Mother 3 Was Almost Localized By Nintendo

gameranx.com:

We take many things in the video game world for granted until we don’t get something we want. One of the biggest ones is the concept of every video game that is “important” being brought all over the world. The fact is that there are plenty of titles from places like Japan that never get translated to other markets for one reason or another. It’s not always fair, but more times than not, it just doesn’t “make sense” to translate them. However, in the case of Mother 3, fans have been begging it to be brought to the West so they can finally enjoy it.

For those “not in the know,” the game is the third entry in the series gamers in the West know as Earthbound. The game that we got on the SNES was actually the second entry in the series, and while it was a disaster for Nintendo sales-wise, it became a cult classic that endures to this day. Nintendo even later put the series’ first entry on the Nintendo Switch Online service for gamers to play. However, the third entry was never brought over. Things got even weirder for fans when Lucas, the game’s protagonist, was put into Super Smash Bros despite his game never being in the West.

But wait, there’s a twist. The franchise’s creator revealed in a new documentary, as noted by IGN, that Mother 3 was almost translated by Nintendo and brought over. Here’s what Shigesato Itoi had to say about the situation:

“I’ve talked about it with Nintendo before. Apparently, they were presented with the offer to use the translation, but they said it wasn’t quite as simple as that. I think it’d be really interesting if they took up the offer. It’d be hard to make something like, say, an automobile with fans. But doing it with software, I believe there’d be a chance to make something that would be