Part 0: Context
This article marks the beginning of my analysis and commentary of the video game, Mother 3. The purpose of this project is to analyze how stories and songs are written in order to bring out emotion, as well as to practice my own writing skills. This introductory article is not necessary to read if you are already familiar with the EarthBound series of games and its development.
Development & translation
Before I analyze the game, Mother 3 requires some context to be fully understood and appreciated. It is a video game published for the Game Boy Advance system in 2006 as the third in the EarthBound series of games (known as Mother in Japan) and the sequel to EarthBound (Mother 2). Mother 3’s story, scenario, and message were written by Shigesato Itoi, with music composed by Shogo Sakai, and several other contributions made by developers mentioned in the game’s credits. Itoi is a celebrity in Japan who has had a wide variety of jobs in his lifetime, but mostly focuses on writing. Mother 3 was the last video game he has made.
The development and release of this game was quite difficult compared to most others. In 1996, Mother 3’s development was first announced for the Nintendo 64 system as a 3D game, only being capable of being played with the 64DD (disk drive) peripheral. However, when sales on the 64DD proved underwhelming, the game’s development was cancelled. In 2003, it was revealed that Mother 3 would be coming to the Game Boy Advance. The game was remade from scratch with 2D pixel sprites rather than 64’s 3D models. When it released in 2006, the Game Boy Advance had already been outdated by the Nintendo DS by two years.
Due to unspecified reasons, the game was never officially released outside of Japan. Some speculate it was because its predecessor, EarthBound, sold poorly in the west, as well as other reasons which will be made evident throughout the game’s analysis. Although EarthBound sold poorly when it released, it became a cult classic by the time most people had access to the internet. When Mother 3 remained untranslated to English for two years, fans took it upon themselves to unofficially translate the game. The fan translation was released in 2008 as a modification for the original game. This translation is the version of the game I will be using to analyze.
RPG as a genre
The genre of the game is a turn-based role-playing game, or ‘RPG’ for short. In this genre, games typically involve a main character who goes on a quest of some sort, talking to non-player-characters (NPCs) who usually only have a few lines of dialogue, fighting monsters, and gaining allies to help them along the way. Analyzing the gameplay is not the purpose of this analysis, but it will be helpful to have knowledge of it when it is used to tell the story, which does happen on several occasions.
The way in which characters fight is a defining feature of this genre, with allies and enemies taking turns attacking each other. Both parties’ characters have a certain amount of health points (HP) which are subtracted when one is attacked. When a character’s HP is 0, they are defeated and can no longer act in the battle. The members of these fights typically involve the main character and their allies against monsters, which are usually themed around the environment in which the fight takes place (bats are in caves, bears are in forests, etc.). When one side loses all of its members’ HP, the battle is over. If the main character’s team wins, everyone in the party receives experience points (XP), which give characters more total health and attack power. If the main character’s team is defeated, the player is usually set back to a previous area they explored and must work their way back again. Since the battles are turn-based, careful planning and strategy is encouraged.
Battles are most significant to the story in ‘boss battles’, where the main character and their team must fight against a single unique enemy more powerful than common enemies. ‘Bosses’ typically guard an important area or are important antagonists in the story.
One of the only divergences from the typical RPG battle system that Mother 3 makes is that when a character loses HP, it slowly decreases over time instead of instantly being subtracted at once. This allows characters to act even if they just received mortal damage. Another mechanic unique to Mother 3 is that characters can attack multiple times per turn if you press the A button along with the beat of the song in the background. Songs from the first half of the game are remixed in the second half with unpredictable changes in tempo intended to make combos harder to perform.
The last unique attribute of Mother 3’s battle system is how attacks are portrayed. The player is rarely shown visually what it looks like when a character attacks. Instead of an animation, a written description of the attack appears on the screen. The other visual difference in battles comes in the placement of the game’s camera. Instead of facing the player and the enemy at a 90 degree angle like a theater act, the point of view is in the first person, with the enemy facing directly at the screen. The most iconic part of this point of view is the animated, colorful patterns that flow in the background, reminiscent of the PSI energy (psychic, not pounds per square inch) that some characters use to attack in the game.
EarthBound Summary
As noted earlier, Mother 3 is the sequel to EarthBound (the game, not the series). The series is largely disconnected across games, so knowledge of the previous two games is not incredibly important. The original game in the series, EarthBound Beginnings, has minimal impact on Mother 3, so there is no need to summarize it. However, at a certain point in Mother 3, having general knowledge of EarthBound will be useful to have.
The main similarities of the three EarthBound games come in the 90’s America (Earth-bound) setting, humorous dialogue, and the contrastingly dark theme of growing up in a corrupt world. Ironically enough, only one of the main characters’ mothers is truly crucial to the story of the game, being in Mother 3. Shigesato Itoi mentioned in an interview that one of the main inspirations for the title was found in John Lennon’s song, Mother, and the emotional impact it had on him. Never being officially released to western audiences, Mother 3’s title remains unlocalized, so is referred to as such by fans of the game.
In the second game in EarthBound, called EarthBound, the game begins in the home of a young boy named Ness. One night, a loud crash is heard around the neighborhood. His unruly and chubby neighbor, Porky (mistranslated as “Pokey” in the English translation), takes Ness with him to investigate, as he forgot that he abandoned his little brother, Picky, outside, and is too scared to go out on his own.
Up on a hill, they find a burning meteorite. When they approach it, a bright light shines above them, and a small flying insect named Buzz Buzz emerges. He is a messenger from the future who has come to give a prophecy of three boys and one girl who will defeat the universal cosmic destroyer, embodiment of evil, Giygas. Lately, his influence has affected the lives of otherwise peaceful creatures, and they have become hostile. It is up to these four chosen ones to bring order back to the world. To be strong enough to defeat Giygas, they must visit eight sanctuary locations from all over the globe. Porky is not fond of this idea at all. Ness, however, steps up to the plate and begins his quest to defeat Giygas.
When Porky returns home, his father beats him for leaving the house and tells Ness to get out, as he has a grudge against Ness’s family. Porky’s mother finds Buzz Buzz and swats him to death before he goes, leaving Ness all by himself to unite the three remaining chosen ones and save the world.
Wielding slingshots, baseball bats, and yo-yos, Ness fights off against various people of influence corrupted by Giygas, such as a gangsters and police officers. At one point he encounters a cult leader who was corrupted by a large golden statue, a particularly strong tool used by Giygas. Porky, who now identifies as “Master Porky” approaches Ness and reveals that he was made an “important person” in the religion. While the former cult leader apologizes to Ness after he is defeated, Porky remains unchanged.
As Ness travels across the globe, defeating evil along the way, he visits a big city whose government has recently changed for the worse. When he enters the mayor’s headquarters, he finds none other than Porky lounging around in an office! He has become very wealthy by giving the mayor political and economic advice. As Ness defeats Giygas’s influence over the city, he once again finds the golden statue at the root of the problem. This time, he destroys it, and all is brought back to normal. The mayor apologizes to Ness and his crew, but Porky still remains the same.
After finding all eight sanctuary locations, Ness can now face Giygas head-on. Giygas is attacking from the ancient past, long before humanity’s creation. With the help of a few great inventors, Ness and his team are able to travel to the past, with only one complication: their physical bodies cannot time travel, so robots are sent in their place. These robots are implanted with the very essence of their minds, and through them, their conscience can be transferred to Giygas’s time.
Giygas’s power has been growing to incomprehensible levels, and is in need of assistance to be contained for his own sanity. The four heroes of prophecy make their way through a pre-historic cave and approach his confines. As they reach the innermost depths, none other than Porky appears right in front of them! He reveals that he was led by Giygas to make sure the prophecy would never be fulfilled. To travel back to the past, Porky had to steal the original time machine meant for Ness. Porky, unlike Ness and his crew, is in the flesh. Because he did not take the same precautions as Ness, he looks completely different—his skin has become a sickly green, and his once-blonde hair is turning grey.
After Ness and Porky fight for the fate of the future, Porky becomes exhausted. In a last-ditch effort, he turns off the “Devil’s Machine” which contains Giygas. Giygas has lost all consciousness due to his incredible power, and is now, as Porky puts it, an “all-mighty idiot.” Giygas has no shape or form and appears as a red gaseous swirl of agonizing faces—the visualization of nightmares.
Neither Ness’s power nor anyone else’s can defeat Giygas. Nothing can defeat Giygas—except for the power of prayer. The girl on the team prays for everyone in the whole world to hear their cries for help. Everyone they rescued from the hands of evil along the way prays from the bottom of their hearts, and Giygas, the universal cosmic destroyer, is destroyed. Porky appears one last time, not to resign in defeat, but to travel to another era to continue his scheming, predicting that this will not be the last time they meet.
Giygas’s influence on everyone has been destroyed—on everyone, but Porky. For now, though, the world is at peace. Ness regains his mind in his own body and returns to a home eradicated of evil. And with that, EarthBound ends and Mother 3 begins.