Mutter Drei mit Thomas und Dieter

kjorteo happened to mention to me today that Mother 3, released only in Japan, known in America as the sequel to Earthbound and known in Europe as absolutely nothing at all, recently had an unofficial translation patch released. As it falls into my indefinable category of fairly piratable games as it's otherwise completely unobtainable, I'm now playing a game that other people on my Friends list might also be playing for the first time in as long as I can remember.

Even though I played through it relatively recently (after my younger siblings had tried to get me to try it for absolutely ages) I can't remember much about the original Earthbound (that is, the second Mother game in Japan)... all I know is that it was like a sort of twenty hour long nightmare after eating six packs of Skittles before bed, featuring maniacally grinning sprites, a disturbing other dimension called Moonside, Ku Klux Klan members painting a town blue, and the most honestly terrifying formless end boss in the world (reportedly inspired by a traumatic childhood memory that the director suffered because of watching a rape scene in a film).

In the first game I just allowed the game to choose the character names for me, but upon seeing the blonde quiff of the main character I had the insane urge - possibly left over from Albion - to call him and his twin Thomas and Dieter (though it wouldn't accept Thomas for some reason and I had to go with Tomas instead - I hope this doesn't cause confusion with a significant Thomas later on). It also makes you decide on a couple of very irrelevant-seeming choices like your "favourite thing" and "favourite food", so I'll look forward to seeing how it uses those.

I haven't got very far at all yet, but I've already been given perhaps the best don't-go-here-yet message I've yet seen - "There are ants at your feet. Please don't go this way". Given the list of things the first game had above, I'm looking forward to seeing what this one can throw up.

The translation patch is here, and you can find the ROM for yourself.