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Mother 3 Fan Translators Offer Their Work To Nintendo For Free
Mother 3, the Earthbound sequel that never made its way to the United States, was translated by fans. Those fans are now offering their translation to Nintendo for free.
The translation was released in 2008, and it was completed over the course of many years by dedicated fans, lead by FUNimation translator Clyde Mandelin. To date, it has been the only way for non-Japanese speaking players to experience the sequel to Earthbound. If you're confused by the naming conventions of the game, the Earthbound series is called Mother in Japan. Mother was an NES title, Mother 2 was a Super Nintendo title that was renamed Earthbound for North America, and Mother 3 released for the Game Boy Advance.
You can find out more about the translation on the project's blog. Mandelin is openly offering the translation to Nintendo in the hopes of giving Mother 3 a legitimate release in North America.
"I realize that localizing a game this size can cost a lot, so if it’ll help in even the slightest, I’ll gladly offer to let Nintendo use my text translation files for any use at all, completely for free. I’ll even edit the files to fit whatever new standards are necessary (content, formatting, memory size, etc.), completely for free. I’ll even retranslate everything from scratch if need be. Just whatever it takes to get an official release out."
On the blog Mandelin points out that the chances of Nintendo taking him up on his offer are slim, but it has happened before. Ys: The Oath in Felghana is a recent example of a game where a fan translation was used.
After the announcement of Earthbound coming to the Wii U's Virtual Console, we've all had Earthbound fever. We featured Earthbound on today's Replay, and even mentioned that Nintendo should buy this fan translation. We think it's a good idea.
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