This is almost a month old now, but I don't see any threads about it and I want to bring it to the attention of any
Mother/
Earthbound fans (or newbies, for that matter; the more the merrier): Thanks to the crack team of tranlsators at Starmen.net, (I believe the one called
tomato lead the project) the game has been paintstakingly translated into English! Simply download the patch provided and follow the included instructions to apply it to a Japanese ROM of
Mother 3 (it shouldn't be hard to find one).
GO HERE --> http://mother3.fobby.net/
I beat the game about two weeks ago and I must say it was a great ride. I find the GBA version more visually appealing than the N64 version that never made it to completion. The only thing missing from the scrapped version is a longer and more in-depth story. Originally, Flint would have played a much bigger role in the game, maybe even as a playable character past Chapter 1. The prologue would have been much longer, detailing some shenanigans that Lucas and Claus had together, implying that they must have gotten into trouble fairly often and giving us more reason to feel emotional about their bond. As-is, Claus is only on-screen for a very brief time before he goes missing.
It is a mind-boggling atroscity that this was never released in America (I'd bet money it could outsell another Mario sports title), but at least we had Starmen and Fobby to do Nintendo's work for them. Whence last the world heard from Shigesato Itoi, there are no plans for a "Mother 4", but with such a delightful series to his name, I won't be too surprised if Itoi decides to dust off the title and try something new. Personally, I'd like to see a remake of
Mother/
Earthbound Zero, either with
Mother 3-style graphics on DS or a cell shaded look on the Wii.