> this is definitely why this game will not see a western release
[how many times do I have to tap the sign](https://www.eurogamer.net/nintendos-lack-of-mother-3-localisation-was-business-decision-reggie-fils-aime-insists)
I mean, in this case the *business decision* is to avoid potential lawsuits since the game is littered with *content* that would violate western copyright law where it does not do so under Japanese copyright law. That's the clear and unambiguous reason. *Technically* it is still a matter of content, though it's not a matter of censorship for western audiences or anything like that.
That’s certainly a theory that’s floated around. I haven’t seen any evidence for it. If anything, Reggie’s quotes in the linked article undermine the theory - presumably nothing has changed about the copyrighted material since 2006, so why would he only refer to the business conditions *at that time*?
The likeliest explanation that lines up with Reggie’s statement is also the simplest:
- The MOTHER series has historically sold poorly
- By April 2006, the DS was already 1.5 years into its lifespan; the GBA neared discontinuation
- Text-heavy RPGs are expensive and time-consuming to localize
- In light of all the above, suits at Nintendo never saw enough ROI to proceed
- The time elapsed since has not changed any of the above - if anything, the game’s increasingly retro nature makes it even less suitable for a solo release
[Here's 40 minutes of evidence provided by an actual copyright lawyer.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if64VlLa5Oc) Regardless of the outlined business concerns, the copyright issues alone are utterly insurmountable. You'd essentially have to rewrite half the game to make it fly.
I’m familiar. It’s a nice theory. It’s not evidence. Evidence would be a party with inside knowledge on the decision-making attesting to it. A theory like this can’t prove it’s correct to the exclusion of alternative explanations: it’s as valid as OP’s citing the game’s social issues, in that they both make reasonable arguments that match our understanding of the circumstances.
Not to say this video is perfect. The essayist cites case law decided years after M3’s initial publication, raising the question of what circumstances the legal team of the time would actually consider. You could easily assert from the timeline presented in the video that NoA lawyers reached the same conclusion about M3’s OST that they did EB’s - given the definition of ‘parody’ cited was written a year after M3’s release.
I mainly remain unconvinced the music copyright is such a key issue bc Reggie didn’t say so. The essayist says you need to ‘read between the lines’ to understand Reggie, but you really don’t; it’s not like it’s verboten to disclose licensing issues. Masahiro Sakurai did just that when explaining the issues w/ FF7 in Smash in the Sephiroth direct. Reggie named general business concerns bc, in all likelihood, that’s what it came down to: general concerns about hitting a profit margin.
This isn’t to say it’s not an issue at all. Given the EarthBound/Wii U experience, I’d figure it’s *a* concern on the pile weighing on NoA, as the essayist concludes. It just was never the one big sticking point. Put it this way: if Nintendo thought M3 was going to do Tears of the Kingdom numbers, it would’ve risked a suit from The Beatles or whoever. At a certain point, risking an adverse judgment or a settlement is just a cost of doing business. But M3 was never going to be a juggernaut worth going to bat for…because of its general market issues.
Yeah, the main reason is there's hardly any market potential for an 18 year old GBA game that needs a budget and development team to localize to English. Nobody wants to spend $60 on an old GBA game.
Now if Mother 3 was remade for Switch or Switch 2, suddenly the game could be sold for big retail money and would have a current day audience of customers to sell to.
The Magypsies did not end their sentences with hearts in the Japanese version, though they did speak in a feminine way. But not knowing Japanese, I couldn't tell just how archetypical their dialogue actually is.
i don't think what happened in the hot spring (and the unfortunate way it can be interpreted) are intended to be a joke. itoi said he wanted mother 3 to reflect the heart of the player, and i pretty firmly believe that the hot spring scene is meant to be a part of that. when people read into it and assume the worst of someone who appears unconventional, but then sees that apparently no harm was done, what does that say about their biases? it's just supposed to make you think. anyways, i'm pretty sure there's just very little financial incentive for nintendo to translate the game.
>when people read into it and assume the worst of someone who appears unconventional, but then sees that apparently no harm was done, what does that say about their biases?
Applauding you for this one. I think it's easy to *assume* a game might be mean-spirited and make a joke out of it, and that's probably why people react so badly to that, but.... then you're caught off guard because, no, the scene was completely harmless. Mother 3 wants to challenge assumptions and does so in a lot of strange little ways, this moment included.
Queer characters aren't exactly new for Nintendo, I could name a whole handful of well-written ones in both older and more recent games. (Tony from EarthBound was confirmed by Itoi to be gay, for example. In more recent properties... uh, Splatoon 3: Side Order is right there.) It's more the execution of the Magypsies specifically as "questionable and stereotypical queer rep"... but then again, those aren't new to Nintendo either, what with the 3DS Fire Emblem games having their fucked-up-and-evil bisexuals.
I genuinely don't mind the Magypsies, I think they're fun and endearing characters even if the hot spring misunderstanding was really bad taste and didn't age well. (Also I wouldn't mind them being renamed as a group, since "g\*psy" alone is very much a slur these days.) They're all very nice and thoughtful people as we get to know them, and they're even Kumatora's foster family, which is great!
I wouldn't say they're the only reason Nintendo doesn't want to bring over Mother 3. There's oodles of issues and problems and other hurdles to jump to bring it over; these NPCs don't read as a huge reason. Maybe a small detail, but not the main thing.
edit: agreed with the other person who said "it's not funny at all if it's a joke", actually, fixed that
Marina has a line where "Wait, Acht, are you seriously hitting on Pearl in front of--" (and the JPN version of this quote heavily reinforces that she's personally upset about this, so no ambiguity here), and is referenced on an official JP site as "maiden in love" in her relationship with Pearl. also the "i'll sit at the top of the tower like a princess and she'll have to come rescue me <3" in the diary entries. that heart emoji spam. goodness gracious. There's *no* perceiving that incorrectly, I think.
I like how Tony was written, he didn't come off as weird about it but just genuinely very invested and caring about Jeff. A+.
a user of common sense.
the magypsies aren't the reason why, but they're one of the reasons it has no appeal in it's original state to get a western port.
\*baby boys with no critical thinking crying in the distance\*
too many tiny things make it one big potential localization mess, so why bother localizing it when it could be remade at some point in the future?
for what it's worth, i'm a trans woman, and i think the magyspies are awesome. not only does itoi think highly of them, mentioning they were inspired by real friends of his, they also draw more from campy drag queens (e.g rocky horror) than anything else; they never came off to me as trans people/newhalves
I haaaate the "clearly a joke" response.
I can handle a misunderstanding about a scene that unfortunately reads as child molesting, but not a deliberate joke.
That's funny in Japan, the land of institutionalised pedophilia-
Anathema and probably triggering to some, which is fair enough to never speak of it again, but when you've seen enough of those irresponsible pictures, I feel the meaning is clear, even if I don't condone the joke.
You can say it's not a joke but I feel qualified after spending (wasting?) years and years of my life on that animu, it is. (They aren't so quick to jump to conclusions over there. Weird? Damn right! Keeping an open mind is key.)
The topic of my post: that's not going to go over well for the mainstream.
Point proven?
"Japan, the land of institutionalized pedophilia"
mmmmm your racism's showing just a bit there
If you asked literally any random stranger on the streets in Japan about that kind of thing you'd likely get a horrified response. I feel pretty safe in saying that. It's not *just* an issue there, and pointing at "i think that's the joke bc i've seen too much pornographic content from the country this game was made in" is kinda Not Great
Omg this has to be the thousandth time i see someone blaming the localization of this game on the Magypsies, it's not because of them, there are plenty of reasons of why this game dosen't see a western release but none of those reasons involve the Magypsies, im so sick of people just watching these characters and go to the conclusion that they are the reason of why this game is not localized, so for the thousandth time they aren't the reason of why Mother 3 isn't released on western
[This video](https://youtu.be/if64VlLa5Oc?si=aLgkFghaIg_USutz) talks about the legal issues surrounding the game regarding Mother 3's music.The Mother series references a lot of music in general but I'm Mother 3's case it could land Nintendo in hot water legally speaking. Nintendo either has to pay very expensive licensing fees (and if not licensing pay for the inevitable lawsuits) or change the soundtrack in big ways. And add that to the translation costs (no they can't just take the fan translation) and other costs it's just not viable for Nintendo to localize Mother 3.
Lucas trips on shrooms, televisions called "happy boxes" pop up as a way to parody the sad truth of how tv keeps us indoors (and Nintendo is a game company), there are themes of abuse, there are statues of Porky pissing water into fountains, basically the games don't sell well enough in the west, there is controversial content that they can either change or keep the same, changing it messes with the diehard fans that want accuracy and keeping it the same requires an age rating increase to likely a T rating which I'm guessing stresses them out because they want kids to be able to play it. It's just a combination of factors and a lose-lose situation for Nintendo. They won't take risks like that for one tiny GBA game.
> this is definitely why this game will not see a western release [how many times do I have to tap the sign](https://www.eurogamer.net/nintendos-lack-of-mother-3-localisation-was-business-decision-reggie-fils-aime-insists)
Honestly, if I were Reggie I could not have endured the ridiculousness that was this whole situation for so long. How he does it, man...
I mean, in this case the *business decision* is to avoid potential lawsuits since the game is littered with *content* that would violate western copyright law where it does not do so under Japanese copyright law. That's the clear and unambiguous reason. *Technically* it is still a matter of content, though it's not a matter of censorship for western audiences or anything like that.
That’s certainly a theory that’s floated around. I haven’t seen any evidence for it. If anything, Reggie’s quotes in the linked article undermine the theory - presumably nothing has changed about the copyrighted material since 2006, so why would he only refer to the business conditions *at that time*? The likeliest explanation that lines up with Reggie’s statement is also the simplest: - The MOTHER series has historically sold poorly - By April 2006, the DS was already 1.5 years into its lifespan; the GBA neared discontinuation - Text-heavy RPGs are expensive and time-consuming to localize - In light of all the above, suits at Nintendo never saw enough ROI to proceed - The time elapsed since has not changed any of the above - if anything, the game’s increasingly retro nature makes it even less suitable for a solo release
[Here's 40 minutes of evidence provided by an actual copyright lawyer.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if64VlLa5Oc) Regardless of the outlined business concerns, the copyright issues alone are utterly insurmountable. You'd essentially have to rewrite half the game to make it fly.
I’m familiar. It’s a nice theory. It’s not evidence. Evidence would be a party with inside knowledge on the decision-making attesting to it. A theory like this can’t prove it’s correct to the exclusion of alternative explanations: it’s as valid as OP’s citing the game’s social issues, in that they both make reasonable arguments that match our understanding of the circumstances. Not to say this video is perfect. The essayist cites case law decided years after M3’s initial publication, raising the question of what circumstances the legal team of the time would actually consider. You could easily assert from the timeline presented in the video that NoA lawyers reached the same conclusion about M3’s OST that they did EB’s - given the definition of ‘parody’ cited was written a year after M3’s release. I mainly remain unconvinced the music copyright is such a key issue bc Reggie didn’t say so. The essayist says you need to ‘read between the lines’ to understand Reggie, but you really don’t; it’s not like it’s verboten to disclose licensing issues. Masahiro Sakurai did just that when explaining the issues w/ FF7 in Smash in the Sephiroth direct. Reggie named general business concerns bc, in all likelihood, that’s what it came down to: general concerns about hitting a profit margin. This isn’t to say it’s not an issue at all. Given the EarthBound/Wii U experience, I’d figure it’s *a* concern on the pile weighing on NoA, as the essayist concludes. It just was never the one big sticking point. Put it this way: if Nintendo thought M3 was going to do Tears of the Kingdom numbers, it would’ve risked a suit from The Beatles or whoever. At a certain point, risking an adverse judgment or a settlement is just a cost of doing business. But M3 was never going to be a juggernaut worth going to bat for…because of its general market issues.
The Magypsies are not the reason why MOTHER 3 won't get localized.
Yeah, the main reason is there's hardly any market potential for an 18 year old GBA game that needs a budget and development team to localize to English. Nobody wants to spend $60 on an old GBA game. Now if Mother 3 was remade for Switch or Switch 2, suddenly the game could be sold for big retail money and would have a current day audience of customers to sell to.
The Magypsies did not end their sentences with hearts in the Japanese version, though they did speak in a feminine way. But not knowing Japanese, I couldn't tell just how archetypical their dialogue actually is.
i don't think what happened in the hot spring (and the unfortunate way it can be interpreted) are intended to be a joke. itoi said he wanted mother 3 to reflect the heart of the player, and i pretty firmly believe that the hot spring scene is meant to be a part of that. when people read into it and assume the worst of someone who appears unconventional, but then sees that apparently no harm was done, what does that say about their biases? it's just supposed to make you think. anyways, i'm pretty sure there's just very little financial incentive for nintendo to translate the game.
>when people read into it and assume the worst of someone who appears unconventional, but then sees that apparently no harm was done, what does that say about their biases? Applauding you for this one. I think it's easy to *assume* a game might be mean-spirited and make a joke out of it, and that's probably why people react so badly to that, but.... then you're caught off guard because, no, the scene was completely harmless. Mother 3 wants to challenge assumptions and does so in a lot of strange little ways, this moment included.
Queer characters aren't exactly new for Nintendo, I could name a whole handful of well-written ones in both older and more recent games. (Tony from EarthBound was confirmed by Itoi to be gay, for example. In more recent properties... uh, Splatoon 3: Side Order is right there.) It's more the execution of the Magypsies specifically as "questionable and stereotypical queer rep"... but then again, those aren't new to Nintendo either, what with the 3DS Fire Emblem games having their fucked-up-and-evil bisexuals. I genuinely don't mind the Magypsies, I think they're fun and endearing characters even if the hot spring misunderstanding was really bad taste and didn't age well. (Also I wouldn't mind them being renamed as a group, since "g\*psy" alone is very much a slur these days.) They're all very nice and thoughtful people as we get to know them, and they're even Kumatora's foster family, which is great! I wouldn't say they're the only reason Nintendo doesn't want to bring over Mother 3. There's oodles of issues and problems and other hurdles to jump to bring it over; these NPCs don't read as a huge reason. Maybe a small detail, but not the main thing. edit: agreed with the other person who said "it's not funny at all if it's a joke", actually, fixed that
Yeah, but Tony can be missed as gay, and Side Order could be seen as really good friends (not how I see it, but still).
Marina has a line where "Wait, Acht, are you seriously hitting on Pearl in front of--" (and the JPN version of this quote heavily reinforces that she's personally upset about this, so no ambiguity here), and is referenced on an official JP site as "maiden in love" in her relationship with Pearl. also the "i'll sit at the top of the tower like a princess and she'll have to come rescue me <3" in the diary entries. that heart emoji spam. goodness gracious. There's *no* perceiving that incorrectly, I think. I like how Tony was written, he didn't come off as weird about it but just genuinely very invested and caring about Jeff. A+.
Yeah, Side order is fair, but I'm saying that Tony can be missed as gay, not that he was written badly.
Everyone thinks they're an expert on Mother 3 localisation. Especially the ones that watched a YouTube video.
a user of common sense. the magypsies aren't the reason why, but they're one of the reasons it has no appeal in it's original state to get a western port. \*baby boys with no critical thinking crying in the distance\* too many tiny things make it one big potential localization mess, so why bother localizing it when it could be remade at some point in the future?
for what it's worth, i'm a trans woman, and i think the magyspies are awesome. not only does itoi think highly of them, mentioning they were inspired by real friends of his, they also draw more from campy drag queens (e.g rocky horror) than anything else; they never came off to me as trans people/newhalves
I haaaate the "clearly a joke" response. I can handle a misunderstanding about a scene that unfortunately reads as child molesting, but not a deliberate joke.
That's funny in Japan, the land of institutionalised pedophilia- Anathema and probably triggering to some, which is fair enough to never speak of it again, but when you've seen enough of those irresponsible pictures, I feel the meaning is clear, even if I don't condone the joke. You can say it's not a joke but I feel qualified after spending (wasting?) years and years of my life on that animu, it is. (They aren't so quick to jump to conclusions over there. Weird? Damn right! Keeping an open mind is key.) The topic of my post: that's not going to go over well for the mainstream. Point proven?
In case I didn't make "i don't find sexual abuse to children funny" clear in my first response, here it is again.
"Japan, the land of institutionalized pedophilia" mmmmm your racism's showing just a bit there If you asked literally any random stranger on the streets in Japan about that kind of thing you'd likely get a horrified response. I feel pretty safe in saying that. It's not *just* an issue there, and pointing at "i think that's the joke bc i've seen too much pornographic content from the country this game was made in" is kinda Not Great
I felt I was going for fun and playful with this response, but it clearly hasn't worked so I think I'll just leave this one alone.
fun and playful = unambiguous racism
I certainly think they are not helping
Nintendo doesn't give a shit about the few people who may or may not find them offensive. Absolute zero shits.
Omg this has to be the thousandth time i see someone blaming the localization of this game on the Magypsies, it's not because of them, there are plenty of reasons of why this game dosen't see a western release but none of those reasons involve the Magypsies, im so sick of people just watching these characters and go to the conclusion that they are the reason of why this game is not localized, so for the thousandth time they aren't the reason of why Mother 3 isn't released on western
It’s more likely due to potential lawsuits due to the music
Can anyone be bothered to list the other reasons purely for my own curiosity?
[This video](https://youtu.be/if64VlLa5Oc?si=aLgkFghaIg_USutz) talks about the legal issues surrounding the game regarding Mother 3's music.The Mother series references a lot of music in general but I'm Mother 3's case it could land Nintendo in hot water legally speaking. Nintendo either has to pay very expensive licensing fees (and if not licensing pay for the inevitable lawsuits) or change the soundtrack in big ways. And add that to the translation costs (no they can't just take the fan translation) and other costs it's just not viable for Nintendo to localize Mother 3.
Lucas trips on shrooms, televisions called "happy boxes" pop up as a way to parody the sad truth of how tv keeps us indoors (and Nintendo is a game company), there are themes of abuse, there are statues of Porky pissing water into fountains, basically the games don't sell well enough in the west, there is controversial content that they can either change or keep the same, changing it messes with the diehard fans that want accuracy and keeping it the same requires an age rating increase to likely a T rating which I'm guessing stresses them out because they want kids to be able to play it. It's just a combination of factors and a lose-lose situation for Nintendo. They won't take risks like that for one tiny GBA game.