They really said "we don't f**kin care about europeans and americans, let's have merch in top of that NSO release"
I think they consider mother a finished franchise like it's creator
I do think you really overestimate how well a franchise like Mother would do in the west. The gaming fanatics screaming about this is very very small but very very vocal. Plus, the franchise is finished. Itoi is busy building Hobonichi products, Mother-branded stationery too. Which is easily obtainable in the west.
Im not saying they should make new games, just that stuff like merch or older games shouldn’t be locked to Japan
Just because they current market for mother is small doesn’t mean it can’t grow. I mean shit, the Mario RPG remake just sold more in a month or two then it did its entire life on the SNES, who’s to say mother can’t expand like that too?
What else would this endless cycle, hypothetically, inspire? Propose an alternative solution
Mother as a franchise is sorta dead though right? It doesn't seem like it's ever going to get a new game. Another studio might could if Nintendo lets them but they'd probably rather make their own game and keep all the potential profit.
just to offer a counterpoint, Fire Emblem got put on Japanese NSO in March 2019 and got its localized worldwide release in december 2020
Mother 3 has far more text than a game like FE.
I’m saying nothing about FE’s release makes Mother 3 an inevitability. The Robot Chicken sketch was a decade ago and nothing has changed.
Fair point. I just think this was the best opportunity they've had to localize it in a while. And fwiw I'd much rather it be permanently on NSO then it be a limited time eshop release.
It's funny but this news is just about the only thing that actually could get me feeling like this copypasta unironically
You got me, I almost typed a genuine response
you gotta use duster's hypno pendulum
I wish I had your optimism.
Given games like Another Code and Endless Ocean are getting new physical releases this year and text heavy games like Famicom Detective Club also got an international release, I respectfully highly disagree.
I wish I had your optimism.
Given games like Another Code and Endless Ocean are getting new physical releases this year and text heavy games like Famicom Detective Club also got an international release, I respectfully highly disagree.
It’s not a question of a personalized trending page. These are national and international trends. They are played and discussed more than the franchises I’ve referred to above.
Considering Mother in Japan and the folks they attract in the Nintendo Stores, I’m sure they will be fine.
Tuff E Nuff is a Jaleco game that doesn't come with the licensing issues Mother 3 would have. Pretty much any game owned by Jaleco (now City Connection) has a good chance of being added to NSO no matter how niche due to nintendo getting a good licensing deal for those.
I'm pretty sure the publicly available eshop sales charts that we have from the time show that Earthbound on Wii U VC did extremely well in the west. No way to know the exact sales but it charted pretty high , not just among VC games but on their entire eshop chart including full releases, despite being sold at a markup compared to other SNES games on VC.
Honestly I just want to play it on my Switch. I already preserved it a long time ago, now I wanna play it cozy on bed.
Yeah, and the video does have a separate section that discusses how there's a qualitative difference between Earthbound's samples and the at times almost direct lifting of Mother 3. I have no background whatsoever in intellectual property law and cannot assess the validity of that discussion, but I have a very hard time seeing how a quality translation of a GBA game done with modern tools (+ a few new sprites) could cost more than the potential revenue generated by an international release, so it's not outlandish to suggest that the issue with Mother 3 is more fundamental (and expensive) than just the text.
I definitely don't consider his word the be all and end all, but I also don't think his mistakes elsewhere completely nullify his arguments (and discussion of fair use and sampling) here. I don't think Nintendo likes leaving money on the ground, so there probably is something that makes localization noticeably more expensive and risky than you'd expect from a GBA game, and it's hard to see how it could be the text or sprites.
Nah, the biggest issue is the timing-based extra hits in the battle system, but it's 1) not necessary to finish the game and 2) still not hard to adjust to, especially with how far cycle-accurate emulators have come in the last decade or so. I finished the game on an emulator years ago without a real problem.
Metal Gear Solid had to change its main theme for the first 3 games because of a copyright claim.
None of the Metal Gear Solid games, in any of their re-releases, have ever cut out any of the old music used in their original versions, including the master collection from just last year. It is true that the "main theme of MGS" stopped being used after the first few games due to an accusation of plagiarism (not, to my knowledge, any actual copyright claim from anyone) but that seems more to have been a choice not to associate with that song going forward than any sort of actual legal trouble.
