MOTHER (Series) Archive

I recently announced a new book about Mother 3 that I’ve been working on – it actually started out in Jan. 2017 as a small article for EarthBound Central, grew too big to be an article, so I was gonna turn it into its own special page, but then it got too big for that too. It wound up book-sized, so I figured okay let’s make it into a book, and with 2018 being the 10th anniversary of the translation patch, it’d fit pretty well.

The book’s not about Mother 3’s translation or Mother 3 itself, but rather the cycle of rumors and hoaxes and hopes and expectations and disappointments that have persisted for 23 years now. Tony the book guy suggested trying to go for a “crazy conspiracy” theme with everything linked together like someone investigating a bizarre mystery. So I threw together this crappy concept pic in about two minutes.

I doubt the end product will look anything along these lines, but it’s a funny premise to think about!

Fangamer’s “You Are Now EarthBound” Kickstarter is ending soon, and I’m involved with one of the final stretch goals! Indeed, if it gets high enough within the next three or so days, I’ll be able to make a book version of my EarthBound localization analysis!

Believe it or not, I’ve been comparing games and translations since way back in 1999, when I first started a site that compared EarthBound with its Japanese counterpart:

I didn’t get too far – I soon studied the language a lot more, did a lot of projects, and even became a professional translator. Armed with all this, I eventually went back and did a full comparison of EarthBound and MOTHER 2 — and later turned that into the start of Legends of Localization.

After I finished it, I dreamed of making it into a book somehow. There was also a lot of content that I skimmed over that I’ve always wanted to go back and cover, plus I’ve actually had the honor of meeting EarthBound’s head localizer, discussing details with him, and even chatting about MOTHER 3!

So with all this, now would be a wonderful chance to put EarthBound Legends of Localization into a book form!

If this Kickstarter stretch goal is met and I’m able to work on a book, I’d be able to:

• Go back and look at stuff in more detail, especially in the first half of the game
• Cover questions and topics that have sprung up since I finished the site – I might even do a call for questions beforehand!
• Discuss topics that concern series continuity
• Include new insights and answers from EarthBound’s head localizer himself!

And more, of course! I’m still trying to figure out how I could include secret image text, but I think it might be a lost cause 😛

Anyway, if the Kickstarter stretch goal is met and the book does well enough, it could open up opportunities to do more books on a more regular basis! I’d love to be able to focus my efforts on plenty of other games and series – my MOTHER 3 translations noteswould be a perfect start, for example.

And I’ve already had the groundwork laid for a good EarthBound Zero/MOTHER 1 analysis too:

And there are the other projects I always have on my mind but not enough time for usually:

And if things go REALLY well, I’d love the opportunity to go and seek out the various people responsible for localizations and see what their experiences were!

Of course, this all rides on whether or not this stretch goal gets hit and if the EarthBound book does well enough. Even if you don’t back the Kickstarter, if the goal DOES get met you’ll still be able to order the book from Fangamer, but if you do back it I think there’s probably a tier or something where you can get a copy of the book automatically.

Depending on how things go, I might do a smaller, simpler book before the EarthBound one just to get the kinks and everything worked out. But that’s getting ahead of myself – for now, if any of this interests you, consider backing Fangamer’s “You Are Now EarthBound” Kickstarter!

– Clyde

I was just looking through the Legends of Localization article archive and realized that today marks one year since I started doing these single-topic articles!

The very first article, which seems like just yesterday, was about someone sending me a copy of Zelda II for the Famicom Disk System. Since then, there’ve been 145 articles, or about 1 article every 2.5 days 😯 I had no idea I’d written that many!

Anyway, that aside, here’s a quick site status update!

For a while there, I was able to keep the updates flowing at a good rate, and even managed to do the big Final Fantasy IV and AVGN updates once a month. But alas, the work of a freelance translator can get crazily unpredictable, so right now Legends of Localization is back in the hectic “update whenever a hole in time opens up” mode. More specifically:

• Final Fantasy IV: I posted an intermission thing here a while back. I’m not as burned out on FFIV anymore, so I look forward to getting back into this when I can!

• MOTHER 3: I get asked about this a lot – for now it’s on hold. I *have* started putting together the version 1.2 patch this past week, though. No expected release date yet. It’ll mostly fix a lot of bugs that existed in the original game.

• A Link Between Worlds: I announced this a few months back. I’ve fully played through both versions of the game, gathered all the screenshots and videos and stuff, and even have a good amount of work done on the layout and content, but freelance work overload last month put everything on hold.

• Blog posts: I get requests for one-topic article posts all the time – if you’ve sent any in, don’t worry if I don’t respond! I put every single request in a spreadsheet, so you haven’t been ignored. The spreadsheet’s getting pretty big, it’s amazing!

Now that I think about it, I did recently do some small updates that you might’ve missed:

• A quick look at an often-missed line in Final Fantasy II/IV
• A look at how to kill Pols Voice enemies in the Japanese 3DS version of The Legend of Zelda

Pretty much every day I wake up thinking how swell it’d be if I could monetize Legends of Localization somehow so I could focus more time on it. I fear that a Kickstarter wouldn’t succeed, and I don’t think Patreon would have enough backers. If anyone has any suggestions, though, let me know! There are a million things I’d like to dig into and write articles about sometime – just off the top of my head:

• Final Fantasy VI
• MOTHER / EarthBound Zero
• Pokemon
• Shadowgate
• Other English->Japanese localizations
• The Wizard
• Gitaroo Man
• Symphony of the Night
• Ninja Gaiden
• Sonic stuff
• Phantasy Star
• Alex Kidd games
• Pretty much every game ever I guess, especially 80s/90s games 😛
• Maybe look at how some American shows got handled in translation
• Live translations (on Youtube or wherever) of Japanese-only games

Anyway, while that’s the dream, in reality I’ve been working on lots of really cool and rewarding professional translation projects too, the most recent of which I can mention is Attack on Titan!

It’s crazy to think back to when I first started learning the language so many years ago, and now millions of people are watching the result of those studies. It’s actually kind of stage fright-y!

Oh yeah, and Legends of Localization is apparently in the running for top professional language blog of 2014 at some language site… even though I write about poop jokes and horse wieners.

Oh, and there was a Polygon article the other day about fan translations, which includes some snippets about MOTHER 3 and some interview bits from Jeffman and me. Check it out here!

So that’s the latest so far! If you wanna keep up with more of my goings-on, follow me on Twitter, where I often post stuff that’s too small to write a whole article about here, like:

– Clyde