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“Mother 3″ is the follow-up to 1995′s SNES masterpiece, “Earthbound” – the slightly less quirky title given to what was once “Mother 2″ in Japan. And it’s one of the most significant videogames of our time.
In 20 years, when my hypothetical daughter goes to school and takes Videogame Criticism and Theory (VGS 102), she will have to play this (yes, “Mother 2″ will be part of VGS 101), but just before “Metal Gear Solid 2″ and right after “The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask.” Unfortunately, since its original April 20, 2006 release, Nintendo has never intended to produce an English version. Fortunately, a few weeks ago, a group of what might be real-life saints released their own professional-grade translation, and yes, it is spectacular.
This event is interesting in that it was roughly in the stone center of the 2008 Videogame Release Catastrophe. “Mother 3″ itself is interesting in that it is better than all of these games we’re buying. Just a few:
“Fable 2″ has some frighteningly clever ideas, interesting music and a terrible, offensively bad interface. “World of Goo” has damn compelling mechanics and a point to make that turns out to be kind of shallow. “Dead Space” took the mechanics of one of the great videogames – “Resident Evil 4″ – wrapped a delicious new skin around them and proceeded to completely lack the competence to make it come together.
But what have we here is “Mother 3,” a videogame made 2 1/2 ago not so much by a team as by one man, and it manages to refine the strengths of each of these titles while completely eliminating nearly every one of their weaknesses. It contains music both genuinely rock and roll and genuinely great. It is one of the few videogames whose graphics are “perfect” in that they could never look any better. It contains under this gorgeous skin the mechanics of one of the Great Videogames – “Dragon Quest” – and it has the confidence to symphonize all of this, as evidenced by the original, rock-solid mechanic of psychotic genius standing at its core. “Mother 3″ has a point. It is expressed in such a way that it feels like something entirely beyond a videogame.
It is appropriate, then, to note that it borrows heavily from both theater and literature. This is where I’m going to recommend “Mother 3″ to you if you play videogames. More importantly, I’m going to recommend it to you if you look to get more than entertainment from media. If you appreciate confident aesthetics, if you desire original experiences and if you are hungry for clever ideas, consider “Mother 3.” There is an unfortunate barrier in that the masses don’t know how to run emulators or play Japanese RPGs. However, the themes of brotherhood and family, love and beauty, capitalism and commercialism in “Mother 3″- they can appeal to anyone. If you have a working computer, you can be playing it tonight with little work. This is where the medium is going, everybody. Check it out!
Bangor Daily News