang Tsung into a character known as 'Egg Drop', fighting the other characters over the rights to a car dealership.
I quote from Shados: "When you're talking about a game like Earthbound or a Secret of Mana sequel, its a certainty that it will be a hit" I think you are a) overestimating the actual number of Earthbound fans and b) underestimating the costs of actually producing and selling videogames. So to cover the first point: Earthbound fans are not in fact that numerous. They are a small but INCREDIBLY vocal group of hardcore fanboys, who yell so loud that it seems like there are millions of them. I'm not convinced by the stats on that site about there being 300000 odd earthbound fans - they are counting page hits, which indicates a slight interest. I read the article(and the links), but i've never played the games, a case in point. The public seriously has no knowledge or interest in this game. I know this because I've played Super Smash Bros on the Gamecube with literally dozens of friends and aquaintances, 99% of whom have said "Who's that?" when the Earthbound characters appear. When it's explained that these characters are from a Japanese RPG that saw a limited US release and no european release whatsoever, they shrug and pay no more interest. Hence I am unconvinced there is actually a PROFITABLE market for these games in the US. On to the second point, there is some serious underestimation of the cost of merely marketing a game. Last time I checked the statistics, roughly half of all games fail to make a profit, including the ones with huge development/marketing budgets, backing from big publishers, franchise appeal etc. So if these games fail to make profit, how the hell will an obscure Japanese RPG ever sell enough units to turn a profit? Even if it DID manage to turn a profit, the amount would be so marginal as to negate the HUGE effort put into translating the game. Stop whinging about Nintendo's reluctance to provide a western release that would CLEARLY lose them money and be thankful that there are unpaid hackers working on it instead.
"Everlasting peace will come to Earth when the last man kills the last but one." - Adolf Hitler
Will this give rise to a Japanese version of "All your base are belong to us"?
I'll give that question a definite probably.
I was replaying Earthbound in an emulator(Have the cart, retired the SNES) two years ago at 22, and I've been playing FFIV on GBA till I beat it thoroughly (emulating it next to actually get those rare items.)
I'm talking about a Earthbound or Secret of Mana sequels. No matter the costs of localisation, the return would be substantial...
You mean like Legend of Mana? Sword of Mana? Children of Mana?
While they were obviously profitable enough for Square to keep making more, I wouldn't call any of them smash hits...
"EarthBound fans have waited 11 years for Nintendo to release the game's sequel, Mother 3, which came out in Japan in April 2006. However, following a recent announcement by a Nintendo employee that it almost certainly won't happen,[...]
If it did come out in April of this year than what "almost certainly won't happen"? From the comments I'm guessing an official English localization of the game is what won't happen.
I know this isn't fark, but DIAF, subby. You too, editors.
"EarthBound fans take matters into their own hands"
They must be lonely...
Wow. so fans are hacking a rom to translate it into english. That didn't happen with FF2 and FF3, FF5, Dragon Warrior 5 and 6.... oh wait it did for all of them and many more rpgs on the SNES.
This isn't a new trend and it's not something that appears to be frowned upon as long as the groups drop it if there was a real port. It's similar to Anime and the reason why anime grew to such heights in america. I wouldn't have known about Full Moon Wo Sagashite if it wasn't for a fansub of that. I've read manga translations where the authors contacted the translators and thanked them.
Is it moral/ethical/legal? That's up to someone else to decide however it's accepted in many places.
I'd say that the big problem with this line of logic is that Earthbound, at best, is a "cult classic" type of game. It has a rabid following in America amongst its niche, sure, and the fans are voracious -- but there's simply not ENOUGH of them to make "throwing more money at it" a logical solution. Your statement is obviously colored by your love for the title, which is understandable, but it would do well to recognize that the original Earthbound itself was a commercial flop in the US and that, traditionally, RPG titles are among the worst-selling games on this side of the world (with a few notable exceptions, ala, Final Fantasy.) Simply put, throwing ANY money at the game at this point would be a rather large risk for Nintendo to take, especially with a new console looming that will require its own substantial chunk of change to promote. Due to the diminishing returns Nintendo has seen in the American market over the past ten years or so, I can understand completely why they would not want to take such a substantial gamble on a game which, while desperately sought after by most hardcore fans, would not be more than a blip on the radar to the average American gamer. For the sake of full disclosure, I'd like to add that Earthbound is, by far, one of my favorite titles of all time. I do, however, think it's important to understand its position in the marketplace at large. Much like a lot of foreign cinema, while there is a very well-defined and eager consumer base for this title, it's just not simply a large enough niche to justify the costs entailed to 'port' it to the US. Your argument, while fairly rational, is basically akin to arguing that anime films should be released in American theatres -- you may like them, and your friends may like them, but the simple fact of the matter is that you're in the minority. With the Gears of War/Halo model of FPS currently ruling the roost, it seems quite clear to me that the 'big money' in gaming is most certainly not coming from RPG's these days, and especially not ones that are fairly esoteric and 'thought-provoking.'
I am not saying I am right by any mean, as you and a few others have pointed out the same thing to me, so I understand I am probably wrong by now. However, that is where I got the idea that it had been a hit. Not in the line of Chrono Trigger, mind you, but still a hit.
I would definitely file Earthbound's US success more under the Okami style of 'success', to use a modern example. It was a game that recieved great reviews, a huge promotional push (even though it WAS the freebie in-house Nintendo Power treatment), critical accolades, and a rabid fan base, yet still managed to be almost completely ignored by the gaming mainstream.
There certainly was a lot of difficulty finding the title when it was released, but I think that was due much more to a limited pressing and the fact that the game had been so popular in Japan for so long by the time it hit the shores here. To refer back to Okami again, it was a game with a stellar reputation before it ended up in the US, which means a lot to hardcore fans of its particular genre, but was still virtually unknown to the average games consumer. You can count on a dedicated 'cultish' fan base to buy a certain amount of units, but once those sales die off, you really do need the support of the market in general to sustain profits. Nintendo has never historically been a company that puts faith in "burst" sales and short-term profits and their titles and franchises that end up being incredibly financially succesful (Zelda, Mario) are titles that usually continue to sell impressively LONG after their release.
I like how this article seems to think that this translation is new. Fact is, we've known Nintendo wouldn't give us Mother 3, so the translation started more or less the second the ROM appeared online.