I want to get into the Mother / EarthBound games but don’t know where to start. What do you recommend?

So I thought it’d be nice to make a short page about the topic to make everything nice and clear. I present to you The Newcomer’s Guide to the EarthBound / Mother series!

Now I know a lot of people will disagree with where I put MOTHER 1. I spent a lot of time trying to decide where to put MOTHER 1, and in the end that seemed the best place to me, but at the very least I want to bring this point across:

I feel like I’ve left some stuff out of that page, so let me know if you think I should add anything else. And if you disagree with my suggestions, please feel free to chime in with your own order of games!

Basically, I want to try to share the series with more people, so send this suggestion page far and wide! If you ever see anyone ask which game they should start with, give them this handy link for reference

EDIT: I’ve since updated the page to incorporate some of the readers’ suggestions. Keep ‘em coming!

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MOTHER 2 vs. EarthBound, Last Call (43) Read More >>>

Last week I posted some neat MOTHER 2-related swag on eBay, and this week I’m listing something even more epic: a copy of MOTHER 1+2 signed by none other than MOTHER/EarthBound series creator Shigesato Itoi himself!

I’m also including a bunch of other really rare items from the official MOTHER 1+2 event held in 2003, check it all out here!

Here’s Itoi signing boxes prior to the event – as far as I know this is the only one that’s ever been made available outside of Japan.

The full listing includes everything here:

I also took more photos than even Mr. Fuzzy Pickles would have – see them and all the juicy details here!

If you’re not sure what the MOTHER 1+2 event was, a good Japanese write-up (with pics) about it is here. I also subtitled this short documentary video about it a few years ago:

That reminds me that someday I really need to sit down and subtitle the whole talk show portion of the event. Most of the cool info is in the video above, though.

Anyway, I have more interesting stuff (some from this event and some not) I’m going to auction off down the road, so keep your noses peeled! In the meantime, you can check out some of my other EarthBound/MOTHER goodies here!

MOTHER 1+2 Event Documentary (20) Read More >>>	Rare MOTHER 1+2 Stuff for Sale! (85) Read More >>>
MOTHER 1+2 Event Raw Video (5) Read More >>>

• MOTHER 2 GBA MP3 archive (159 MB)

Honestly, there’s no real point in downloading this – I highly recommend getting the Super NES EarthBound MP3 archive off of Starmen.Net here instead. The GBA music is pretty disappointing – I’m secretly hoping someone will show up to save the day and redo the music like Final Fantasy fans have been fixing the music in the GBA Final Fantasy games.

I was hoping to someday do a side-by-side comparison of a bunch of music from both versions of the game, but I don’t have the time. If someone could make a video (unless one has already been made?) comparing a bunch of them that’d be awesome. Actually, the sound effects took a huge hit too, so comparing them would also be a good idea.

UPDATE: Fixed the download link.

MOTHER 1+2 GSF Music Download (29) Read More >>>	MOTHER 2 Piano Book MP3s (7) Read More >>>
MOTHER Live Performance MP3s (13) Read More >>>

Rock has released a Latin American Spanish translation of my MOTHER 1+2 translation – you can check out the site here!

Apparently it’s not 100% completed – some graphics still need to be edited and testing isn’t fully done, but you can check out the version 0.99 patch if you’re interested.

Update: Here are some screenshots:

M1+2 Translation Update (Apr. 13) (96) Read More >>>	MOTHER 1+2 Translation Preview (35) Read More >>>
M1+2 Translation Update (Mar. 12) (125) Read More >>>

Part 1:

Part 2:

It’s all in Japanese, so there probably isn’t much to get out of these videos for most people. Like I said, I already translated most of the good stuff in that other fancier video, but there are a few little things here and there that got left out. I wish I had the time to subtitle the video, but alas, I don’t have the time for it. I’ll write up a summary of the video sometime though!

MOTHER 1+2 Event Documentary (20) Read More >>>	MOTHER 1 Beta Video (17) Read More >>>
Picosaru Animated Cast Roll (10) Read More >>>

Brazilian Portuguese: 100% complete!

This was done by Foffano and the other folks associated with EarthBound Brasil. I swear, that site impresses me more and more each time I check it Check out the site here, you can download the MOTHER 1+2 patch on the right sidebar.

Mexican Spanish: ~10%? Help requested

This is a project being worked on by X-Games. The translation is approximately 10% done, but help is requested if you can offer any. See the project site here!

Other Translations?

If you’re working on a translation of MOTHER 1+2 using the tools I released here and want it mentioned on EB Central, make sure you make a website for your project first. That way, if your project makes progress or if you make a new version of your patch, you won’t have to go through me. It saves me a lot of time and makes it easier for speakers of your language to keep tabs on your work.

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MOTHER 1+2 Translation (97) Read More >>>

domflo just sent me his German translation patch for the MOTHER 1 side of MOTHER 1+2. You can download it here. I don’t speak German, so I can’t say anything about the quality one way or the other, but it looks pretty good from what I can tell.

If you want to translate MOTHER 1+2 into your own language, you can use the tools I provided on the MOTHER 1+2 translation page. I created the tools and assets with other translations in mind, so it’s pretty easy to translate. I’m kind of amazed that a full translation is out already, only one month after I released my English translation. I hope we’ll see more language translations soon

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Mexican & Brazilian MOTHER 1+2 (18) Read More >>>

• MOTHER 1 GSF archive
• MOTHER 2 GSF archive

GSF files are basically the GBA equivalent of SPC files – they’re music data taken from the ROMs and have to be played by special players. You can find what plugins/players are available for your system here.

Anyway, I was hoping someone here with more spare time could time and tag these files. As they are now, they basically run for the same amount of time, even if it means looping 20 times or being cut off before the full song is completed. Once someone can time them, I’ll post MP3 archives of them here for everyone to leech off of

Incidentally, here are three songs from the MOTHER 2 side of MOTHER 1+2. You can tell just from these ones how bleh the music turned out.

Pokey’s House:
Download audio file (01_Pokeys-House.mp3)

Jackie’s Cafe:
Download audio file (01_Mother-2-Geigue-no-Fukushu-Jackies-Cafe.mp3)

Battle #2:
Download audio file (01_Mother-2-Geigue-no-Fukushu-Battle-2.mp3)

I haven’t listened to the full GBA soundtrack in a while, are there any songs you remember as being particularly poorly-ported?

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Hidden Song in EarthBound (54) Read More >>>

Hopefully that should take care of most (if not all) of those issues, but if you come across any other stuff or come across any bugs, let me know in the bug post!

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MOTHER 1+2 Translation Preview (35) Read More >>>

The question’s come up a lot since I released my MOTHER 1+2 translation the other day, so I should try to explain why it would be a lot of work to fully translate the MOTHER 2 side of the game too.

EarthBound’s Text System

What I hear a lot is, “Can’t you just copy and paste EarthBound’s script into the game?” For many other games, it WOULD be that easy – in fact, RPGOne did that with the MOTHER 1 side of MOTHER 1+2 shortly after the game was released in 2003. It was pretty much a copy-paste job from the EarthBound Zero script. It was possible with MOTHER 1 because the game’s text format is extremely simple.

EarthBound’s text format, on the other hand, is the absolute, 100% opposite. It’s a huge mess. It’s not even appropriate to call it a “text format” – everything in EarthBound is pretty much one gigantic scripting language. I don’t know how to explain that well to non-programmers, so here’s a random snippet from Threed, with some of the control codes parsed for your understanding:

[GOSUB C69082][FLAGON 00B][1F 41 05][1F EB 03 06][1F 15 03 00 0E 01 01][1F 61][1F E7 03 00][1F F3 03 00 03][DELAY 3C][1F F4 03][LINE][OPENWIN 01]@Ah![DELAY 14] Here’s the problem, and it’s not too tough to fix.[PAUSE][LINE]@Hang on for a second or two…[PAUSE][CLOSEALLWIN][DELAY 1E][1F EA 03 00][1F 61][1F 00 00 B3][1F F1 E2 01 10 01][1F 61][1F E6 E2 01][1F 07 02][DELAY 3C][1F 03][OPENWIN 01]@There![PAUSE][LINE]@That should do it![PAUSE][LINE]@Now, if [GOSUB C91FBA] board,[DELAY 0F] the Sky Runner will take [GOSUB C91FDB][PAUSE][LINE]@back to Winters.[PAUSE][LINE]@With Dr. Andonuts’ help,[DELAY 0F] I can modify the machine to fly to Summers.[PAUSE][LINE]@…If Dad, I mean Dr. Andonuts,[PAUSE][LINE]@is not available, I’ll have to figure it out by myself.[PAUSE][LINE]@Anyway, let’s go back to the lab in Winters.[PAUSE][LINE]@…That’s it…[DELAY 14][LINE] Go, machine,[DELAY 0F] go![PAUSE][CLOSEALLWIN][1F 15 6A 00 0F 01 01][DELAY 01][1F EF 6A 00][1F E8 FF][1F 61][1F EB FF 06][FLAGON 28F][GOSUB C7DD7D][1F ED][1F E5 FF][1F E9 E2 01][1F 61][DELAY 0F][1F 1E E0 01 06][DELAY 5A][1F 15 D1 00 A2 00 FF][1F 15 E6 00 A5 00 FF][1F 21 C2][1F EF E6 00][1F E8 FF][DELAY 01][1F 61][1F ED][1F 15 D1 00 96 00 FF][1F 21 BB][1F EF D1 00][1F 61][1F ED][1F 15 D1 00 9E 00 FF][1F 15 E6 00 A0 00 FF][1F 21 C0][1F EF E6 00][1F 61][1F ED][1F 15 D1 00 97 00 FF][1F 21 BB][1F EF D1 00][1F 61][1F ED][1F 15 D1 00 9A 00 FF][1F 15 E6 00 9C 00 FF][1F 21 BE][1F EF E6 00][1F 61][1F ED][1F 15 D1 00 98 00 FF][1F 21 BB][1F EF D1 00][1F 61][1F ED][1F 15 D1 00 A6 00 FF][1F 21 BA][1F EF D1 00][1F 61][1F ED][FLAGON 26D][1F 21 DA][1F 17 6F 02 A7 00 01][DELAY 64][1F 17 6D 02 A8 00 01][1F 61][FLAGOFF 28F][GOSUB C7DD7D][1F 15 6A 00 A9 00 01][DELAY 01][1F EF 6A 00][1F EC FF 01][1F 61][1F ED][1F E5 FF][1F F1 69 02 8D 00][1F 61][1F E6 67 02][1F E6 69 02][1F E6 6A 02][GOSUB C6CB97][1F F1 6A 02 8E 00][1F 61][1F E6 6A 02][GOSUB C6CC31][1F F1 6A 02 90 00][1F 61][1F F1 69 02 8F 00][1F 61][19 26 06][FLAGOFF 26D][FLAGOFF 2EC][FLAGOFF 030][FLAGOFF 305][FLAGON 276][FLAGOFF 00B][1F 41 06][1F E8 FF][END]

Keep in mind that’s just ONE line in the game.

Everything in the game from text, to events, to cut scenes, to music, to sound effects, to windows, to user input – it’s all just one giant scripting language, and even after all these years we don’t have it fully mapped out. Here’s an older file that lists some of the control codes in the game: control code lexicon. This is mostly why there aren’t many translations of EarthBound into other languages, some 16 years after the game’s release – it’s a huge mess. Seriously, try to edit the game’s text using PK Hack sometime to see for yourself.

The scripting language is advanced – it does all the normal stuff you might expect from a game’s text system, but it also implements its own stack, various registers, a huge number of flags/memory addresses, conditional branching, can handle subroutines many levels deep, it’s very impressive. Fellow computer science nerds are probably thinking, “Whoa, almost sounds like a CPU!” In fact, using a simple hack Rufus made a while back to allow the scripting system to access any memory address, it would theoretically be possible to write an emulator just using EarthBound’s text system. If you were crazy enough, you could get EarthBound to emulate the EarthBound Zero ROM, or even EarthBound itself! It’d be slow as hell, but still

Anyway, because the game’s text uses pointers all over the place – and because we don’t have EarthBound’s script codes fully mapped out – a simple copy-and-paste job into the MOTHER 1+2 ROM is not possible.

Still, even if Giygas himself came down and somehow solved those problems… guess what? MOTHER 2′s text and script codes are in a completely different format! (head explodes)

Now, I’m not saying it’s impossible, in fact a few years back I had started to write a utility that dumped EarthBound’s text to the best of my ability and tried to turn the nonsense control codes into something sensible. I did this for my old EarthBound Zero remake hack and later on to make a utility for people to translate EarthBound into other languages. I got it to a pretty advanced state, yet there were still many issues, so I dropped it.

Hacking MOTHER 2

I think if I were to take a bunch of time off and hole myself up in a room with buckets of coffee, I could probably get EarthBound’s text converted into MOTHER 1+2′s text format after a while. That’s all it takes to translate the game, right?

Nope! Think back to the MOTHER 3 fan translation – remember how much work it was to get the game to look and act properly, even after we had the game’s script in English and inserted into the game? It would be pretty much the same here. It’d be a year-long (probably longer, actually) nightmare. I’m not even necessarily talking about the variable-width font specifically – just the sheer amount of hacking work it overall would take would be immense.

I can see how it’d be nice to have the MOTHER 2 side fully translated – I’d love to have all three GBA games in the series fan-translated, but the MOTHER 2 GBA port isn’t that great to begin with – the sound effects and music take a serious hit, a number of glitches and bugs were added, while some beloved things like the Rock Candy trick were taken out (if I remember right).

Also, I should briefly mention that not all the text in the game is in the same format. The file select screen itself uses three different text formats, entirely different from the main text format. One of them isn’t even really a “format” – it’s actually just tilemap data bundled with surrounding window tilemap data, all LZZ compressed for no understandable reason.

Basically, I have to ask myself if it’s worth a couple years of my life so people can play an inferior version of EarthBound. I don’t think it is. If I had no worries and had lots of free time and extra money, I’d love to work on it, I love the series and especially like to translate ROMs. If I were a zillionaire with no worries at all, I could probably even get it done in a few months.

Anyway, that’s why the MOTHER 2 part of the patch isn’t a full translation. I do think (and hope) that someone with a lot more energy and free time will show up and be able to pull off a full conversion of the MOTHER 2 part, even down to the little new control codes added just for EarthBound that tell the game when to use “The” or when to use “him” or “her”. It’ll be a tough job, but knowing EarthBound fans, someone will do it

tl;dr

EarthBound text is very complicated, the MOTHER 2 text format is equally complicated AND in a different format. Would take me years to fully accomplish for very little gain. MOTHER 2 GBA port isn’t very good to begin with. Haven’t given up the idea of working on it, but would rather work on other, more productive stuff.

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