Mother 3
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| Mother 3 | |
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| Developer(s) | Nintendo SPD Production Group No.3 HAL Laboratory Brownie Brown |
| Publisher(s) | Nintendo |
| Designer(s) | Nobuyuki Inoue (director) Shigesato Itoi (writer) Satoru Iwata (executive producer) Shogo Sakai (composer) |
| Series | EarthBound (Mother) |
| Platform(s) | Game Boy Advance |
| Release date | JP April 20, 2006 |
| Genre(s) | Console role-playing game |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Rating(s) | CERO: All Ages |
| Media | 256 megabit Cartridge |
Mother 3 is a role-playing video game for the Game Boy Advance handheld game console, developed by HAL Laboratory and Brownie Brown, published by Nintendo. It is the third video game in the Mother series of video games. It was announced in June 2003 during a Mother 1 + 2 television commercial, though details of its development were kept secret. Up until its release, the game remained near the top of Famitsu's most wanted games list. Immediately before its release, Mother 3 was the most wanted game in Japan according to Weekly Famitsu.[1]
According to Shigesato Itoi, the lead designer of the Mother series, they have no plans to create a Mother 4.[2]
[edit] Gameplay
Mother 3 starts out very differently from the first two Mother games. The game is set up into eight different chapters, much like Dragon Quest IV. Instead of focusing on a group of children, it chronicles the story and adventures of Lucas and his family, and the story switches perspective during each chapter. (For example, the first half of the game is played as Flint, Duster and Salsa, but the rest of the game is played as Lucas.) Nowhere Island also changes dramatically due to the influence of the Pig Mask Army, transforming from a simple low-tech rural society to a more modern 21st Century infrastructure that's similar to the first two Mother games (hence the game's theme of nature vs. technology). The game also features a more traditional top-down RPG perspective, instead of the oblique projection used in the first two games.
Once again, the game retains the Dragon Quest-style battle system Mother and EarthBound had (although this time at a much quicker pace), but Mother 3 adds an extra twist in the form of the Music combo system. Depending on how well the player presses the A Button in-sync to the lead enemy's "theme" (each enemy has their own respective beat, some even possessing variable tempos), he or she can perform up to 16 hits of damaging combos on the game's enemies. (The game also has an option of letting the player practice Music combos on enemies they have already fought, once they gain a certain item. Tempos can also be more easily heard in the form of a "heartbeat" when the enemy is asleep.) Enemies are still visible on the field, and can still be approached from behind for a surprise attack (along with the extra added detail of seeing behind an enemy.) The game also retains the rolling HP/PP odometers from the previous game, enabling the player to heal before the counter rolls to 0. In Mother 3, the HP odometer scrolls more slowly than the previous game and can be slowed further by defending — however, unlike Mother 2, the player will still be technically 'dead' if the HP odometer scrolls to zero. Another new addition is the ability to run, by holding and releasing the B Button the player can not only reach areas quicker, but also smash into breakable objects and also stun enemies significantly weaker than the party, replacing the previous game's ability to instantly defeat weak enemies without entering battle. Mother 3 also abandons saving the game by phone in favor of Save Frogs, which are abundant and appear at various areas in the game. Currency (which doesn't come into play until Chapter 4) comes in the form of DP (Dragon Power), which the player can deposit/transfer from Save Frogs.
[edit] Plot
[edit] Characters
[edit] Setting
Unlike the first two games, the focus is no longer on a group of children. Some chapters put completely different characters in the protagonistic role: In one chapter the player controls a 30-ish, limping thief named Duster, in another chapter the main character is Salsa, a monkey who is constantly suffering abuse by a rich traveling merchant named Yokuba. The only child character the player gets to control is Lucas, who is about nine to ten years old in the first three chapters and 12 to 13 years for the remainder of the game. Further controllable characters include Kumatora, a tomboyish Princess from a strange country, a middle-aged cowboy named Flint (Lucas' father), and Lucas' family dog, Boney.
True to the game's slogan "Strange, Funny and Heartrending," Mother 3 sheds the more lighthearted and quirky plot lines of the previous games in favor of a far darker and more emotional story. The plot involves quite a few tragic and saddening events. However, the game still retains many humorous and bizarre elements that are common to the series.
Mother 3 is set in the Nowhere Islands. Chaos ensues after an invasion by the Pig Mask Army, named after the uniforms, which resemble pigs, and its leader, Porky Minch, the "Pig King". They slowly construct a police state, while experimenting on the land's flora and fauna, and introducing new technology and infrastructure to the islands. The various chapters record the life of a boy named Lucas and his family and friends, banding together to rid the Nowhere Islands of the Pig Mask Army.
[edit] Story
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The plot summary in this section is too long or detailed compared to the rest of the article. Please edit the article to focus on discussing the work rather than merely reiterating the plot. |
The story is divided by eight Chapters. The first three each have a different main character, First being Flint, a local cowboy, Second being Duster, a local thief, and the Third being Salsa, an abused monkey, looking for his girlfriend. Chapters four to eight's main character is Lucas, Flint's son.
[edit] Prologue
The story begins with Lucas, his twin brother Claus, and his mother, Hinawa, spending time at his grandfather's place. While playing with a playful Drago (dinosaur) and his family, a mole cricket named Okera came and had a brief fight with Lucas and Claus. After being defeated he vowed to meet Lucas again. After breakfast, Hinawa sent a homing pigeon to tell her husband, Flint, that they'll be back by noon.
[edit] Chapter 1: Night of the Funeral
The chapter opens with Flint, who, after a forest fire, finds out that Hinawa and his sons Lucas and Claus haven't come back to the village yet. He then sets out to look for them with the help of his dog, Boney, and Duster. He soon finds out that Hinawa has died, leaving him to raise their sons. After Claus goes missing to kill the Drago that killed his mother, Flint, with the help of Alec, Hinawa's father, goes looking for him. Claus ultimately lost the battle and was killed. Flint did not find the body. But instead he found the Drago, reanimated into a robot. After defeating it, Flint was about to kill it with the same tooth that pierced Hinawa's heart, but was stopped by the Drago's child. Flint then decided to spare the Drago's life.
[edit] Chapter 2: A Thief's Adventure
From here, Duster is drafted to go to the haunted Osohe Castle by his father Wes to find the Egg of Light. Duster purchases the Rope Snake to help him cross gaps in the castle. After getting the wrong artifact, Wes went along with Duster on his second trip to Osohe Castle, to make sure he gets the right artifact. Along the way, Duster and Wes meet Kumatora. After they stop several of the Pig Mask Army soldiers, the trio are flushed out of the castle and Duster loses his memory and the Egg of Light. He joins the musical group DCMC as their bassist.
[edit] Chapter 3: The Suspicious Traveling Merchant
In Duster's absence, the Pig Mask army moves into Tazmily Village[3] and, with the help of Yokuba and his abused monkey Salsa, they help modernize the town with new infrastructure and "happiness boxes," which are like TV's (not filled with money)[1]. They use the happiness boxes primarily to corrupt them and make their job of establishing authority easier. Salsa is ultimately rescued by Kumatora, Wes, and Lucas.
[edit] Chapter 4: Club Titiboo
Three years later, the Pig Mask army turns Tazmily Village from a low-tech farming land into a more Modern-day city. Those who don't follow the new customs, like Lucas and Flint, are struck by lightning from The Thunder Tower or sentenced to jail.
Wes finally gets wind of Duster's whereabouts and asks Lucas to confirm the rumors that he has joined DCMC and to respond via homing pigeon. On the way to Club Titiboo, the club where DCMC will play, Lucas learned PK powers from a Magypsy named Ionia. With the help of Kumatora (disguised as a waitress) Lucas and Boney finds Duster and the four set off together to Thunder Tower to find the Egg of Light and hopefully Duster's lost memory.
[edit] Chapter 5: Thunder Tower
After disguising themselves as Pig Mask soldiers, they were able to find the Egg of Light, along with Duster's memory. On the way there, they were stopped by a big muscular Pig Mask soldier called the Pork Trooper (AKA Scary Pig-Mask Soldier). But because he is a hard core DCMC fan, DCMC goods distracts him, allowing the team to beat him twice. Yokuba discover their true identity, and chases them across the tower. On top, the gang destroys The Generator, making the tower useless. Yokuba was able to corner them on top of the roof of the tower, and informs them that they are going to destroy the tower along with them, while he escapes through an airship. But before he could do that he fell down the tower on one of his banana peels. Duster then use the Rope Snake to grab onto the airship so that the party could escape. They see the Pig Mask Army's general, The Mask Man, walk outside, and after a while the Rope Snake lets go.
[edit] Chapter 6: Sunflower Field
Lucas awakes in a field full of sunflowers. After finding Boney, he sees figments of his mother, Hinawa. After chasing her off the edge of a cliff, he falls back down to Tazmily village, where Wes and Alec (Lucas' grandfather) bring him home and help him get well.
[edit] Chapter 7: The Seven Needles
After rescuing the Magypsy Ionia, Lucas and Boney find out about the Seven Needles from her after Aeolia disappears before their eyes. Pulling the Seven Needles will release a seal on a Dragon sleeping below the island, which inherently possesses massive power. In the wrong hands it could destroy the island, while it could heal the world in good hands. Each Magypsy watches over a needle, and disappears when his/her needle is pulled. The party races against the Pig Mask Army to activate the needles.
Lucas and Boney soon find themselves in a genetic-engineering laboratory where Dr. Andonuts works. However, the most dangerous of their creations, The Ultimate Chimera, has been set loose. After fleeing from the beast, they discover Salsa and his girlfriend trying to escape the lab. Salsa, remembering how Lucas helped save him from Yokuba, deactivates the Ultimate Chimera, and helps him escape. Salsa opens the way to the Magypsy Doria's house, where they find Kumatora. With the help of Dr. Andonuts, Lucas drains the lake with Doria's needle. They leave Salsa behind to live with his girlfriend in peace.
After encountering and having a rematch with Okera the mole cricket (who is still just as weak), the party finds its way through the complex tunnels dug by the mole crickets to a snowy mountain. The needle just behind the Magypsy Lydia's house is pulled by the Masked Man just as they arrive, and they are attacked by a gorilla chimera created by the pig-mask army.
After returning to Tazmily Village, the party finds a note in strange handwritting, asking them to go back towards the Thunder Tower. Lucas and company discover a village of Mr. Saturns, under attack by the pig-mask army. Duster is found trapped along with the Mr. Saturns and Rope Snake, but is freed by the party. After the pig-army is driven off, the Mr. Saturns reveal that Phryigia the Magypsy's needle is inside a nearby volcano. Upon finding the needle, Lucas and his friends are attacked by a rebuilt Yokuba, now sporting trumpets as weaponry. After defeating him, the tunnel leading out of Saturn Village is collapsed by a bomb, but the Mr. Saturns help the party escape by using a flock of birds.
Swimming through the ocean, the party is hurt by a powerful whirlpool. They arrive on a tropical island, without any means to recover their health. Everyone but Boney resorts to eating some strange mushrooms, forcing them to trek through the jungle under the effects of a hallucination. Eventually the party makes its way to the next Magypsy, Mixolydia, who slaps the sense back into them, but is unable to pull the needle after the Masked Man arrives and knocks them unconcious with a lightning attack.
They are ferried back to Tazmily Village on the back of an Octopus. Using the Delicious Pickle Missy left them, Lucas and friends get to Ionia's house where they acquire the Water of Time so they can get into the temple nearby. At the temple, they meet the Masked Man. He is defeated and flies away, leaving Lucas to pull the next Needle. As they exit the temple, a limousine pulls up, inviting them to "New Pork City."
[edit] Chapter 8: Everything and All Things
In New Pork City, Lucas and friends go to the movie theater, which shows some of the Pig King's past adversaries (including Ness, Paula, Jeff, and Poo from EarthBound). A stinkbug gets the attention of Boney and the party chases him into the sewers. Once there, they follow Boney's barks to find Leder, the bell ringer from Tazmily Village. He tells them the long history of their world and the Pig King, including the facts that their island is a post-apocalyptic utopia and that it exists on the back of a giant sleeping dragon, which is kept asleep by the Needles. The Magypsies were put in place to guard them. On the way out of the sewers, Yokuba attacks again, and is defeated.
In the tallest tower in New Pork City, the party makes its way up the floors until they discover a robot that resembles Porky. They compete with the robot in a few mini-games before moving on to Porky himself.
On top of the tower, they find the Hall of Memories, showcasing many items from Earthbound, before ending up in a long hallway leading to Porky. In Porky's room they are attacked by more complete Porky robots, which are soon destroyed by Duster's ex-bandmates of DCMC. After the townspeople of Tazmily Village enter the room with Dr. Andonuts and Flint, Porky descends from the vines on the roof to speak to the party. He reveals that the last Needle has been found and challenges Lucas and friends to beat him to it via the express elevator. Lucas, Boney, Kumatora, Duster, and Flint slide down the elevator shaft to a mine-like environment.
Flint goes ahead and soon tells Lucas that the Masked Man is actually his brother Claus, who was killed by the Pig Army, then brought back to life as their general. They have been using him because he is the only other one besides Lucas who is capable of pulling the Needles and awakening the Dragon.
Porky soon confronts them in a large spider-mech. When he sees he is to be defeated, he calls upon the "Absolutely Safe Capsule" and climbs inside. It seals Porky inside, and being true to its name, it protects Porky from all harm. However, Porky finds that he cannot harm the heroes, either. When the battle ends, Dr. Andonuts reveals that he built the Absolutely Safe Capsule with the specifications that once someone is inside, the machine cannot be opened by anyone, including the person inside of it, and while Porky is "absolutely safe", he is trapped in the machine forever.
Before reaching the final Needle, the Masked Man attacks again in a one-on-one battle with Lucas, who stays safe from his lightning attack thanks to the Franklin Badge, although Kumatora, Duster and Boney are automatically defeated by the lightning, leaving Lucas to fight the Masked Man by himself. Hinawa pleads with Claus from beyond the grave, trying to get him to stop attacking Lucas, while Flint blocks the effects of the PK Love attack. Eventually, the Masked Man removes his helmet revealing himself as Claus and strikes one final lightning attack at Lucas, resulting in the Franklin Badge deflecting it towards him for one final blow. After Claus collapses, he regains his sense of self and utters a few parting words. Lucas pulls the final needle, and the player is shown a grim outlook of what appears to be the end of Nowhere Island. A secret on the final screen of the game, in which the word 'End?' appears, will actually reveal that everybody survives the attack and thank the player for all his/her help.
[edit] Development
Mother 3 was originally announced in 1996 for the Nintendo 64. Development soon moved to the Nintendo 64DD, where it was to be a launch title. Developer Benimaru Itoh remarked at E3's 1997 convention that the game would probably utilize the Rumble Pak in battle sequences, but worried that the controller would become too cumbersome for players given the time-consuming nature of role-playing games.[4] Itoh also aimed to allow players to pick several character faces or create new visages with Mario Artist.[4] Shigesato Itoi's team ran into some trouble while developing this game, due to their inexperience with 3D games and the difficulty of developing for Nintendo 64 hardware. The Nintendo 64DD became a commercial failure, and on August 21, 2000, Itoi officially confirmed the game's cancellation.
The project was revived in 2003 on the Game Boy Advance, and it was eventually released on April 20, 2006. A limited edition version of Mother 3 was sold in Japan in addition to the basic title. The "Deluxe Box" included a special edition Game Boy Micro and a Franklin Badge. Due to unexpected demand, only a small fraction of the Deluxe Boxes were shipped by the release date of the game.
[edit] Demand for an international release
Since the original, scrapped, Nintendo 64 version's announcement in 1996, many fans of the Mother series have been pleading for Mother 3 to be given a global release. A cult following has formed around the franchise, and many petitions and demands have been made towards Nintendo of America; however, there do not appear to be any plans to release Mother 3 in the United States.
Rumors in the August 2006 issue of EGM suggested the possibility that Nintendo may compile all three Mother titles onto one Nintendo DS cart, and could possibly bring this compilation to the US and Europe. [5]
In November of 2006, NintendoWorldReport.com interviewed Nate Bihldorff, the Nintendo of America Localization Producer/Manager, about the localization process he and his team must go through for a videogame. When NintendoWorldReport.com mentions Mother 3, Bihldorff mentions that he and his team are not working on Mother 3. However, he does mention some of his writers are not under him, so discussions of the game may be going on. He also mentions that he does not plan on working on it in the immediate future.[6]
Because no official translation has been announced, a fan translation has been started and is close to completion. However, the people involved in this translation have said that if Nintendo announces an official translation, they will immediately cease their work, indicating that their sole goal is to ensure that the game is translated to English. [2]
[edit] Audio
On November 2, 2006, the MOTHER3+ original soundtrack was released in Japan. It was also released in the iTunes Music Store in the United States on April 1, 2007, featuring an additional bonus track unavailable on the CD release. This album contains arranged songs by the Crazy Ken Band as D.C.M.C. and a vocal track by Taeko Onuki, as well as some songs from older games.
MOTHER3i was released on the February 6, 2007 in the iTunes Music Store and Napster in Japan, as well as a few other online music services. On April 1, 2007, it was released in the iTunes Music Store in the United States. It contains a different selection of music from the game. The track list for the album is as follows, translations in brackets:
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MOTHER3+
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MOTHER3i
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[edit] Reception
Famitsu scored Mother 3 with a 35/40, providing the first public review of the game.[7] Australian publication Hyper Magazine gave it 92/100, and the "Hyper Big Rubber Stamp of Approval" (awarded to all games with a score over ninety), and was said to be "One of the best RPGs ever made."
Mother 3 sold 205,914 copies in its first 3 days on sale,[8] and 338,382 copies were sold from April 20 to June 25 in Japan.[9]
[edit] References
- ^ Earthbound 2 / Mother 3: Mother 3 is THE Most Wanted in Weekly Famitsu! (2006). Retrieved on December 19, 2006.
- ^ Gantayat, Anoop (2006-05-03). No More Mother. IGN. Retrieved on 2006-05-04.
- ^ Archived Official Mother 3 (N64) page (1998). Retrieved on May 30th, 1998.
- ^ a b Takao Imamura, Shigeru Miyamoto (1997). Nintendo Power August, 1997 - Pak Watch E3 Report "The Game Masters". Nintendo, 104-105.
- ^ http://www.epbsoft.com/egmmotherscan.jpg
- ^ Day of Twilight NOA Treehouse Interview. Nintendo World Report (2006). Retrieved on December 19, 2006.
- ^ Famitsu Scores for the Week of 04/13/2006. GameBrink (2006). Retrieved on December 19, 2006.
- ^ Japan: Weekly software sales for 4/17 - 4/23. GamesAreFun (2006). Retrieved on December 19, 2006.
- ^ MOTHER3、2006年上半期までの累計販売本数は338,382本. www.Mother-jp.net (2006). Retrieved on December 19, 2006.
[edit] External links
- Official sites
- (Japanese) Official site
- (Japanese) 1101.com (Shigesato Itoi's website): Mother 3
- (Japanese) SpaceWorld 1999: Mother 3
- Press coverage
- IGN: Mother 3
- GameSpy: Mother 3
- 1UP.com: Mother 3 Preview
- GameStats: Mother 3
- RPGamer: Mother 3 Import Review
- Mother capture(Japanese)
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