A screenshot from Mother 3 |
They don’t make games like Earthbound anymore. Released by Nintendo in 1995, Earthbound is the story of Ness, a typical suburban boy who lives in a town called Onett. One night, a meteor crashes into a mountain near Ness’ house. That’s when a bee named Buzz Buzz appears from the future and declares that the Apple of Enlightenment has predicted Ness will save the world from a formless malevolent force known as Giygas. On said quest to save the world, Ness encounters everything from an enemy called a “Diamond Dog” to music that samples Monty Python. Earthbound offered quirks and oddities that, to this day, have not been matched.
Save an occasional cameo by Ness in other Nintendo titles and an infamously scrapped Nintendo 64 sequel, though, the game remained perpetually under the radar aside from an extremely dedicated cult following.
In late fall of last year, more than a decade after Earthbound’s release, creator Shigesato Itoi announced an EB sequel seemingly out of nowhere. About half a year later, the game saw Japanese release on April 20, 2006. This past spring and summer, the stateside fan community waited anxiously for the announcement of an American release of the game, dubbed Mother 3.
The announcement never came. Enter Austin-based software engineer Cliff Spradlin.
“Some of us have been waiting over a decade (for an EB sequel),” says Spradlin over Instant Messenger from Austin, where he’s a student at the University of Texas, “so when the actual release date was announced at the end of last year, I realized I had the technical ability to convert Mother 3 to English.”
Spradlin, 20, is the webmaster and project manager of mother3.org, a website dedicated to translating the entirety of Mother 3 without the aid of Nintendo or any other gaming organization. The mother3.org team started with three and has since risen in size to about eight, but the project is a true labor of love for Spradlin, who makes clear his adoration for the game: “Earthbound was a real joy when I was growing up,” he says, “and I really wanted to [translate] its sequel not only for myself, but also for others who have been hoping for it to be released for so many years.”
He references the disappointment he felt at the cancellation of Earthbound 64, explaining it happened at an inopportune time in his life. “[It was] right near the end of middle school, and my parents were going through a divorce. For me [Earthbound 64] was one of only a couple things I had to look forward to.” He doesn’t want another generation of players to wind up disappointed.
Since the project began in April, Spradlin and his team have translated approximately seven-and-a-half of Mother 3’s eight chapters. In spite of the team’s speedy progress, though, Spradlin emphasizes the day-to-day drudgery of translating a game so reliant on its text. “We’re doing our best to capture the original style,” says Cliff, “but it’s really hard.”
