Before I start this review I want to say thanks to the people who have been patient enough for me to finish this and if a game you may have thought would be here and is not it’s probably on my honorable mentions list, I have a lot of games I haven’t actually played or wasn’t interested in which makes me think I missed a few very revolutionary games of the past decade, and to the one person who has put input into this list and made me rethink a few last minute additions Julian, sorry GTA4 didn’t make this list, but GTA3 was just more revolutionary at the time it was released. Okay let’s get on with this now I can’t believe I’m done.

Game: Mother 3
Release Date: April 20, 2006

Only once before have I felt this over whelming sensation of mixed emotions over a video game and that game was this games older brother Mother 2 (EarthBound for us Amurricanns). Mother 3 is a game 12 years in the making, first planned to be released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1996, this was delayed and the project was then moved to the Nintendo 64 DD (disk drive), the after that failed in Japan now moving production over to the Nintendo 64 to meet it’s ultimate demise, or so we thought. EarthBound was a commercial failure in America, it just for some reason was not the hit Nintendo expected it to have been. That kind of layed the ground work for Mother 3 to fail, we heard nothing more about this game, until… 2003. Shigesato Itoi who created the Mother series announced in a commercial for a Mother 1+2 bundle for the Gameboy Advance with a message at the end declared it’s ressurection on the Gameboy Advance, fans rejoiced! Only problem was Nintendo of America didn’t have any plans to release this bundle or Mother 3 in America.

All of us Mother fans kept dreaming, looking at screen shots of it’s failed 3D life and Japanese websites for it’s return to 2D, why Nintendo of America would use Ness, the star of EarthBound in its Super Smash Bros. series but act as if Mother never existed is beyond me, well, besides the fact that Hal Laboratories worked on both series, but why tease us like that? Fans kept up with the process of the game and petitioned it to also be released in America to no avail, we try again, Nintendo of America head Reggie Hil-Aimes says “too bad” the game was doomed. We try once again and got 300,000 signatures, but yet again are told no. The game was released on 4/20/06 after the first announcement in ‘03 but only in limited supply, American fans were tired of waiting on Nintendo of America to have a change of heart, and that’s when we took it into our own hands. Starmen.net a fan site dedicated to the Mother series created a seperate site as they took the job Nintendo of America did not want and started translating the game their selves, they ran into coding issues and thought they’d be halted, then pushed right through it! The progress was updated periodically on this new website with screenshots, issues, and good news. Thinking Nintendo would stop them any day all the workers took psuedo names, to much surprise it was not necessary. Nintendo had seemed to turn a blind eye and let it go on. 10/17/08 was the glorious day this patch was released! Not aiding to stealing the game no link for a ROM was attached. The translation received 100,000 downloads in the first week.

Lucas and Ness then made it into Super Smash Bros. Brawl but not including a demo to Mother 2 or 3 in the American release, the only game on the disc to not be included, fans felt snubbed again, Japan got it, why not us? Nintendo of America gave a few answers for this, copy writing issues was the biggest though (there’s mention of Beatles tracks, characters who vaguely resemble The Blues Brothers and song similarities) but there’s no excuse to why Mother 3 will never be released in America. Brownie Brown even stated if Nintendo of America asked they’d work on getting all three games released for the Nintendo DS. EGM said it was coming, twice in ‘08, it’s now 2010.. The U.K. thought they were going to get it, also in ‘08, the rest of the world may never get this game the way it was intended to. UGO.com considers this “Gamings biggest heartbreak” and it honestly is.

This game is not even given a change, and I’m sure if it was it would do well just because the issues it’s gone through. There’s no issue with copy writing in it like there is in EarthBound (so many so that N.O.A. wont release it as a Virtual Console release). So why Nintendo of America wont release it is because it may fail? This coming from a company who took a risk with the Wii? Failed with the Virtual Boy and Gamecube so, why Nintendo? I’m pleading right now to Reggie and most importantly Shigeru Miyamoto, you’ve taken bigger risks, so why not give it a shot? You wouldn’t be disappointed.

Now, why I love this game, like I stated before, there’s so much emotion involved, it’s a little hard for me to go on without spoiling why, so I wont. There’s multiple stories in this game, the main one being Lucas; the star of this game. Other stories revolve around Flint, Lucas’ father, Salsa; a monkey trying to save his love, Duster; a thief, and Kumatora; a princess. All the stories intertwine with one another making the complete story that brings up destruction of the planet by man-made machinery. How you see it is really up to you though, that’s just my opinion. Nintendo has said the fan translation is correct in every possible way so if you were thinking how faithful is it to the Japanese story, it’s completely faithful besides a few westernized changes (such as names and standard phrasing). Shigesato Itoi has stated this is the last game in the series and has no plans for a Mother 4, but….it’s not out of the question to make another, so until that has been decided, we can only dream what may (or may not) come.

Honorable mentions will be up in the next few days, for now I’m after a Bad Movie Beatdown, Video Game Movies addition.