I also like Earthbound, not only because of the Runaway Five, The Sharks and the Starmen, but the feel of being your own hero inside. From naming your friends to fighting a giant ant, it’s all exciting and awesome until Carpainter steps in and fucks up Peaceful Rest Valley. then Threed causes kids to shit their pants, and it goes all downhill from there.

I have nothing to say about EB0 yet.

Then I made a new file and played it for a bit, and I was really confused on what to do. I got to Frankie and for the love of Satan I could not beat him, so I gave up for… a few years. then when I was in the 6th grade and I was playing Smash Bros for 64. I noticed that Ness was in it. Then that reminded me that I still had the game, and I started playing it again, 2 or 3 months later I beat it, and have been such a huge fanboy ever since. So my favorite would have to be Mother 2. Just an amazing experience at such a young age. And for my 8th grade English assignment, I did a whole 5 page short story Based on Ness’s journey from the beginning to The end of Threed.

Mother 3 is amazing as well, since there is such an intense feeling of nostalgia whenever I play it.

I really should get around to playing Mother….
Haven’t beaten it yet heh..

However, about the same week Mother 3 came out, my dog died and my best friend committed suicide, so the tragedy aspect of the story became extremely personal. I tried playing through the game as a way to keep my mind off my friend who had just passed away but it didn’t work, and instead, I became obsessed with defeating the game’s main enemy, like he had personally affected me. I guess that sounds weird, but it was a very hard part of my life, just getting done with college, working a crappy job away from friends and family, and then tragedy strikes. I just really wanted to kick Porky’s ass.

In my opinion, Mother 3 works better as a standalone story than as a RPG I’d want to play again and again. When I started I couldn’t put it down, like a really good book, but after I was finished I found I had more of a desire to go through the old ones more, despite the fact that their stories are less interesting. I think it’s because of this that Mother 3 is my least favorite in the series. Still, it’s such better crafted and so much more heart, so please understand that even though I like the old ones better, this game is still one of my favorite games of all time.

So, M3 is definitively my favorite. And yay for the pic of this article

It’s a bit too late to mention this, but I think you may have missed the point of the whole Fassad thing. The player knows he is evil, and the party members knew he was evil, but the rest of the town didn’t. To them, Fassad was some charismatic guy who gave them happiness in a box and had friends who could protect them from the scary mismatched animals and lightning and junk. Of course they’d let him set up a training camp to raise more people to protect them and keep them happy.

As it stands, a big part of the game has you running around trying to stop these secretly evil guys from their doomsday plot while most everyone else was completely oblivious to your journey and were preoccupied with their own happiness.

Still, Mother 3 I love with all my heart, but it’s just too sad for me to love it the most out of the three. I nearly cried at the end of Chapter 1, and the really short chapter where Lucas is chasing after Hinawa in the field of sunflowers made me nearly cry as well. After all, I love my own mother a lot, and I’d imagine I’d feel the same as Lucas if something like that happened to me.

I’m not finished with it yet, but I intend to. I’m just too…sad…to play it…

I promised myself that I would play it in it’s intended original format, because I think games lose some of their magic being played on a keyboard. Especially a handheld game; there’s nothing better than curling up with a DS on a school night and playing a great RPG in the darkness. It provides me with such comfort.
I got a job and a bank account with a debit card just so I could purchase an EZ-Flash IV. My limited tech skills plagued the experience of trying to get the ROM onto the cart, and it certainly didn’t help that the SD card broke off…INSIDE the EZ-Flash.

Finally, in December, I had a 13-hour plane ride to Hawaii for the holidays with my girlfriend, and I poured 10 hours into that game, being sure not to rush and to take the time to behold the wonder of it all. It’s such a beautifully crafted game. The art is eye-popping. Gorgeous. The story is just as the logo says; heartrending. The years of being wary of spoilers certainly paid off, and every turn of the story had me laughing, eye-popping, solemn.

I really can’t wait until I finish the game, but I’m taking my time, because I can tell I’ll be quite sad once I finish this journey. No experience amounts to the first time through a MOTHER game, and I want to prolong it’s end as long as possible.

Until then, thank you, Mato, for this wonderful translation. :]