MOTHER 3 (2008 localization patch) [GBA]

At this point, I’ll just let the cat out of the bag: I played MOTHER 3 when the unofficial localization was first released, and I recently played it in English version 1.2 on the 2DS Virtual Console with some homebrew help. But I don’t worry much about Nintendo coming after little old me, considering they’ve been well aware of the localization since its release and permitted it tacitly all along. Knock on wood.

“Nowadays, people are always looking for consistency. Take, for example, a place lined up with nothing but bonsai trees. People would find it strange if there were suddenly a rose among them. But this MOTHER 3 WORLD of mine, including its logo, is the essence of inconsistency.”
–Shigesato Itoi

For me, MOTHER 3 occupies that contested territory between the real and the imaginary, the actual and the possible, with a combination of grit and grace. The primary meaning of its title screen logo, letters half shiny metal and half rustic branches, is simply what’s there on the surface: the duality between nature and technology. But it also speaks to the long struggle to make the game a reality at all (much less playable outside Japan). The rough materials of willpower and ingenuity finally saw the game’s development through to completion over a decade after fans had started clamoring for it, following up the bizarre saga of the canceled EarthBound 64 with the eventual release of a truly worthy conclusion to the beloved franchise. Equally important, this logo sets up the prevalence of duality itself as a pattern or schema within the game. The twins Lucas and Claus, two of the central characters, are the clearest example, but there are many others. That very duality sows the seeds for its own transcendence by the ending–about which we’ll say no more here, to spare anyone worried about spoilers for a decade-plus-old game (and/or further dialectical shenanigans).

From the outset, MOTHER 3 has to break into the stable equipoise of the previous two games in the series, MOTHER/EarthBound Beginnings and MOTHER 2/EarthBound, classics on their respective consoles. In a sense it is a counterweight, all on its own, that can stand up against them both. It builds on the tradition of its predecessors’ comfortable gameplay and timeless themes. In ways large and small, MOTHER 3 addresses loose ends opened up by the ending of EarthBound. But it also represents Shigesato Itoi’s decision to turn his personal storytelling language of words, images, and music towards concerns that were much less prevalent in the earlier games. The very nature of progress comes into question, juxtaposed against the tried and true friendships and family relationships that have shaped a whole world of meanings for players across the series. For all their similarities, this third adventure arrives at a very different result. And to all appearances, a final one.

The Long and Winding Road

The story of MOTHER 3 is told episodically across a prologue and eight chapters that vary widely in length and content. Each of the three opening chapters (“The Night of the Fire,” “Thief Adventure,” and “The Mysterious Peddlar”) takes place almost simultaneously, revolving around a critical interruption in the peaceful world of the game. Each puts us in the role of a different main character, joined by a mixed bag of allies, so that we can’t tell who will stay in our party long-term. Only in Chapter 4 (“Club Titiboo”) do we retake control of Lucas, who has been all but absent since the brief prologue. The chronology jumps ahead by three years at this point, with significant changes to the environment. Processing all this is quite a whirlwind, but the game’s second half is at least as full of twists and surprises.

Keeping the dramatic structure established on this larger chapter-by-chapter scale in mind, though, the movement from scene to scene matters more in determining our immediate experience of the game. Scenes of intensity and intrigue are juxtaposed with the most inane and boring patter, but by and large these moments do entertain, and with hindsight they ultimately come together to make a compelling whole. At times, MOTHER 3 relies unusually heavily on cutscenes to tell its emotional story. Players have to adjust to the whiplash between free-flowing gameplay and methodical exposition up front, or we won’t be likely to stick with it long enough to be drawn in. If we do stay with the story, some of the bewildering narrative choices in the opening chapters might start to make sense. They reinforceItoi’s message of accepting and even welcoming whatever and whomever we encounter on our journey.

I remember being pretty unimpressed on my first playthrough, but I also remember rushing more than I should have. Deeper messages were largely lost on me. I was more interested in what MOTHER 3 might illuminate as far as EarthBound’s story than in seeing what the game might have to show me. I was listening for echoes of my favorite game–and there are plenty–but not really hearing what this one has to say for itself. This go-round, I talked through the game with a friend as we played. Not so much recapturing the old days playing SNES all summer as reconstructing (a fraught term in the world of MOTHER 3, but I mean it in a good way), as best we could, our relationship with Itoi’s work in light of its total impact (those conversations are all freely available). This time, in place of feeling nonplussed, I felt pleasantly challenged. Recognized and weirdly known, belonging (though that could be delusional), and implicated, even, in some of the fan-service and rug-pulling that Itoi seems to be up to here.

Anger or disdain, even disgust, might just as naturally be in store for players who aren’t terribly big EarthBound fans, or who don’t get Itoi’s worldview. As transmitted via his quirky sense of humor and even stranger feel for pacing, the story beats of MOTHER 3 don’t always land without some rough edges. Players who get their hopes up too much going into MOTHER 3, even a fan like myself, looking for clear evidence of progression or improvement upon the previous games, might be setting themselves up for disappointment. In the measure that we love EarthBound we might reasonably fear the likelihood of being let down, and we surely shall be if we misapprehend MOTHER 3 by failing to grapple with it on its own terms.

But what’s strangest and most incredible of all, Itoi has built the game around precisely these conflicting emotions.

Just endure it for a little bit!

Almost as if daring the critically-inclined player, MOTHER 3 undercuts practically any attempt to take it seriously. It actively stymies even the characters themselves when they’re in the throes of rage or grief. Notable moments come early in the game. When Flint, the father of the twins, receives a life-changing message, it is couched in the most stunningly inappropriate delivery. His outburst at this point is literally cut off with a blow to the head. When he sets out to rescue one of his kids who has gone missing, his father-in-law tags along, interrupting at every other step with reminders to take it easy, advice which seems totally out of place given the circumstances.

But Grandpa Alec perhaps knows more than Flint or the rest of us do about the sort of world this is. His powerful friends, the Magypsies, similarly present a mix of humor and pathos. Named for offbeat musical modes, such as Phrygia, Ionia, Doria, and so on, they are ambiguous in other ways, too: male and female, mortal and immortal, aloof and generous. The Magypsies are less helpful than Alec’s confidence might lead us to expect; or at any rate the ways in which they help out are not immediately clear. During the early chapters they fail to meaningfully intervene on Flint’s behalf, and for long stretches of Lucas’ journey, they are entirely absent. McGuffins and secondary conflicts string us along without much mention of the mysterious forces that have set everything in motion. As the endgame comes into focus, however, the Magypsies in their very hiddenness point towards this world’s version of the Eight Melodies of MOTHER and EarthBound. The game really begins to open up at that point, both in terms of freedom of movement and thematic coherence.

One significant exception proves the rule. Throughout the game, hot springs function like beds do in most JRPGs. Resting there recovers HP and status. Itoi puts his own spin on this by requiring the player to wait five seconds, in-game, rather than simply skipping through text to that effect. It’s a subtle but characteristic move, as the creator is on record saying, from the first trailers for MOTHER, that he wishes players to take their time. (Much like Alec’s words to Flint). Now and then, though, there will be someone else in the hot spring with your party. At one point, when Lucas is alone, it’s one of the Magypsies. The screen goes dark and a dubious transition ensues, with energetic text from Ionia, after which Lucas pops up from under the water profoundly changed.

A number of commenters and videos purporting to analyze the game seize on this and a handful of similarly awkward moments to explain why MOTHER 3 has not been officially released outside Japan. I expect the truth is somewhat more complicated. In fact, I suspect that explanation gets it backwards: the episode at the hot springs is a symptom, not the cause, of the game’s regional exclusivity. Along the same lines as Lucas’ awakening, whenever a character learns a new PSI technique in the normal course of leveling up, the game’s dash functionality is temporarily disabled, because they are “feeling feverish.” As a result of natural processes of maturation (Itoi suggests menstruation or teething as real-world analogues), realizing their new ability has to manifest with a physical accompaniment: sweating and exhaustion for the character, and another slowdown likely causing confusion or frustration on the part of the player. Considering the hot springs, PSI, and Magypsies as complementing one another in service of Itoi’s idiosyncratic vision of MOTHER-hood, it seems entirely possible that withholding a global release was intentional all along: the ultimate delay of gratification, demanding that fans the world over sweat it out and exert themselves to play the game at all.

If we accept that MOTHER 3 as its own game with its own agenda and go along with the big swings in tone and feeling from scene to scene, abiding with the welter of characters and points of view from chapter to chapter, we, like Lucas, stand to learn our own forms of Lifeup and PK Love.