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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?"
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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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.