English Mother 3 Reproduction goes on sale

[Heran Bago]

Mother/earthbound started out on the NES where it gained something of a cult following. The long awaited third entry in the series hit on the GBA and never made it out of Japan, previous titles in the series also command a high price second hand and Nintendo had previously been somewhat reluctant to rerelease them outside Japan (or at least until the other week). In one of the more impressive translations the GBA has seen it was translated by the folks at Fobby.net.

An English reproduction of Mother 3 is now available though we can not link it up on this site as it is completely unlicensed. For those that don't know, a reproduction is usually a fan-made cartridge with original parts. Unlike previous Mother 3 reproductions which were made in batches of 10 at most, this one is not made of gutted flash cart parts.

If you're asking why someone would want this when there are GBA flash carts I can give you a few reasons. One benefit of a dedicated card is no SD slot and a form factor that fits flush with a Gameboy Advance. There is also no menu or splash screen; you boot right to the game which is only functionally comparable to an EZ 3-in-1 or X-ROM 512 in single game mode. Also it's an English Mother 3 cartridge.

It is sold cart-only, I believe with a label. If you want a box your options are here or here.



I'm not totally sure this news works for GBAtemp, but it's more fitting with the site's theme than cell phone benchmarks for example. If a mod has a problem with it please move it somewhere more fitting.

 

[2ndApex]

See Nintendo? If you don't sell Mother 3 in English, someone else will.

 

[shakirmoledina]

whatever the case, this one came very close to earthbound and in some areas surpassed its predecessor.
the translation was better than best.

 

[FAST6191]

Interesting in that non pokemon repros or ones where the effort was apparently made is not something I have seen much on the GBA.
The trouble with such news is this is technically straight up paid piracy, I dashed the links for now and added a bit of background in the first paragraph but will otherwise leave it.

 

[Celice]

I'm gonna guess none of this money is gonna go to the fans who actually translated their favorite game, making it possible for English-speaking fans to enjoy Mother 3.

 

[T-hug]

So it's kind of the same as flashing the game onto a flash2advance card. Iirc when putting a single ROM on it skips the boot menu.
Sounds like a lot of work for whoever is making these.
Also the batteries in these devices aren't the best and the cards they have bought up are probably ancient though I guess you could change the battery yourself.
Nice find but I don't think we can front page this for obvious reasons.

 

[Heran Bago]

So it's kind of the same as flashing the game onto a flash2advance card. Iirc when putting a single ROM on it skips the boot menu.
Sounds like a lot of work for whoever is making these.
Also the batteries in these devices aren't the best and the cards they have bought up are probably ancient though I guess you could change the battery yourself.
Nice find but I don't think we can front page this for obvious reasons.

In terms of function when you boot it yes, but it is not re-flashable memory. The dude straight up contracted out the right kind of ROM chips and new batteries, albeit from from china. It was pretty hard since mother 3 used bigger memory than most all GBA games. Yeah it's a lot of work for the guy to have gone through which is why it's $55, relatively steep for a GBA game.

Reproduction cartridges are most always made of completely new parts which is kind of the appeal, although it's common to see donor cartridge shells used when a 3D printer isn't available or authentic enough.

I understand why I can't link directly to the store selling it. Thanks for letting the thread stay up. Suffice it to say anyone really interested is going to have to go on a "retro quest" or PM someone else in the know.

 

[Pedeadstrian]

$55? I would leave out the "relatively," and call it just steep. The translation has been out for years now. Pretty much everyone who would be interested in this has already played it.

 

[Heran Bago]

$55? I would leave out the "relatively," and call it just steep. The translation has been out for years now. Pretty much everyone who would be interested in this has already played it.

Yeah but on the other hand it's a much better game than a lot of modern $60 titles.

 

[Costello]

the problem I have with those is probably that 0% of the profit will go to the original game developers, to Nintendo or to anyone else involved in the making of the game...

 

[Bladexdsl]

others will do what nintendon't

 

[Nathan Drake]

the problem I have with those is probably that 0% of the profit will go to the original game developers, to Nintendo or to anyone else involved in the making of the game...

That is the major issue with copies of any game with a fan translation being distributed for money. You know the translators won't see one penny, nor will Nintendo, or any person involved in creating the game, and quite frankly, I don't think most translators, official developers, and the like want money from something like this. For example, on the site for the Mother 3 patch, it explicitly states that they would rather you at least purchase some official merchandise if you can't get your hands on an official cart to rip your own ROM to apply the patch to. They in no way condone piracy, which you would have to do in order to accept profits from the sale of game reproductions.

No matter how you look at it, the person making the reproductions is in the wrong, and regardless of how desperate you are to have an illegitimate hard copy of the game in question with the fan translation, if you aren't willing to do the work yourself to put the cart together, you damn well shouldn't have it to begin with.

 

[FireEmblemGuy]

No one who translated the game is getting any of this money, nor are the developers. The guy selling the repros is the only one profiting, and of course it's completely illegal. I laugh at whoever actually pays money for that - if you haven't learned anything else from the flood of Chinese bootlegs all over the internet, you should at least know that the guy is severely overcharging anyways.

The guys who did the Der Langrisser translation for the SNES had a couple neat licensing tricks that prevented repros from being sold using their translation (see here) but I'm don't know if the Mother 3 team is in anything close to the same position; they might be powerless to do anything about it.

 

[Pedeadstrian]

No one who translated the game is getting any of this money, nor are the developers. The guy selling the repros is the only one profiting, and of course it's completely illegal. I laugh at whoever actually pays money for that - if you haven't learned anything else from the flood of Chinese bootlegs all over the internet, you should at least know that the guy is severely overcharging anyways.

The guys who did the Der Langrisser translation for the SNES had a couple neat licensing tricks that prevented repros from being sold using their translation (see here but I'm don't know if the Mother 3 team is in anything close to the same position; they might be powerless to do anything about it.

Link is totally messed up, fyi. Here's a working one: http://board.byuu.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1204&start=15#p25250

 

[Heran Bago]

the problem I have with those is probably that 0% of the profit will go to the original game developers, to Nintendo or to anyone else involved in the making of the game...

You're on a site that tracks rom releases. Have you seen http://shoptemp.net/ ?

You make a fair point, but I'm sure that everyone buying a card would gladly give nintendo money for an English version if only they would let them.

 

[FireEmblemGuy]

You're on a site that tracks rom releases. Have you seen http://shoptemp.net/ ?

You make a fair point, but I'm sure that everyone buying a card would gladly give nintendo money for an English version if only they would let them.

To be fair, tracking ROM/ISO releases and selling ROMs are two totally different things.

I know I've pointed out the problem with pirated games being indexed on Shoptemp before as well, but the way Shoptemp works is that it indexes everything on the sites it tracks. It would be nice if there was a basic filter settings that prevented that, though.

 

[xist]

The guys who did the Der Langrisser translation for the SNES had a couple neat licensing tricks that prevented repros from being sold using their translation (see here)

That is just amazing....

 

[Joe88]

I'll wait for the c&d letters from nintendo

 

[WiiUBricker]

So basically he is selling warez?

 

[Gahars]

So not only is this blatantly illegal, it's also not benefiting anyone involved in either the original development of the game or its translation? I sure do love me some shameless money-grubbing.

10/10 deal would piss my money away