Mailbag: The Octopus Statue

I’m not against Nintendo censorship but this seems pretty stupid.

I dunno, it doesn’t seem like too great a loss.

I think it’s an improvement, I don’t see why they wouldn’t do something like this for the sake of localization.

I personally see it as an improvement too. Before it was just goofy in a random way, in the localization it was still goofy and random but there was added humor in how it needs to be dealt with.

I think they changed it to a Pencil statue because they changed the Doll statue to an Eraser statue to try and keep the joke of the original statue and its eraser item intact, and naturally pencils and erasers go hand-in-hand. That’s just my opinion though.

What are the jokes around the Octopus Eraser in Mother 2? Don’t take it into Takoyaki shop?

I was referring to the Doll Eraser, not the Octopus Eraser. In Japanese, eraser is “keshi” and doll is “kokeshi”, so the name of the Doll Eraser in Japanese is “kokeshikeshi”. Obviously it wouldn’t transfer over to the US, so they changed it to “Eraser Eraser”, which is not quite the same, but it was the best they could do.

But aren’t the pencil and eraser statues in the museum in Mother 3, or did Mato put them in?

@TheZunar123 Interesting 🙂 I hadn’t seen your comment before posting mine, but I was asking about what the Pencil Shop joke was in M2.

Furball200x: We put that in, see here: http://mother3.fobby.net/or/

If we got the pencil eraser then what did mother two get? An octopus eraser?

Yes, that was the randomness of it. NoA changed it either because they deemed it too random or because they thought it would make the game better.

I still think they changed it to a pencil because they changed the doll to an eraser to keep the joke about its name, and naturally pencils and erasers go together. But it could be out of randomness, who knows.

Honestly, I prefer the pencil over the octopus. I mean, yeah, random humor is all good and all.. but a pencil eraser (which is not an eraser on a pencil, but in fact an eraser FOR pencils) just seems more amusing to me. But that’s just one person’s opinion!

I remember an interview or something along that, where Itoi joked about how the octopus eraser could actually erase octopuses–or some kind of octopus dish with a fancy Japanese name.

(Addendum: Of course, the only octopuses in the entire game are alien robots that jack your inventory. Maybe they also changed it to diminish confusion over whether the octopus eraser kills Octobots instantly, which it doesn’t.)

They changed it from an octopus simply so I could use it as my Theories mascot on Starmen.net.

Obviously.

Me and Itoi are long-time bros after all.