When Nintendo fans talk about games that the studio hasn’t released in North America, it’s hard to avoid the topic ofMother 3.TheMotherfranchise, also known as theEarthBoundfranchise outside of Japan, has a curious and complicated history, with those complications coming to a head inMother 3.EarthBound’s international release drummed up lots of fans for the franchise, butMother 3still has yet to get an official English localization. In response, fans have done everything from localizingMother 3themselves to making an unofficialMother 4now calledOddity,but Nintendo still remains stoic, showing no sign of bringingMother 3to the West.
Even so, there may be more hope now than ever that Nintendo will finallydo something withMother 3.When Nintendo launched the Switch’s Nintendo Switch Online service in 2018, fans were delighted to also gain access to a ton of classic games that thrived on Nintendo’s earliest consoles. Through NSO, Nintendo fans can play dozens of NES and SNES titles, including the earliest entries in highly influential Nintendo franchises, likeThe Legend of Zelda, Super Mario,andMetroid.Mother 3isn’t available in English yet, but NSO provides a perfect venue for it, especially considering the fact that NSO already includes some titles once exclusive to Japan.
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NSO is Begging For Mother 3
Nintendo didn’t have to translate past games for NSO if it didn’t want to. It easily could have just uploaded titles likethe originalZeldaandMariogamesthat got English language versions and still gotten lots of attention. Even so, Nintendo put a few games on the service that had never appeared in North America before. For example, the game that Western audiences knew asTetris Attackreleased asPanel de Ponin Japan, featuring a cast of original fairy characters instead ofTetris Attack’s characters borrowed fromSuper Mario.Panel de Pon’s inclusion in the English version of the NSO game library suggests that Nintendo is aware that some of its fans are interested in games that didn’t get English versions before.
The same hope could be applied toMother 3.Although admittedly Nintendo didn’t need to translate or localize the vast majority of games available through NSO, Nintendo’s willingness to do so for even a handful of games opens a door to further localizations. English-speaking Nintendo fans have been saying for years that they’re interested in playingMother 3; even beloved actorTerry Crews says he wantsMother 3localized. Since NSO serves as a good possible platform forMother 3and already offers newly localized games, NSO andMother 3would be a match made in heaven.
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Mother 3’s case is further helped by the latest rumor thatGame Boy games are coming to NSO. Nintendo has waited for some time to expand NSO’s game library into a new Nintendo console, but the Game Boy and the Game Boy Color seem like the next logical platforms to add.Mother 3is a Game Boy Advance title, so technically it came out for a later Game Boy generation, but it’s possible that an NSO Game Boy expansion would reach more broadly across the platform’s generations than fans expect.Mother 3may have been a later Game Boy title, but considering how iconic the RPG is and how badly fans want to play it, it would be the perfect face of a Game Boy expansion.
Admittedly, NSO isn’t the perfect hope thatMother 3will get localized. Nintendo has had about three years to putMother 3on NSO, and yet it hasn’t done so. Even before that, it’s had nearly 20 years to do a traditionalMother 3localization, and Nintendo hasn’t done so even though there’s an obvious market. Even so,NSO’s newly localized gamescould be the breaking point. Maybe Nintendo just needs to warm up to revisiting the classics first.
Mother 3is available now for Game Boy Advance.
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