Nintendo of Japan released an anticipated game called Mother 3 in their home country, and then didn’t bother to translate and bring it over to the states, perhaps in response to the disappointing sales in American for Mother 2, retitled Earthbound. A rabid fanbase of the series called Starman.net begged Nintendo to reconsider, and sent them bound notebooks full of signatures of fans promising to buy the game, but Nintendo still wouldn’t pay attention. As a result, Starman.net took the matter into their own hands and created an English translation of the game themselves to be downloaded for free on their website. With emulations and roms easily accessible, it was now a piece of cake for Americans to download and play Mother 3 for free in its entirety (the heavy use of japanese text in the game used to be a barrier in itself for pirating copies). The website stated that it would gladly disable the work whenever Nintendo changed its mind and released an official English version, but Nintendo never did, and even learning about the project, didn’t seem to care enough to interfere. Which brings up the backwards image of the thief doing all the protesting and the victim of the theft indifferently shrugging his shoulders. Here is a video that goes through a brief history of the Mother series, ending in the Starman.net episode for Mother 3 during the last ten minutes. Behind the coarse and regrettable attempts at humor, Roo does a competent job explaining the issue.
Mother 3: Unauthorized/Sole English Edition
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