At after two years, the unofficial translation is finished for the sequel to Earthbound. You can get it here. You’ll need to scrounge up ROM image of the Japanese game to patch over.
Now, technically that’s against the law, but Nintendo has made it difficult to give them money for the game. The site recommends importing one of the out-of-print Japanese cartridges and letting it gather dust while you play the translated version on your PC. That’s certainly more ethical, and there’s some for sale here at what I think is a considerable markup, I’m still not sure if that’s legal given the state of intellectual property law in this country. I may just drive up to Nintendo of America headquarters, throw a handfull of bills out the window and peel out before anyone catches me.
Nintendo’s recalcitrance to put out an English version of Mother 3/Earthbound 2 is bizarre. It has a rabid fan base ready to sing its praises to anyone who will listen. It has plenty of mainstream recognition from one of its characters, Lucas, appearing in the hit Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The fan translation is covered by all the major gaming blogs, which should signal there’s a good amount of interest in it.
They’ve even got a digital delivery service built in to the best-selling video game console in the nation that they could use to push this without taking on the expense of manufacturing Game Boy Advance cartridges, though admittedly the service doesn’t seem to have emulation for the GBA at the moment.
If they went the digital route, the costs would be, what, a couple of engineers and a good translator? Mother 3 was reportedly quite difficult to hack out for roman characters, but that’s two guys working without the benefit of the source code. Hell, why not buy out the fan translation? They already said they’d take it down the moment Nintendo announced an official North American release.
The only explanation is that the original Earthbound flopped so hard thirteen years ago that the trauma of it is burned into the psyche of Nintendo executives as a genetic memory, and despite a visible demand for it, they cringe and sob at the very mention of ever bringing another title over.
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