no mother 2 is like abbey road and mother 3 is more like band on the run
That 3ās soundtrack is even remotely comparable to Earthbound in quality always struck me as kind of a staggering achievement in itself.
I think I mentioned this on a podcast a few years ago but Mother 3 was a very, very controversial game in Japan when it came out. As you might expect, the complaints basically boiled down to ones that echo sentiments from this thread (uneven pacing and focus on character, heavy-handed moralizing etc.) and what amounts to basically shouting āit wasnāt just like the first two games!!ā
mother 3 was good when i played it
mother 2 was infinite and incredible, mother 3 is just a game. the soundtrack is pretty good. the hot springs scene is fucked up as hell and i donāt think i can forgive the game for that.
mother 2 is a game you can live with. mother 3 is a game you should really just play once and never play again.
the soundtrack is pretty good
well, iām not sure i can meaningfully contribute to this thread.
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What is the best way to play Mother 3?
ā¦
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Snobby answer: legit cart, backlit GBA w/ headphones
Realistic answer: flash cart, backlit GBA w/ headphones
Easy answer: emulate it
Though concerning the second option, I hear rumblings of a GBA Everdrive happening sometime in the futureā¦
Emulated with the best sound sync possible. On a good big CRT, syncād & hooked up & output properly, display squished with monitor controls to the correct aspect ratio, sound emanating from built-in not great but not terrible speaker. Input from usb converted or replica SNES controller. Sitting in your best chair and with a constant supply of decent quality Taiwanese tea and snacks.
Maybe the GBA Gamecube player could stand in for some of this, but Iām not sure of the āhooked up & output properlyā specifics of this option? Would probably solve the ābest sound sync possibleā that has I think traditionally been the emulation shortcoming most degrading on this particular game.
I think it is silly to play this game hunched over a tiny screen it is too beautiful for that. I mean, I think it was developed as a handheld title due to production realities of the industry, that doesnāt seem like a controversial assertion? Whether to struggle against that reality or embrace it is a worthwhile discussion, though, I guess.
immediately after finishing mother 3, my flashcart gave up the ghost
seemed apt
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If weāre entertaining weird peripherals like the GB Player, may I recommend playing with this as well?
Emulation still breaks the rhythm sync even on byuuās code in my experience so try to get a flash cart if you can.
Iāve played it twice, on a flashcart on a DS lite before the actual translation patch was released with an English text dump translation file open in front of me, and then a few years later emulated on my first Android phone. The audio latency is manageable but thereās nothing wrong with authenticity.
I canāt help but feel terribly sad to hear this. Why only once?
Itās not that I disagree with you about the hot springs scene - I certainly donāt. But maybe itās that itās hard to swallow that something I hold up as being pretty special, something had a profound and useful emotional reaction to has a bit of real, unambiguous poison inside it. I think Iād play through it again just to get to that moment and try to suss out why itās there to begin with and what purpose it serves, because everything else in the game makes me feel so many things and that moment just made me feel surprised and weird, as i recall.
I would say that Mother 3 is a great story, but Mother 2 is a good friend, and I think that makes it a more enduring artifact, ultimately.
Well itās definitely a problematic game. I donāt think there is actually any molestation going on in the hot springs scene. I do think itās supposed to appear that way, though, and thatās more than a little uncomfortable. And the magypsies are really, really cringeworthy. As is the fact that the duplicitous henchman is supposed to look middle-eastern. I donāt personally find this stuff worth writing the game off for, but itās there and can be tough to grapple with and i donāt begrudge anyone who was soured on the game because of it.
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Whatever you think about Mother 3ās story, itās entirely digestible in a single playthrough. Mother 2 has a lot of breathing room. Mother 3 feels cramped and claustrophobic. The music is very nice, though, did I mention that?
Thereās no need to sit with and marinate in the world of Mother 3. I think itās a more mature game in that sense, that it doesnāt waste any of your time and instead has a pretty direct message for you. Once youāve received it, whatās the point?
When I want to relive M3 I listen to the OST highlights.
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IAWTP tho
this a Good Thread.
what did you put as your favorite thing/food? and what color for the text-boxes?
when i played it i was almost fifteen. i put āPastaā as my favorite food and āFictionā as my favorite thing.
iām still not entirely sure why is that. never in a videogame i thought so hard about an option. it made me look unto myself in quite a gruesome way. i remember getting away from the computer to drink a glass of water and think. it seemed fair, at the time, to say āfictionā. i know if i replayed the game i wouldnāt put that again, nor would i use the given words, though āLOVEā could be tempting.
itās a thing, with these games. how they are interested in knowing you face to face. playing earthbound and mother 3, though there are many differences in tone and structure and context within the two, is more or less like talking to someone with your heartās intent and listening to a response that shows mutual respect. i canāt say the same about a lot of people iāve met.
oh, and err, i used the āstrawberryā color.
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I used mint windows and STEAK as i do in Earthbound. I also use LOVE in both games.
I give different names to the characters from play to play, but i always name Boney after my childhood dog, Kobe.
I still like Mother 3 better, I think. Itās an apology (not an apologia) for EB: hardnosed where EB is sentimental; anticapitalist where EB takes Leave It To Beaverism for granted; final where EB lingers. M3 is the adult to EBās child, and I think itās important to play both, in order. To live with EBās moral principles forever is to cede worldly power to those willing to take it and ultimately make your naive environment unlivable. M3 tells EB fans, you werenāt supposed to love it forever, you were supposed to move on and grow into adults. Move on.
i canāt agree with any reading of these two games that posits mother 2 as being uncritical of the world itās depicting. your father never leaves work. your neighbors abandon their child in the pursuit of money. you eat literal garbage. itās an incredibly scary, confusing, and melancholy game, just like childhood itself.
i tried to replay this a few weeks ago, still excited despite the fact that i knew i would be grossed out by fassad/magypsies/bath scene and felt no desire to continue. the games emotional core is much more reliant on an uncomplicated relationship to nuclear family and itās pretty hard to have an emotional connection to it like i do with 2. i have no beloved mother and i was unable to think of a name for one when prompted. itās attitudes are incredibly conservative in ways that 2 isnāt and iām always surprised to see them being presented the other way arround.
about the nicest things i can say at this point is that i like how the main theme riffs off the pet shop boys āsuburbiaā and that tazmily is nice and cozy and having a single town change over the course of the game vs.
iām not sure if itās the translation or not but the sage-like dialogue from around half the cast came off as really grating this time around. koyaanisqatsi as written by wario.
mother 2 works by giving you a world and asking you to engage with it. 3 communicates to you via didacticism and condescion. the former is what i want out of an rpg. i like the stuff about not getting buried in the past to an extent but 3 would have been better off by not existing at all.
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I played Mother 3 immediately after my gf dumped me a few years ago for something that was my fault. I would buy two 40 0z beers and sit down to play each night and would not get up until the beers were finished, by which point I would either pass out or amble down to the closest bar.
I was sad, and i am sort of ashamed to admit i remember crying a bit at the end. Iām not sure if this is a good memory or a bad memory, I would like to play the game again with a fresh perspective.
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yeah, this is where itās at. mother 2 isnāt hitting you over the head constantly with its themes. it is plenty nuanced and cynical in its depiction of family and society. thereās also the corrupt police force in onett, the cult in twoson, the bizarre mr saturn slavery, and the monetary corruption in fourside. thereās a natural progression of complexity from town to town that keeps this development from feeling formulaic, too.
mother 1 and 2 are much more like dragon quest in their storytelling. mother 3 feels like a 90ās final fantasy. which isnāt exactly a bad thing, but itās poorly suited to itoiās style imo.
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Iām not convinced of that analogy but seeing as 90s final fantasies are the only jrpgs that really held my interest when they were contemporary you might have something there
well, it reminds me the most of ffiv, which has breezy pacing and frequent party changeups and constant interpersonal drama between characters and stuff.