Preview: Mother 3 Translation Project October 18, 2008

Are you my mommy?

The Mother series of games is a big deal to RPGers.  Known as the Earthbound series in the United States, these role-playing games are not another thud-and-blunder series, but instead are set in the West, albeit from a Japanese point of view.  Enemies range from aliens to hippies, your weapon is more like to be a Star Tropic-al yo-yo than a sword.  The series started in 1989 with the Japan only release of Mother for the Famicom. The second game in the series was released in the U.S. as EarthBound for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1995.

 

Mother 3 was in development for 12 years before it was released in Japan in April 2006 for the GBA. Ostensibly the most popular title of the series, it is similar to Dragon Quest IV in that it divides the tale up into several chapters. Each chapter features different characters whose stories all tie together in the end. The original game received a 35/40 from Famitsu Magazineand sold 205,914 copies in its first 3 days on sale.

 

Hello, World!

Earthbound 3 was announced as an N64 title, but was scrapped.  Ever since, fans have been clamoring for an English version.  As of today, they need clamor no more. A group of talented fan programmers known as Starmen.Net have translated and patched the entire game.  After two years of work, the translation patch was finally released today, October 17, 2008. Any fan with the ROM can run the patch and enjoy Mother 3’s humor in English. I intend to do just that this weekend and give a full review on Monday.

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Preview: Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen September 12, 2008

There aren’t enough colons in that title.

I love role-playing games.  The first RPG I ever played was Dragon Warrior – the American version of Enix’s (no Square merger yet) Dragon Quest. From the moment I saw my first blue slime, I was hooked. My folks couldn’t afford to get me Dragon Quests II and III, but on Christmas morning 1992, I opened my shiny new Dragon Warrior IV.

Mr. Brando welcomes you to the game.

My Christmas Morning.

This game was amazing! It came with a detailed strategy guide full of art and pictures of how my magical weapons and armor really looked. It featured chapters, 5 of them, each with different characters! Some of these characters, sisters Mara and Nara, were girls, and they weren’t in another castle, they were right in front of me! (My mother nearly had a cow when she saw me “fan fighting” the dog one day with a cheap Chinese paper fan.)

 

Even then I knew the game wasn’t perfect. There were level grinds, particularly in the chapter where you play as the merchant (7 swords and 7 suits of armor to be farmed via random encounters, ugh!), but it was all worth it when I took control of my first ever airship.

I SWORE this was what I looked like.

So yeah, I’m excited about Dragon Quest IV’s DS re-release.

 

SquareEnix has given DQIV the Final Fantasy treatment. They’ve updated the graphics to 3D while keeping most of the goofy charm.

The king slime approacheth!

The storyline is the same, but Squeenix has reverted to the original character names from the Japanese version. There are no touchscreen controls, but the shoulder buttons will adjust your camera angle if you wish and the Y button will bring up a “hand drawn” map in towns, ala DQ VII.

 

The starting town.

All in all, if you loved the original, or just loved JRPGs, you need to have this one. If you hate turn-based, sprite-y games, keep on moving, nothing to see here.

 

Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen, will be released on September 16, 2008. The price is USD$39.99