Two teams make one in ongoing quest for a Mother 3 translation

Destructoid is no stranger to the myriad Mother 3 translation dramabombs that have dropped since the game’s original Japanese (and nowhere else) release of the game, mostly due to my corrupt influence. But now we’ve got something new to share with you — very exciting news, but not so much in the ’round-the-water-cooler sort of gossip way that previous breaks had been: the two major groups, Starmen.net and Mother3.org, have joined up to work towards a goal of one solid, single translation. With the key players of both teams in tow, this new collective hopes to have a finished translation sooner than either team would have completed individually.

It also seems that the translation isn’t as far along as some of the blokes at Mother3.org would have us believe. Reid (by night known as reidman), while cluing me into some of the latest developments of the Starmen.net Siege project, was also good enough to update me (and his site) with the news. From his post:

The not-so-good news is that the translation isn’t nearly as far along as many people seem to believe. sblur has made good progress on the hacking, and many of the ‘small things’ like item names, descriptions, menus, etc. have been carefully translated by Doctor Fedora. Unfortunately, even with our combined translations, we still haven’t made huge amounts of progress on the meat of the translation — the game dialogue.

But with two teams working towards a completed translation, there’s hope of seeing some finished product sometime in the (relatively) near future — noting, of course, that the announcement of a US localization of Mother 3 in any capacity would put a stop to the project entirely. And why not? That’s the ultimate goal, after all — to bring Shigesato Itoi’s incomparable Mother series to other territories.

Say what you like about the game, but you simply can’t dismiss the dedication of this community. It’s been just over 12 years since we last saw Mother in the States and they’re still going strong. Speaking of which, I’ll have a lot more to tell you about Siege in the coming days, so keep your eyes peeled.

[Wee update: While there’s a shot for a before-2008 release of the translation and the team is hopeful, it is by no means an official timetable, and you shouldn’t go banking your hopes on the stupid misconceptions of an editor who drinks too much. It’ll be done when it’s done, yo — but it looks like it’ll be getting done a lot sooner than it would have otherwise.]