Mother 3

Mother 3
Developer(s)	Brownie Brown HAL Laboratory
Publisher(s)	Nintendo
Director(s)	Nobuyuki Inoue
Producer(s)	Shinichi Kameoka Kensuke Tanabe Keisuke Terasaki
Artist(s)	Nobuhiro Imagawa
Writer(s)	Shigesato Itoi
Composer(s)	Shogo Sakai
Series	Mother
Platform(s)	Game Boy Advance
Release	JP: April 20, 2006
Genre(s)	Role-playing game
Mode(s)	Single-player

Mother 3 is a video game for the Game Boy Advance, made by Brownie Brown and HAL Laboratory. It was released on April 20, 2006 and it is the third game in the Mother video game series, called EarthBound outside of Japan.

The game was kept secret until it appeared in June 2003 during a Mother 1 + 2 commercial in Japan. Once it appeared, the game stayed near the top of Famitsu's Most Wanted Games list.

Development

Mother 3 was first going to be made for the Nintendo 64 and then later for the Nintendo 64DD. It was going to be called Earthbound 64. It was canceled after the developers were having problems making the 3D graphics work. It was moved to the Game Boy Advance, and came out in 2006. It uses much stuff from EarthBound 64, including the characters Lucas, Claus, Flint, and Boney, as well as the villain of the game, Porky

Storyline

Mother 3 takes place on Nowhere Islands. The Nowhere Islands are a large amount of islands in the middle of the ocean. They contain one volcano, two mountains, a castle, and one small village called Tazmily. The story takes place when Lucas, his brother Claus, and his mother Hinawa take a vacation to his grandpa's house. During the vacation, Lucas and Claus play with a race of peaceful T-Rex like creatures called Dragos. After a long day of playing, they head home, not after Hinawa sending a message to Flint, her husband, that they are heading back.

Meanwhile, the forest near Tazmily is lit on fire mysteriously.

Characters

• Lucas - the main protagonist, son of his mother Hinawa and father Flint. Lucas is known to be gentle. He is yellow haired with stripes of yellow and red on his shirt.
• Claus - Lucas' twin brother. He is not gentle, but is not mean either. He likes rough-housing and makes impulsive decisions. He is orange haired with stripes of orange and blue on his shirt.
• Flint - he has a cowboy hat and bandana and has a long and thin moustache like a cowboy might have. Still, Flint is not a cowboy. He is a farmer.
• Boney - the family dog of Lucas, Claus, Flint and Hinawa. Boney travels with Lucas on his adventures and helps Lucas fight bad guys. He is brown and wears an orange bandana that Wess gave him.
• Kumatora - the princess of Osohe Castle. She has short pink hair that sticks up in the middle. She wears a bluish-purple coat with one turquoise stripe on each sleeve. She does not like "girl clothes" or make-up.
• Duster - son of Wess. He has light brown hair with long sideburns, a light blue shirt and pink pants that are held up unevenly by suspenders. He also has a short moustache. He steals things when Wess tells him to. He walks with a limp.
• Wess - He is thinks Duster is useless and yells at him. He teaches Duster how to be a thief. He has spiky white hair that goes around the back of his head in a horizontal line. He also has white hair at the top of his head, in the middle of his head. He has a white beard that goes around his mouth. He has a wrinkle on his forehead and he doesn't smile.

Fan translation

As a Japan-exclusive video game, it was not localized, so some American fans of the franchise have worked to make an unofficial English version of the game. This fan-made English version of the game was released for free online in 2008. Though, the project took over a thousand hours to make.

Other websites

Official sites

• Official site (Japanese)
• 1101.com (Shigesato Itoi's website): Mother 3 (Japanese)
• SpaceWorld 1999: Mother 3 (Japanese)

Press coverage

• IGN: Mother 3 Archived 2006-04-24 at the Wayback Machine
• GameSpy: Mother 3 Archived 2006-05-06 at the Wayback Machine
• GameStats: Mother 3 Archived 2006-08-20 at the Wayback Machine

Fansites

• Starmen.net, the biggest EarthBound/Mother fansite.