It is by complete coincidence that I happened to wrap on my first playthrough of Mother 3 mere days ahead of Nintendo's first direct of 2022 that teased good news for Mother (Earthbound) fans. While it doesn't surprise me at all that Nintendo still refuses to localize the final and, arguably, finest entry in one of the greatest RPG series ever made, it does remain a tremendous shame that it remains inaccessible to those who are unable or unknowing of ROM patching methods and computer emulation.
I played Earthbound for the first time in 2021 and found myself captivated by how timeless its themes felt, especially going into what, at the time, seemed like a post-pandemic world (not so lucky on that front). I instantly fell in love with it and kicked myself for not having played it sooner, though I was thankful that I had played it precisely when I did. I knew immediately that I had to get my hands on a copy of the fan-translated Mother 3. As someone who was lucky enough to snag an Analogue Pocket, I wanted to wait until I received it to play Mother 3 in the format that was intended -- on the Game Boy Advance, no save states, with the same form limitations that one would have encountered back on the game's release in 2006 (admittedly though, with a better screen). I'm pleased to say that it was the right call. Mother 3 is an immaculate work that takes every advantage of its form to share a captivating narrative that asks the player to engage with the physical work Mother 3 as much as its wide cast of beautiful characters.
Ending spoilers for Mother 3 follow, but I'd argue that knowing about some late-plot details cannot ruin the experience of this game for you.
Where Earthbound/Mother 2 is a globe-trotting adventure to save the world from the forces of an unknowable, incomprehensible force of darkness and nihilism, Mother 3 is a direct response to nearly every theme of the previous game. It's about the battle for the soul of a community. Everything in Mother 3 is so much more personal than the previous game. Of the game's eight chapters, the first three of them are spent setting up the players, the stakes, and the cast. Even the series' namesake, which can be argued to refer to the more abstract concept of Earth/life as Mother to all things, Mother 3 is the first game in the series to be more explicitly about motherhood and the first in the series to make the protagonist's mother a central character.
Literal novels could be filled with the themes of this game, but I believe that the central thesis is tucked away about eighty-percent of the way into the game. Mother 3 begins in earnest in its fourth chapter, when protagonist Lucas begins his journey to pull seven "needles" located across the land to awaken a dragon sleeping within the depths of the islands he and his community call home. His rival, Fassad and the Pigmask Army (along with the mysterious masked man), are on the same mission, as it is stated that the actions of the dragon following the pull of the final needle are a direct response to the heart of the one that pulls them. Legend says one with a heart of good will bring happiness and light to the land, whereas one with evil will bring unbridled destruction. However, even a little further in, a mysterious character that has been around since the beginning of the game, Leder, explains that there's more to this legend: the world has already been destroyed. An ark of sorts delivered the remaining humans to the islands where their memories of the previous world was wiped, and they were given new "scripts" to follow, believing that they had always lived together on the islands in perfect harmony. It is here that the meta-narrative of Mother 3 is laid bare: we are the dragon. We are, in a sense, the source of the characters' imprisonment on the islands, and we can only free them by seeing the story to its conclusion (for better and for worse).
None of the games in the Mother series have traditional happy endings, but Mother 3's might be the bleakest, at least at first: Lucas summons the last of his courage and pulls the final needle. Many of the environments the player has traversed over the course of the game are destroyed in an apocalypse of biblical proportions. The final visual is a massive explosion viewed from the sea, as meteors rain out of the sky and massive waterspouts spread throughout the ocean. The screen cuts to black as "END" is displayed. Then, after a few moments, a question mark appears. If the player then uses the directional buttons, they can move the "END?" around as if it were a player character. Suddenly, the voices of the characters throughout the game are heard. They talk to the player directly, letting them know that everything is OK where they are, and they hope that the player is doing well too. Many of the events of Mother 3 are nothing short of tragic. To participate in this world that we ostensibly enjoy means to subject these characters to pain, to Lucas to the loss of his family, and to the villagers the subjugation and destruction of their livelihood.
Mother 3 has inspired many RPGs with this kind of meta-narrative approach to the relationship between player and game. When I played Undertale back in 2015, I vowed never to play the game again because the game begs you to leave the characters alone, to settle comfortably in the choices made and the experience had and to allow those characters to "rest". Mother 3, a major influence, allows even less certainty. You never see the characters after the calamity causes, you only "hear" their voices in the dark. They tell you that they're OK and doing well, and that they hope you're doing well too. Mother 3 invites us to experience it, cry alongside the characters, and then let them go. Hold tight to these experiences and these memories, and take them into your own life and your own world. I will let the little reproduction cart that carries the fan-translated cartridge for Mother 3 sit on my shelf for the rest of time. I will rest easy knowing that Lucas and his friends and loved ones are doing alright, and I will continue to tell those who will listen of the wonderful adventures I had with them. The time I watched Lucas run through a field of sunflowers, the many times we sat in a natural sauna and felt revitalized, or the times we watched fireworks over the city. I will never experience these again, but I will treasure them always. It's better this way.