EarthBound Central

MOTHER 3 Chinese Translation

Mato — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:03:38 +0000

MOTHER 3 was released in Japan almost four years ago now… and released nowhere else. So fans came together to translate the game into English, French, Spanish, and many other languages. But I don’t think most Western fans know that there’s also been a completely separate project to translate the game into Chinese and that the project is almost nearly complete now.

Here are some screenshots:

If you know Chinese, you can check out more details here. You can also download the latest version from Dec. 25, 2009 here:

MOTHER 3 Chinese Translation

According to the site, the progress stands at this:

Hacking: 95% done
Translation: 100% done
Editing: 100% done
Art/graphics: 0% done

Having worked on the hacking and translation of the English version, my many hats go off to this team. It’s a LOT of work. And difficult work. So they rock

BTW, the game is known there as “地球冒险”, which is something like “Earth Adventure”. I’m fairly certain there’ve never been any official Chinese versions of any of the games in the series, though I did come across this a while back.

I studied Chinese many years ago but it’s almost all forgotten now. I can’t even tell which kind of Chinese this translation uses. Can anyone provide more details?

Shigesato Itoi Tries Strawberry Tofu

Mato — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:04:26 +0000

I’m not sure what magazine this is from, but it’s from way back when MOTHER 2 was released in Japan.

Basically, the magazine people made some Strawberry Tofu for Itoi to try, and he said:

This is really something! It has a profound flavor that makes me feel sad. (laugh) I thought this would be something an American with an unusual understanding of foreign cultures might make, but this is actually terrible!

Strawberry Tofu appeared in all three MOTHER games, but the EarthBound localizers changed it to Trout Yogurt before releasing the game in English. But if you want to see someone actually make Trout Yogurt, see here

I remember Itoi talking briefly about Strawberry Tofu during the MOTHER 1+2 event, though it didn’t get included in that mini-documentary. As I recall, he said he came up with the idea thinking it was so crazy that nobody would ever make it, but years later he found out that some places in France or Italy (I forget) had been making a strawberry tofu dish for some time, just by coincidence.

EarthBound Level Challenge Hack!

Mato — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 04:07:52 +0000

Not too long ago Bozo posted a really cool hack on the PK Hack message board. Basically, the idea is this:

You gain a level with every 1 EXP.

Every enemy gives 1 EXP.

At level 99, your game ends.

The challenge is to try to get as far as you can, defeating as few enemies as possible. This is difficult because you’re gonna get hurt running away, and you’re not going to get very much money at all.

After some tests and some fixing, the final patch was posted, and you can download it here!

I haven’t tried it myself, but the concept sounds really cool and I hope I can find time to play it sometime. If you try it out, be sure to post your experiences you have here or on the PK Hack forum thread!

EarthBound Ruler Photos

Mato — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:37:14 +0000

EBchamp won the super-rare EarthBound ruler that was on eBay a few weeks back, and he was kind enough to take some more photos of it for the rest of us.

(caution! huge pics!)

It’s just a ruler, but it’s also really rare so it’s always good to have some more pics of one after all these years

The seller also included a Nintendo Power thingy that talked about EarthBound 64, which I’ll post about another day.

EarthBound Pogs Sell for $255

Mato — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:17:19 +0000

Remember those official EarthBound Pogs that hit eBay a week or two ago? The auction finally ended and the final price was $255.

Hopefully they’ve found a good home, possibly as part of an EarthBound shrine

Some Nice DCMC Remixes

Mato — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 04:22:16 +0000

katanaswordfish sent this in the other day:

This past weekend I threw together two Mother3/DCMC covers. Both of them are versions of the “Theme of DCMC”, and are stylistically quite different. The quality is not bad (nothing to write home about but certainly not terrible either) if i may say so myself…

Nothing super amazing or revolutionary here. But, I thought i’d upload them and share them with my fellow EB/Mother3 fans. The music of Mother2/3 have been (and continue to be) a constant source of joy and inspiration to me. I enjoyed slapping these two songs together, and I hope others will enjoy listening to them as well.

They are both up on my new youtube account. With a bit of customized mother3 sprite modifications as a background.

Download audio file (KatanaSwordfish-Tonda-Bossa.mp3)
(download MP3)

Download audio file (KatanaSwordfish-Theme-of-DCMC-demo.mp3)
(download MP3)

Thanks again. The tracks are were mostly improvised, aside from the characteristic themes and motives that are part of the main melodies of the songs. I know my these aren’t perfect, but I hope they are well received! =)

I really like these remixes. It’s a shame they’re not available in MP3 form – I could rip some from the videos but they wouldn’t be very good quality I bet. Maybe sometime down the road downloadable versions will be available?

MP3 versions are now up. Thanks for the files, katanaswordfish!

Weekly Round-Up #60

Mato — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:19:18 +0000

Gonna be another short weekly round-up this week, I’m mighty busy indeed. We did have some interesting stuff happen this past week, though. Here’s some other stuff from around the net that was EarthBound-related too:

Community News

I can’t possibly keep up with every single thing that happens in the EarthBound community, so if you’ve done something cool or if you know of something cool that belongs here, let me know!

Cool Auctions & Merchandise

Things were a little slower this past week merchandise-wise. There were still some neat things and good deals, and here they are!

Remember, you can also see all the EarthBound / MOTHER stuff on eBay all gathered in one handy place here!

Official EarthBound Pogs – this auction’s STILL going? I wonder how much it’ll go for. I’d love to have more info on these, if anyone happens to get ahold of them
MOTHER 2 Cartridge for only $10! – maybe even elss if you make a lower offer
Official Mr. Saturn phone strap – the rare MOTHER 1+2 preorder bonus
Extremely rare Mr. Saturn Art Book in mint condition + the plushie + insert!
EarthBound, EarthBound Player’s Guide, and many other Super NES games!
EarthBound complete with guide, box, cart, and various inserts
More official mini Mr. Saturn plushies!

BTW, I’ve also noticed that MOTHER 3 Deluxe Boxes are getting very scarce on eBay and on Japanese sites. I checked, and the average price for them on eBay rose quite a bit in the past month. If you ever come across one for cheap, be sure to get it. They’ll probably only get more expensive as time goes on, much like EarthBound has.

Anyway, here’s some cool stuff on Yahoo! Auctions Japan:

And stuff on Amazon:

Interesting how the game’s guide can fetch as much as the game itself!

What’s Up With Itoi

This past week Itoi and everyone at his office went on a big trip. I didn’t pay too much attention, but it sounds like they might’ve gone to Kyoto this time. Last year they spent a lot of money and flew out to some islands. The trips are for letting off steam but also meant to give the employees ideas for stuff to write about or do projects about in the upcoming months.

Final Thought

If you haven’t yet, check out the Postcards for EarthBound thing!

And of course check out the new EarthBound Central forum!

Yesterday I hooked up my Super NES and played a little bit more of my game of EarthBound (using my crazy save file of course) and once again noticed how much better it felt playing the game on an actual system rather than emulation. I don’t know why that is, though. Anybody else been struck by this feeling? Or just the opposite?

No related posts.

Hands On with the EB0 Prototype

Mato — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 15:48:43 +0000

As you may remember, an EarthBound Zero prototype cart was put on eBay last month and was won buy our own fellow fan Roo for $1100. Roo is also an avid researcher and video-making guy, so naturally he made a detailed video about the prototype and information about all the EB0 prototypes. It’s interesting stuff, check it out!

For $1100, I would’ve hoped the prototype could also clean your house and make breakfast and stuff. Also: cat boxes are not good storage places for rare games

EarthBound Central Forum

Mato — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 19:06:45 +0000

I recently added a basic forum to the site, you can visit it here.

It isn’t meant to be a humongo forum, it’s more like a small place for visitors to talk and a place for mini-projects, mini-updates, and stuff like that that I don’t want to clog the blog front page with. The manga translation project I mentioned in the last update would best be organized on a forum, for example.

I tried to find a way to link blog accounts with forum accounts by using WP-United, but with no luck. If anyone has suggestions, let me know.

MOTHER 2 Manga Scans

Mato — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 16:10:44 +0000

When I started EarthBound Central, I originally planned to translate some of the official manga page by page over a period of time. But I have so little free time these days that scanning, translating, and editing the scans takes way more time than I can afford. So translated manga has been heavily neglected.

So what I’ll do instead is offer a bunch of scans to the fans, and if anyone is skilled enough and has time enough to translate them into English, go right ahead. I’d like to have a section on the site that offers all the manga in fan-translated form, so maybe people can submit single pages and I’ll add them to the site one by one as they’re finished.

Anyway, here’s a manga I scanned a while back. It’s a four-panel manga with many different contributors. I also covered it briefly in a past update here.

MOTHER 2 Manga (44 MB)

If you look around this site, you’ll see I’ve already translated a few pages and a few individual things. I don’t have those page numbers handy though. Anyway, hopefully this will work out and equate to more fun stuff for English-speaking fans