http://www.rpgone.net/modules.php?name=Projects&op=ShowPage&pid=22 this is the guy(S) currenly working on a translation of Mother 1+2 for GBA. To those whom dont know what that is, it is a collection of SNES classic Earthbound and its prequel also called Earthbound. For those who dont know what they are, they are the games in which Super Smash Bros character Ness comes from. Anyways, according to the pictures, they are doing extremely well, but in the text, they ask for anyone's help regarding techincal support and translation assistance. Is there anyone here who can help them, since i think that EB is one of those games that everyone should experience once. Thanks for your time.
I love it how he's described as "Ness from Super Smash Brothers" in Earthbound, rather than "Ness from Earthbound" in the context of SSB. Some people just don't know their roots! :smt043 Anyways, I hate to be the one to bring this up. Translation projects are always noble and time-consuming endeavors, but in this case I really have to ask - what's the point? Yes, the Gameboy collection would be nice to have in English, but the games have already been professionally translated by Nintendo themselves in English - the unreleased Mother/Earthbound 0 NES rom that anyone can dig up with a little bit of Google searching, and the Mother 2/Earthbound SNES game that can be easily had on eBay or with a bit of perseverance in your favorite used shop. Furthermore, how's the legality of this going to work? I can guess it's probably not going to be a release that will require any sort of original ownership of the game in question. I'm all for defunct, obscure games being translated, or the releases of unreleased stuff to the masses, but a fan translation of something that is not only already translated professionally, but wouldn't require ownership of the original game just seems to me to be a bit of a waste of time. No offense to anyone that may be involved with it, like I said - translating is a noble effort, but this project just seems a bit redundant to me, sorry - especially in light of all sorts of other older games that never saw an English release.
I agree with GSL. If you're gonna go to the effort of translating a game, do something that will never likely come out in English. Either something cool/quirky or a game thats criminal not to have an English version (Seiken Densetsu 3).
Already done. http://www.neillcorlett.com/sd3/ :-D And looking at the website of the people behind this project, it seems they're no strangers to redundant translations. There's nothing stopping them, of course, from doing as Purge said, and slogging along with the project, but I think they'll find that the public reception of it will be lukewarm, at best. Now if you're just translating it for the hell of it, have fun and good luck! But doing something that's already been done almost isn't going to have very many people excited, and could almost seem a bit arrogant - "I can do a better job than the company who made this game! You'll see!" But that's just my take on it.
Heres my thought process: Wow, Mother 1 & 2 Translated on GBA! Hmmm...they need translators...they came to the right place... Wait a minute...they already were translated...and the translations are pretty damn good. Whaaa!?!?
That was precisely my point. Although, if enough people sent angry letters to Nintendo demanding a US release of the game... I wouldn't think it would be that hard to do, as they already have full translations of both titles - the biggest effort would be shoehorning the text into the GBA version. According to Starmen.net, the Japanese version of Mother 1+2 even contains the censors/edits found in the US releases (or canned release in the face of EB0) such as the changing of crosses in the graveyard to tombstones, or the churches to chapels, so they seriously wouldn't have to change anything about the game!
ok, I wrote one of the guys that did the mother 1 translation and he says: Thanks most of it was done by Xero though. I just gave him help on how to insert the scripts mainly and a few other pointers. We need to do a variable width font if its to fit right on the screen for part 2. And I am swamped so we really need someone that can code in gba assembly. is there anyone out there, (with a lot of free time) that can help out? Thanks As for the people complaining that the 2 games were already translated, you forget 2 important things: 1. (Like this guy says in his new message) you cant take font from a SNES and exactly match it to their GBA counterparts. They need to be shrunk, while maintaining their original shapes and patterns. 2. Many times (especially with Nintendo based/related RPGs) many parts of dialogue are censored or cut in order to fit their view of what should be read/not read. For this, many people take the original japanese versions, translate it and then, write based on the original dialogue. (for example, compare Final Fantasy remakes on the PSone to their NES/SNES originals) Thanks for your time.
