earthbound

If Bubsy Can Come Back, So Can the Rest of the Games in my Dream Journal

If after the release of one of the worst games in gaming history and a 20 year absence Bubsy can make a triumphant return, then there’s no reason why the other games in my dream journal can’t. Anything is possible! And as Bubsy has just proven, there are no odds to slim! Which is why I’m pulling out the ol’ dream journal of games that I otherwise was sure would never come out, and I’m going to restore some of my hope for these beloved series. After all, what could possibly go wrong?

 

Mother 3

via twoleftsticks.com

The elusive sequel to Mother 2 (known in the States as Earthbound) that, to the lament of Earthbound fans, was never released outside of Japan. There is no definitive reason why it was never localized, but many speculate it’s because Earthbound sold so poorly at the time of its release that Nintendo didn’t want to risk losing more money on its sequel. This cult classic GBA game is now something of a symbol of game publishers not listening to their fans. And believe me, Nintendo is very aware of it.  But 20 years wasn’t enough to stop Bubsy, so why should Mother 3 care about 11, right?

 

Earthbound 2

via youtube.com

Known in Japan as Mother 3, Earthbound 2 is unofficial English name of the highly sought after sequel of Earthbound that was never released outside of Japan. We’ll never know exactly why it was never localized, but many speculate it’s because Reggie Fils-Aimé maintains his youthful facade by drinking the tears of Mother fans every night. Bubsy 3D is infamous for being one of the worst games in gaming history, and even that didn’t stop it from a sequel. So why should the fact that Earthbound didn’t sell as well as Nintendo wanted it to stop a sequel for it?

 

Earthbound 64

via earthboundcentral.com

Before it was eventually put on the GBA, Mother 3 was going to be a Nintendo 64 game that many fans refer to as Earthbound 64. Due to overwhelming technical difficulties however, the idea was eventually scrapped (but not before a few brief gameplay demos). About a decade later, it was finally revived and released as a 2D game on the GBA, Mother 3. The Internet has dug up every last scrap of information it could possibly get on this cryptid of a game, but legend has it that the only functional Earthbound 64 cartridge lies leagues beneath Nintendo of America’s headquarters, alongside a script for a localized version of Mother 3 being guarded by the last living dodo bird. If we have Bubsy to keep us going, I see no reason why a group of us Mother fans can’t just get together and dig under Nintendo of America’s headquarters. After all, if they have nothing to hide, why could they possibly mind a group of fans digging up its only headquarters in the country?

 

.hack//Link

via cc2.co.jp

.hack//Link is the elusive sequel to the .hack//G.U. series that connects it with the .hack//IMOQ series that was never released outside of Japan. There’s no definitive reason why it was never localized, but many fans believe it’s either because both of the previous .hack// series didn’t sell as well as Bandai Namco wanted them to and they didn’t want to risk losing more money, or because it’s the tears of English-speaking .hack// fans that keeps Dracula sealed away in the depths of a remote volcano island. Regardless, like Mother, .hack// has very much become a cult classic series since its release. Much has changed since the last .hack// game came out over here a decade ago. If it takes Bubsy 2 decades to get over having a game being called one of the worst in gaming history, then I’m sure .hack can get over having 7 fan-favorite JRPGs that just didn’t sell quite up to expectations in 1, don’t you agree?

 

The Son-Flower Boys: Lucas’s Wild Ride ft. Sentient Furniture

 

via aminoapps.com

Also known simply as Mother 3. We’ll never know exactly why it was never released outside of Japan, but many believe it’s because Nintendo likes drinking the salty tears of Mother fans out of champagne glasses before every E3 or Nintendo Direct for good luck.

Why Mother 4’s Rebranding is a Great Decision

As some of you may have heard, the highly anticipated fan game Mother 4 has just announced that they’ve decided to rebrand the game. This was done mostly due to the controversial take downs of AM2R and Pokemon Uranium by Nintendo last year. As a fellow Nintendo fan game, Mother 4 had plenty of reason to believe that it not only could, but likely would also be taken down by Nintendo.

via http://am2r-another-metroid-2-remake.en.uptodown.com

“But it’s a free game! They’re not making any profit! So it should be fine, right?” Some of you may be thinking. As others may recall though, so were both AM2R and Pokemon Uranium. A common misconception about copyright and IP law is that to take legal action, the infringer (in this case, the fan games) has to be making a profit before the IP holder can take legal action–that’s not true at all. In what Josh Walters (attorney, law professor, advisor and chief of DeviantArt) calls “The Law of the Playground” in a panel he hosted on copyright laws in fandom at San Diego Comic Con 2012, there’s a slight difference in actual law and what’s written on paper. To paraphrase what he says, written law dictates that an IP holder can sue for anything as minor as fan art, regardless of its quality or whether or not it made profit, if they want to. However, the “law of the playground” dictates that, essentially, (and again: I’m paraphrasing so as to not quote an hour long lecture) if you do that then you’re going look like a petty jerk and likely suffer a barrage of bad press. Therefore, in cases like fan art, most IP holders go beyond not caring (from a legal standpoint) about whether or not you do it, but some even encourage it (after all, why wouldn’t they? Free advertising).

There is only, however, a certain degree to which the general public and companies tend to consider these minor infringements “acceptable.” Fan art? Acceptable–nay, often encouraged. Ripping movies from online and selling them for cheap? Not acceptable–might even get you in some degree of legal trouble depending on the extent to which you did it. Generally, the perception seems to be based on how much effort in the infringement that the infringer placed. Ripping a DVD or Blu-Ray? No effort or artistic value whatsoever. Making a fan game? Years worth of effort and lots of artistic value. I can’t confirm this, but I’d place a large bet that the the amount of income (if any) the infringement makes would also tip the scale in how acceptable it would generally be considered as well.

So how does this all tie into Mother 4? Because Nintendo is well-known to fiercely protect their IPs. And why wouldn’t they? They run a much higher risk than any other major game company for becoming a generic trademark. A generic trademark is when your brand name becomes so synonymous with the product that the name of the brand is usually used in place of the name of the product–for example, saying Q-tip for cotton swab, Aspirin for pain reliever, Yo-Yo for spinning toy, and even App Store for mobile gaming market. When your brand becomes a generic trademark, it essentially enters the public domain–therefore making it exceedingly difficult to take legal action if someone uses your brand name in a way you don’t want them to.

via imagenspng.com

Being the owner of some of gaming’s largest and most recognizable IPs, it should be no wonder why Nintendo might be scared of becoming a generic IP. They had a particularly bad scare in the 90’s, when they almost did become a generic trademark synonymous for video game console. They’ve become noticeably more fierce about defending their IPs since then–from taking down fan games (which, as I already explained, are considered copyright infringement in a court of law) to suing Pokemon themed parties. They have to be fierce about it–otherwise, as the most recognizable brand in video gaming, they and some of their IPs might come close to being generic IPs again. In return for their fierce defending of their IPs, they’ve had a lot of bad press about it, and certainly lost the faith and respect of several of their fans–especially those who loved some of their games so much that they wanted to express that love in the medium of another game, who will likely never think of Nintendo in the same way the once did again.

Some of you may be wondering if Mother 4 would still be affected by this because it does, after all, still have an original setting, original characters, etc. Point blank, yes, it is. They’re still using the Mother IP in the title, they revealed that they were putting Mr. Saturn in the game, and likely many more such concepts original to Mother. An IP doesn’t necessarily have to be the brand itself–it can also be identifiable hallmarks of the brand that make it itself. This can be anything from an aesthetic, concepts/characters/places existing in works of fiction, or even materials used in production. For example, Tiffany Blue. Yes, the color. It’s arguably the biggest hallmark of the Tiffany brand, and therefore, even using that blue is considered copyright infringement if you’re using it in a way when it can be confused with their brand. In other words, if you want to paint your house Tiffany Blue, that’s fine. If you want to sell your product in a Tiffany Blue box, then there might be a problem. If your product is jewelry, then you have a lawsuit on your hands if Tiffany Co. ever finds out. In this scenario, Nintendo is Tiffany Co. and Mother 4 is the artist packaging their jewelry in a Tiffany Blue box.

Luckily, judging by the trailers and the information we’ve been given about the game up until now, this won’t have an astronomical affect on the game. To quote the OP of the AMA, “This is still the story of Travis and his friends fighting the mysterious Modern Men. Leo still lights his smokes with paranormal fire.” In other words, although there will certainly be noticeable changes, the game is still itself. It will have a different name, but it’s still the same story. Whether or not this will affect gameplay is yet to be said, as far as I can see.

If they were to say that this game was inspired by Mother and drop some subtle references here and there, then legally speaking, that’s fine. Case in point: Undertale, which does this many times. Therefore, if Mother 4 took this approach by removing all the explicit uses of Mother/Earthbound IPs, they’d be in the clear, and unable to be touched by Nintendo. On the other hand, by keeping its name and the Mr. Saturns (among other characters/concepts original to Mother) they would put themselves at a likely risk of being taken down by Nintendo. As not only a huge fan of the Mother series, but a big fan of the work that the Mother 4 team has been showing in their game, I’d really hate to see this happen. Therefore, their protecting themselves from copyright infringement by rebranding and joining the ranks of games like Undertale and LISA as Mother-inspired games, they’re making a good decision not only for themselves, but for their fans who will want to play the game and see to it that it’s preserved. Nobody, least of all them, wants to see years worth of effort go to waste. That’s why rebranding is the best thing Mother 4 could’ve done for themselves and their fans right now. I, for one, am no less excited for this game than before.

via hardcoregamer.com

Why I’m Confident Mother 3 Will be Localized by the End of the Year

When it came out in 1994, Earthbound was a massive loss for Nintendo of America, and it seems that it’s haunted them to this day in more ways than one. Right off the bat Earthbound was a major financial loss during its initial release—its poor sales are commonly attributed to its poor advertising, RPGs not being popularized in the West yet, and most of all, you could only buy the game in a special edition that came with the guide that cost $70. Needless to say, there weren’t that many people at the time who wanted to pay $70 for a game that they hardly knew anything about, so sales were atrocious, therefore Nintendo didn’t produce many carts of it, nor did they bother to release its sequel game Mother 3 that came out 12 years later.
You’d be hardpressed to find a fanbase so devoted despite how Nintendo of America has neglected them than American Mother fans. Earthbound became a cult classic a few years after its initial release—just long enough for carts to be nearly impossible to find since Nintendo of America stopped distributing them so quickly. When Mother 3 finally came out in Japan 12 years later, for the first time in a long time for many Earthbound fans, hope had finally seem to come back! And so they waited for the announcement that Nintendo of America would translate Mother 3, but that announcement would never come. The closest thing they would receive was Lucas being in Super Smash Bro’s Brawl on the Wii, but his being there was not a decision made by Nintendo of America.

Image Source: Earthbound Wiki

When time passed and there was still no announcement, fans started to get angry. More importantly, fans started to get vocal. Threads about wondering where Mother 3 was became all too common in not just Earthbound and Nintendo forums, but video game forums as a whole. Notably, in an interview with Reggie Fils-Aime (Nintendo of America President) in 2007 he said, “…For example, I’m still being bombarded by Mother fans who are asking for [Mother 3] to be translated to English and launched here in the U.S.” Nintendo was clearly hearing the Mother fans, but they didn’t care to listen because of the horrible financial loss that was Earthbound—even though it had aged terrifically and is widely considered to be one of the best games on the SNES.
The next time America would hear about Mother 3 wouldn’t be until 2015 when Lucas was going to be added to Super Smash Bro’s 4 on the Wii U and 3DS—though again, his addition to Smash wasn’t a decision made by Nintendo of America. His release, however, got a lot of people wondering: Mother 3 turns 10 years old next year, and there’s a new group of Smash players being introduced to the Mother franchise through not only Lucas and Ness being in Smash, but the addition of Earthbound on the Wii U virtual console, and more importantly, the release of Mother 1 (retitled Earthbound Beginnings) which had previously been translated but never officially released in America because of poor timing (Which is why they decided to release Earthbound despite the myriad of production and translation snags that were had with it.) Nintendo of America seemed to finally be acknowledging the Mother franchise again—was there actually hope for Mother 3 all these years later?
On February 3, 2016 their prayers were finally answered when Emily Rogers—an employee for Nintendo who has been known to leak out information that thus far has been true (usually about when  NX/Zelda U news would be annoucned) tweeted, “Don’t be surprised if Nintendo celebrates a game’s 10th anniversary this year… just some food for thought.” followed by a tweet with a picture of Kumatora—one of the main characters of Mother 3. The Internet went into a frenzy wondering if Mother 3 had actually been confirmed after all these years.

Image source: SSL Forum

There’s no reason to discredit or doubt what she says, as her track record of leaks has been pretty solid. On the other hand, however, she’s never leaked anything even close to as major as the potential release of Mother 3. Personally, I only see that as more reason to believe her, though—if she’s used to only leaking small, generally unimportant details about what Nintendo of America is doing, then why would she dive into something she knows would set off a frenzy? She knows that all eyes will be on her now, and if she’s wrong about this, she’ll be one of the first people a mob of enraged Mother 3 fans who had shown a glimmer of hope would be hunting down. An English release of Mother 3 has become such an unbelievable concept that the idea that a Nintendo employee would leak something like that has to be believable—if she wanted to leak something huge just to mess with everyone it would make more sense for her to go after something bigger and more relevant like Zelda U—a game that she had previously been leaking small tidbits of information for, and would therefore be far more believable.
Shortly after these tweets were set free, another Nintendo employee, Liam Robertson, tweeted “I was asked to keep quiet, and then Emily decided to let the cat out of the bag herself. Hopefully this clears some confusion.”  “What I heard about Mother 3 (rumour) was that it was in the final stages of localisation in Nintendo of Europe a little while back.” “Emily sure likes to play around lol. My tweet wasn’t nearly this explicit and I got told off for it.” Tom Phillips of Eurogamer would later go on to corroborate them as well. She also recently tweeted that Mother 3’s announcement would likely be done at E3 in June—which would be a wise move on Nintendo’s part not only because their last E3 was considered to be a failure, but because this is also the first E3 for the new President of Nintendo, Tatsumi Kimishima. E3 is essentially the Olympics of video game distributors—if he were to have as lackluster of an E3 as Nintendo did last year, it would haunt his career (and PR) forever. If there were ever a time for him to bring out the absolute best of the best, it’s this E3. Nintendo has already announced that E3 will be mostly focused on Zelda U, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be entirely on that. Last year, for instance, although Star Fox Zero was the focus, it wasn’t the only thing we saw. Granted it was still almost entirely what we saw, my point still stands that there were a few other miscellaneous announcements. Zelda U could be the star of this E3, and the release of Mother 3 in English would make for a wonderful ending announcement to send Nintendo off on a good note.
I’m confident that Mother 3 will get announced sometime this year—more than likely at E3, but still sometime this year at the very least. If there were ever an E3 for Nintendo to do well at, it’s this one. More than that, Nintendo of America has been better about acknowledging the Mother franchsie by adding 1 and 2 to the Wii U Virtual Console and putting Earthbound on the New 3DS virtual console. They’re actively creating more Mother fans, and when they’re combined with the millions of insane Mother 3 fans who were already here, it would sell tremendously. Knowing that there’d be these same millions of Mother 3 fans demanding your head on a pike to be paraded through the streets if you were wrong, I don’t think anyone would leak anything about Mother 3 getting a translation this year just for fun—let alone it getting corroborated by two other reliable sources. It’s Mother 3’s 10th birthday this year, and Nintendo has always really liked celebrating major birthdays for their games— Super Mario Bro’s turning 30 last year for example, and even the 20th birthday of Earthbound by putting Earthbound Beginnings on the virtual console.

All the signs are pointing to it.
C’mon Reggie, give us Mother 3.