MOTHER 1 vs. MOTHER 2

I want both parts, of course– after all, it’s Mother 1+2! But Mother 1 is probably a priority in this case, since this will be a new translation to the standards of now instead of the NES-era!

I’d say most of us have played Mother 2 extensively and can probably deal with a computer ROM, but I’d wager most of us haven’t played Mother 1, ever. So that’s my vote, definitely.

Another option just came to mind so I added it to the poll.

As much as I’d love to have a portable version of Mother 2 with an improved translation (I assume it would still be 99% of the original translation), undone censorship, and Porky and Gyiyg given back their real names… Mother 1 is more important for me. The old translation just sucks, and there were IMPROVEMENTS made to it unlike the DOWNGRADE Mother 2 got.

Let’s see… Mother 1 has better sounding music, the ability to run, new ending… But it also has easier mazes and an altered way of obtaining the eighth melody… :/ Oh well! ^_^

I agree with the MOTHER 1 side, but at the same side, I like M2 better and would ADORE a retranslation! It’d be awesome! I know it’s a lot of work and would probably never happen anyway…

Honestly, it depends. I have never played Mother 1 to completion, and the biggest reason for that is that the monospace font strains my eyes. If you give M1 a VWF, then it’ll without a doubt be the part I find more exciting, but if it’s anywhere near even half as difficult as it seems to have been for M3, I wouldn’t hold it against you for not doing it.

A VWF for M1 would probably be even harder than for M3 because I’d have to pretty much rewrite a large percentage of the original game’s programming to get it to work. It’s kind of why you don’t see VWFs in NES games 😐

I’m torn between MOTHERs… 🙁 IDK which I choose… MOTHER 1 is greatly improved, but MOTHER 2 is just sooooo….. “MOTHER 2”!

how bout a 3rd option- MOTHER 2 with EB’s text uncensored (Peaceful Death Valley, HH on hood, bar, drugs, hospital, etc.)

Of course, I’d use both translations but I’d prefer it if Mother 2 were getting more attention, even if it is painstaking to translate.

Wouldn’t it be easier to retranslate the SNES EarthBound than do it in the GBA?

Similarly, would it be easier to retranslate the NES Mother 1?

I can completely understand why to translate Mother 3, but Mother 1 and 2 both exist on other platforms.

No contest, the Mother 1 translation interests me much more.

Both parts retranslated would be really nice, but the Mother 1 Part has higher priority for me.

Hands down, it’s Mother 2 re-translated for me. It’s probably the coolest game I’ve ever played and I feel like we (USA) received a watered down version of a classic.

Ahhh….I voted Mother 2. Why? Mother 1 doesn’t hold a lot of replay and/or sentimentality value for me. Mother 2 was the beginning and I’ll love it forever.

I like Mother 2 more, and I’d like to see an uncensored version with a touched-up script, but I’m not really interested in the GBA version at all, so I’ll vote for Mother.

While I would looove the mother 1 translation, but I would prefer to play Mother 2 in either way on my gameboy without one of the incredibly bad SNES emulators.

How about this: Do Mother 1…

Then take SNES EarthBound and make the slight adjustments to make it just like the Japanese version.

Sounds much easier and more practical. Especially considering the sound quality is worse in the Game Boy version.

Both parts preferred, but if I had to choose though I’d say MOTHER 2. I just enjoy the overall game much better and would love to see it re-translated (especially seeing how amazingly you guys did with MOTHER 3) without stuff being censored, and it would be really nice to have it playable on the same portable system as MOTHER 3.

Again, I’d love to have the whole series translated and in English for the GBA, but MOTHER 2 (as someone said above) holds much more sentimental value to me. So even though we already have an english version available, I personally would love to see a Starmen.net handled “perfect” version of one of my favorite games of all time.

I bought the GBA cart, because it was the cheapest way for me to get my hands on both games, and to top things, be able to play them while on the go.I had never played either of the two. Now I beat the Mother 1 part with one of the patches from other teams already available on here, and I’m playing the Mother 2 part (having never touched the SNES version).

I play them on GP2X Wiz, using a GBA emulator, and when I’m done beating both, I’ll copy back my save file into my GBA cart using GBABackuptool for DS. Not being able to play directly the Mother 2 part of Mother 1+2 in English is a pain in the… I have to play the SNES rom in english AND the mother 2 part of Mother 1+2 at the same time so I can understand the plot and what I’m supposed to do. twice the work. So my vote goes for a retranslation of Mother 2.

I’d already be really happy with just the Earthbound text put back in, but since there was a bit of censorship in the SNES text, I’d rather have a good translation directly, and besides the biggest issue here isn’t too much about the translation part, but rather the hacking part.

I think the GBA MOTHER 2 should be left alone. The only (I stress, only) advantage it has over the SNES original is “portability”, and even that for a 5-year dead system. Any retranslation of M2 should put into SNES EB.

I’m looking forward to the M1 translation though! The GBA has much more potential than the NES like you’ve explained, namely data size and palette. I hope you can incorporate the updated sprites from EB0->EB at some point too.

Actually, I prefer to play both in english because I can play them on the go with my DS or GBA.

I must confess the part that’s more interesting to me is Mother 1. Earthbound (Mother 2) appears to have a pretty good translation, from what you’ve shown so far in your comparisons. The only sticklers for me are things like the Runaway 5/Runaway Bros getting their outfits changed from the Blues Brothers look to this odd mishmash of styles. Mind you, that odd mismatch of styles does fit the game, and the fact that there are 6 Runaway 5 members is a joke in itself that fits that world, but hey, I love the Blues Brothers. Plus, their look in SSBM’s opening movie kept the original style.

Sorry for that rambling, anyway Mother 1, from what I’ve seen, does not have a very smooth translation and suffers from severe limitations on space for text.

That, and there’s the important matter of how downgraded the sound is from the SNES to GBA. Listening to your samples for the GBA version, it’s like night and day, and reminds me of how startled I was playing King’s Quest 4 with true MT32 music for the first time after only hearing it in basic Adlib for so many years, but in reverse.

At any rate, I love my SNES copy just fine. If not enough people are really excited about that part, don’t break your back putting so much work into it! You’ve done so much already.

I have to be honest, I’d like to be able to have both playable on one ROM, and one that I can put on my DS to boot. And while I’d much prefer a retranslated Mother 2 to a port of the Earthbound script, I would take the latter and deal with the inferior audio to be able to have all 3 games playable on one console.

Don’t get me wrong, though – I am very eagerly looking forward to the Mother 1 translation!

Mother 1 retranslation, no contest.

for whatever reason mother holds a special place in my heart, so thats what I chose.

I wish I could say both (M1 retranslation + M2 original text [not EB’s])

My opinions reflect the poll exactly
Mother 1 Retrans. > Mother 2 Retrans > Mother 2 EB

While I’d love to play a more accurate translation of Earthbound, I wouldn’t want to subject someone to the nightmare of retranslating and completely hacking the damn thing for such a minimal gain. (And aren’t there more interesting targets for translation out there? Why has this never been attempted? Is it a bad game?)

I’d second the opinion of touching up the already translated SNES ROM—failing that, I had fun just looking through the old M2 to EB site, and maybe your energies would be better invested there, and you can direct the people who’d geek out over the translation differences there.

I really can’t choose one over the other. I haven’t beaten Mother 1 yet and now I feel I should be patient and play yours since it will be superior. But I’m just as excited about Mother 2. Sure I’ve beaten it 4 or 5 times but I’ll actually get to play a different version of it. Replaying your version will be fresh and I think it will revitalize the game for me. I plan on beating all 3 of your translations back to back in order as soon as you release this. Should add equally excited about both to the poll. 🙂

I would much rather see the actual Mother 1 game in translation than Mother 2

Actually, wouldn’t it be easier just to retranslate the original Mother 2 on the SNES?

@Guurak: You mean the North American version. Just tweaking that version (which already is in English) is much, much more logical.

Taking a Mother 2 ROM and translating that would be stupid, since we already have English text boxes with EarthBound.

mother 1! 😀

While I had to choose Mother 1, I still hope that the Mother 2 half will be translated someday, despite the existence of the superior original version. It would be sad to go through the game select screen every time and see Mother 2 sitting there, always waiting to be played but never touched because I couldn’t read the text.

I’d definitely say Mother 1. (I can play EB portable on my PSP already, shhh)

Even for people that would benefit from a portable EarthBound, as others have said, the overall quality of M2 got butchered to fit on the GBA cartridge, and considering we do already have it in English, it seems like an enormous amount of work for little gain as you said… especially if it could possibly take even MORE work than the Mother 3 job.

I think with a touched up script and the item you’re including to make it slightly less of a drag to play, I might give Mother 1 another go. So I’d say definitely focus on that one.

Mother 2 being retranslated would interest me alot more really,never liked mother 1 much.

A Mother 2 re-translation would be nice, but Mother definitely is in more urgent need of it. A better script and tighter and more accessible controls would make it just more fun for all. And why would you want to play the GBA version of Mother 2 when pretty much all of the hot emulating platforms enable you to play the superior SNES version anyway?

And if you really wanted a re-translated M2 I’m sure somebody will make a very simple patch of tweaks to Earthbound without the need to hack the whole damn thing.

Most people agree that the translation on Earthbound, while not perfect, was a good effort and even added some humour that wasn’t originally there. Since Earthbound Zero was not given as good a job, many of us would like to play the original Mother, the way it was intended. Anyone who has played both games notices how the atmosphere in Earthbound is more “out there” while the original felt a bit “generic”.

I voted M1, but M2 would be good. I don’t know if you guys noticed, but M2 on GBA loads faster than on SNES. So faster loading + portability = awesome. I’m looking forward to both, Mato! 😀 I’d love to help with your translation if possible (not to get credit, but just to have fun doing it and have people appreciate it)!

I voted for the M1 option because I haven’t played through the game yet and wouldn’t mind experiencing it without censorship.

However, the M2 part interests me almost just as much, just for the sheer fun of spotting differences as I play through.

I haven’t played Mother 2 game yet

@MotherFanBoy: Have you played EarthBound before?

Interest results so far. Looks like 2/3 of people are more interested in the M1 side of things. For some reason I had thought it was just the opposite – that most people only cared about the M2 part of the game getting translated.

Well, some people care about both, like me. Speaking of M2, if you do translate it, are you going to use just the capital or hack in a font like you did in M3?

I really want to see re-translations for both games. Obviously, that’s already underway for MOTHER 1, but I see no reason for a re-translation of MOTHER 1 to be any more important than one for MOTHER 2 (or vice-versa, for that matter).

I’m interested in both 8)

I’m more intrigued by the Mother 1 portion, though I must say that I’d love to have both sides of Mother 1+2 released in English. From what I’ve seen, Mother 2’s localization was a rare bird in the SNES era–it had a lot of thought and consideration put into it. It only needs some uncensoring; a retranslation isn’t necessary by any means.

Personally… I’m looking more towards the Mother 1 translation. Why? Well, for starters, it’s my favorite in the series. Don’t get me wrong, Earthbound is fantastic (haven’t played Mother 3 sadly), but I have a love for old 8-bit games. Being able to play the original Mother with a better translation is really appealing to me. And heck, when you’re done with it, I’d love to see someone use the script to re-translate the NES version so it is closer to the original Famicom game.

I definitely want Mother 1 most, but i also would like for Mother 2 to get done, if you can handle it. I know you’ve said before how difficult hacking it would be.

Also, if Mother 2 would be done, i would wanna see a new translation akin to what you’re doing on Mother 1, instead of simply re-inserting the SNES version’s script. The M2 vs. EB article gave us a taste of the differences in script, and i’d like to see those differences executed in a new English version.

I think both a retranslation of EarthBound and the original translation would be nice. You could make a seperate patch for each and such.

Hey Mato, I think when you’re done with the M1 side, you should release the patch and then you could every once in a while work on the Mother 2 side and release it whenever. I’m not saying I don’t want to see the Mother 2 half retranslated, just its not that big of a priority, but I don’t want it completely dropped.

Mother 1 because I’ve never played through the whole thing. EB0 was too hard and I couldn’t read a thing inM1

If you were going to do anything with Mother 2 (which I’d love to see you do eventually), I’d rather see it translated with the SNES ROM, if possible. Like you said, it’s superior in many ways; it seems silly to use the GBA version instead.

I think it would be cool to have a new Mother 2 translation because the localizers obviously took some things out of it, but if that isn’t possible reversing some of the graphical changes would be excellent.

To be honest, I’d love to see a PROPER translation of both, seeing as “Earthbound” isn’t totally true to Mother 2. But right now, I’m leaning towards a proper Mother translation. That’s just how I feel, perosnally though.

To elaborate a little more, with Earthbound I understand the need to change things like the squid statues because that really doesn’t make too much sense to English speakers. I do prefer “Mother 2” as a title just because of the meaning behind it, but all in all, things like an “eraser eraser” and other such small changes just make more sense, and I consider them funnier and a bit more relevant in a world that’s supposed to be a parody of Americana. It really helps that the translators were good writers themselves (for the most part) and able to come up with unique solutions to those Japanese oddities.

Also, one other thing, Mato. If you do translate the M2 part, PLEASE put Ness in his pajamas in Magicant (if possible)! I don’t want to control, let alone see, and naked boy.

*a, not and.

Honestly, I would probably leave that in as that was Itoi’s original intention. It’s not like you see or do anything indecent in the Japanese version or anything.

I don’t understand why you would want to do like a “half translation” where you keep stuff “because it’s funny” when we have the original Earthbound for this. If you’re going to translate Mother 2 shouldn’t you do a true translation of everything? Including leaving everything intact? Kind of pointless, imo.

@Mato: Well, I think I understand what you’re getting at… I hope the sprites aren’t too graphic.

@TMMDI
Well, the translation is mostly accurate. There were a few mistranslations I believe, and some changes for censorship, and some other random changes, but that’s no reason to re-translate EVERYTHING. It just needs a little tune-up. That’s all. 🙂

@TheZunar123
It’s just skin coloured Ness. Nothing inappropriate in the slightest.

@linkdude: Oh, well if that’s all it is, then that’s a relief! I thought you could actually see Ness’s… thing (you should know what I mean by that 😉 )

The nude Ness graphics are astonishingly graphic. Beyond description. Men, women, children were driven to madness. New laws had to be enacted in Japan in response. Everyone who played Mother 2 in Japan was arrested and put in jail forever, even if they didn’t make it to Magicant. I tell you, that Shigesato Itoi is a genius.

^ :o.o: You.. you can’t be serious!

He’s kidding. ^o^

I was about to say…

^Don’t worry, nothing bad is in the Japanese EB.
I thought everybody only cared about the Mother 2 part.

I’d actually prefer the original translations for both games. Even if parts of the new translation would be better, they would still throw me off because they are different.

Sort of like the retranslation of Cave Story made for Cave Story Wii. Some parts are better, some parts are worse, but I don’t like it at all because I’m so used to the original.

I too am surprised by the poll results, considering there’s already a perfectly good way to play Mother 1 in English on GBA.

@TheZunar123: Here’s what it looks like from the front. You can see his butt from the back, but that’s it. http://mmii.info/icons/Koole321/eb_nudeNess.gif

After further consideration I kind of want to go back and change my vote to Mother 1. Mother 2 was my instinct, honestly, but I’m really at a loss as to what kind of major gains there are to be made by translating it. If the hacking work is going to be *that* much effort you really have to ask yourself if you’re up to it again or not.

Hey, Mato. Will you provide the tools for translating MOTHER 1+2, like you did with MOTHER 3? Pleeease? =D

I’d like to play both MOTHER 1 and MOTHER 2 retranslated and uncensored, like the way it was supposed to be in the original japan version(extra feature additions are always welcome).
You’re doing a great job Mato! Keep up the good work!
\(^0^)/

Foffano: yes, I talked about it here: http://earthboundcentral.com/2011/01/m12-translation-update-jan-29/

I’m just wondering, how do you save in Snes9X? That’s the only way I’ll ever get to play Earthbound in English without a re-translation. I can’t seem to save in Snes9x…

Anyways, I can’t wait for Mato to translate MOTHER 1!

You call you dad…?

I’ll go for Mother 1. The main reason for that is, I’ve never beaten it :c. And, with the easy ring, I’ll probably beat it this time. Believe me, I’ve tried twice, but I just couldn’t do it with all the slow battles…

I know that Earthbound and Mother 2 are really extremely different from each other, but since I’ve played Earthbound, I feel like I already understand the story/ gameplay/ etc of Mother 2. But I’ve never gotten far or beaten Mother 1, mostly because of the random encounter battles and unclear progression of the story. So if I were to choose one game, it would be a vamped-up, translated version of Mother 1 with the Easy Ring, and maybe with the graphics reworked to look like the graphics of Earthbound/Mother 2.

^ There’s already something like that going on. It’s EB to EB0, where EB graphics are being used to remake EB0. Good idea though. M3 graphics would be even better! 😀 But that won’t happen, I guarantee it. At the very most, it’ll be changed to EB graphics.

About the Mother 2 translation, I’d like the original translated script to be used, with possible additions. However, I’d prefer the uncensored graphics to be used.

As for the Mother 1 translation, yes, I WOULD prefer an updated script. But no, I wouldn’t like the town names to be changed back to the originals. And I’d prefer the changes to the ending present in the US version to exist in it. And the Easy Ring? Definitely.

@CalmingS: Try pressing Shift+F1 to save and F1 to load. It works similar to VisualBoy Advance.

I have an idea.

Most of us seem to prefer the GBA version of Mother 1, but dislike what was done to Mother 2 in the porting process. What if the Mother 2 portion was just… scrapped?

Hear me out.

If you simply deleted the Mother 2 portion, you’d have a lot more room in the ROM to incorporate those special features you’ve been considering, and potentially even more. It makes sense to me that making downsizing Mother 1+2 into a “Mother” ROM would give you ROM space to do the enemy toggle selection, as well as maybe options to make the game run in original Famicom mode or restoring the audio to its original state.

Of course, I’m not going to pretend I know much about ROM hacking to begin with, but it’s something to consider.

Deleting the Mother 2 portion won’t help much – there’s already a huge amount of blank space in the ROM.

Why is the Mother 2 port considered poor?

@Big A2

Probably because the music was ported terribly. Even the SOUNDS were ported terribly. I could try to do the MOTHER 2 music on FamiTracker and do better, even though I fail at any music making thing ever.

I already listed some reasons in the post, but the main reasons are that the audio suffers terribly and a lot of bugs were introduced into the GBA port.

I chose to vote for the MOTHER 1 portion of the game, though I wish there was an option for both. :B

But, seriously, I’m pumped for the Easy Ring and re-translation, because your MOTHER 3 translation was amazing. I think asking for you to do MOTHER 2 as well would really be asking too much from you, Mato. I wouldn’t want you to overwork yourself.

Personally I think people get a bit carried away with “original intent”.

Mato’s M2-to-EB notes made it pretty clear that most of what happened during the localization was some censoring and changing of jokes or references that didn’t make sense to audiences outside Japan, with some mistranslations here and there.

I don’t really think the censorship is that big of a deal, it doesn’t really change much in the grand scheme of things. That’s personally why I think the M2 part of this patch should be an afterthought really.

“Interest results so far. Looks like 2/3 of people are more interested in the M1 side of things. For some reason I had thought it was just the opposite – that most people only cared about the M2 part of the game getting translated.”

Why do you think that? EarthBound already has a good translation. Plus, the GBA version of Mother 2 is pretty bad.

I’d rather just play the originals instead of having to deal with the gba’s horrible soundchip.

@Mato/SomeUser: Blah, I hate it when they don’t get the audio right. A lot of other ports and emulations I have suffer from inferior sound, and it’s very annoying, especially becuase most people don’t notice.

It would be nice to have a translation of M1 that is actually good, and not censored. An uncensored M2 would be nice too, but it’s not as important to me. Anyways, the audio would probably suck a lot more because the NES sound isn’t THAT great (so there’s not much of a difference), but SNES audio is great so it seems like a downgrade.

@Big A2: Usually, people who play ports and emulations have never played the original (and often don’t care to find out what it sounded like and/or assume it’s the same), so they don’t know the difference.

I don’t understand why everyone’s bashing on the sound. It isn’t that bad. Obviously it’s not going to be as good as the snes sound nor could it be. And like someone else said there’s already a perfectly good way to play Mother 1 on the gba. I just want portable Mother 2.