Thank you, Polinym!
SupremeKirbo, I’ll look into that MaternalBound thing, but the reason I was trying to use “Perfect Edition” as a starting point instead of MaternalBound is because I’m worried about having to undo all the things MaternalBound added into the game which were not originally there, and MaternalBound added a LOOOOOT of stuff.
For the record, I’m not de-localizing the game. I am a serious narrative analyst in the process of doing a deep-diving, comprehensive narrative analysis of the MOTHER trilogy on the level of Giovanni’s trailblazing work you can find throughout his posting history on the forums here, but I’ve had no luck finding a true-to-Itoi localization to play through and show off as I analyze it, so that’s the angle from which I’m approaching this project. All heretofore English versions of the game, both official and fan-made, have made destructive changes to very meaningful dialogue and names of things, all of which spoil various important details both large and small in the grand tapestry of Itoi’s finely crafted web of deeply layered symbolism, intricately interconnected themes, and clues to the hidden aspects of the narrative which can only be noticed upon close inspection of the original text and introspective reflection upon it. I’m working on an enormous trilogy-spanning analysis which will blow the lid off of the series and finally show everyone once and for all how much is really going on beneath the surface of these games, Itoi’s beautiful magnum opus which 99% of people completely misunderstand and underestimate on a narrative level, largely because of the series’s marred history of sloppy localizations and spotty release history in the West causing things which were supposed to be clear in Itoi’s original work to become unclear or even impossible to figure out for Western audiences. My patch will be a re-localization, a marriage of the important details not carried over into English from MOTHER 2 being corrected, the unimportant details from EarthBound being retained, and shoddy localization choices being re-localized for improvement.
I’ll give you a few examples of what I mean.
Marcus Lindblom, EarthBound’s localizer, wishes he could go back and change Ness’s father’s “work to exhaustion when you’re young” line to instead say “make hay while the sun shines.” The original Japanese line was a proverb the Japanese know but Westerners don’t, so it needs localization, but the official localization was rushed and poorly handled. I’m going to make Marcus Lindblom’s wish come true by implementing this change only the power of hindsight gave him after it was too late.
Buzz Buzz officially, canonically looks like a rhinoceros beetle, not a bee, and since his sprite is so small, the word choices the characters use to refer to him (Porky asking if we can hear the sound of a rhinoceros beetle and Buzz Buzz himself saying “A rhinoceros beetle I am not”) are the only things players have to understand what he looks like in-game. He’s a unique case where the text description is doing the work of painting his appearance in players’ heads for them in place of a visually telling sprite, and he is canonically shown in official artwork to be rhinoceros beetle-esque, not bee-esque. This is highly important because, on top of being incredibly strong for their size (which Buzz Buzz is, hence his fitting appearance as this type of beetle), rhinoceros beetles are associated in Eastern culture with being heroic, as opposed to spiders which are associated with being sneaky and conniving. This contrasts Buzz Buzz as Ness’s insectoid aid at the beginning of the game against Porky in his spider mech as Giygas’s insectoid aid at the end of the game, two time travelers who show up to aid their own chosen “horse in the race” in a perfectly bookended thematic connection. When you make Buzz Buzz a bee, you lose all of that symbolism and pristine thematic layering.
“Everdred’s” Japanese name is Tonchiki-san, which means something along the lines of “Mr. Dimwit”, “Mr. Numbskull”, or “Mr. Meathead”, and in order to properly localize the name to retain its meaning of idiocy while simultaneously making it sound like a legitimate last name instead of a straightforward, on-the-nose insult for a name, I’m going to call him “Mr. Thick”, a perfect representation of his Japanese name which also sounds natural to Western ears, because “thick” means “slow” or “stupid” and “Thick” is a Western last name. This moronic name of his is important to the character’s thematic connection with Duster in MOTHER 3, another thief with a heart of gold and a bum leg (remember that Mr. Thick jumps down from his roof and sprains his ankle) who’s constantly called a moron right to his face and whose Japanese stage name is Tamekichi, the latter half of which is a syllable swap of the “chiki” portion of “Tonchiki” to help drive the echoing similarities home. Itoi often mixes syllables of words around for jokes or thematic connection throughout the series, and this is just one of many examples. Losing the meaning of Mr. Thick’s Japanese name by changing it to something irrelevant to stupidity makes it harder to catch the thematic connection between him and Duster, and thus it’s important to retain from Itoi’s original work.
Itoi is on record saying there was no meaningful reason behind why he made the iron statues an octopus and a doll, he just wanted to use something strange and unusual as a video game obstacle that made use of puns when combined with the machines that erase them. However, since the Japanese pun between these statues doesn’t make sense in English, I’m keeping the Pencil and Eraser statues from EarthBound, because they fit Itoi’s criteria perfectly: strange, unusual video game obstacles that make use of puns when combined with the machines that erase them.
A Happy Happyism cultist in the village states that when the world is painted blue, a happy country can be established, but this was erroneously changed to a “peaceful” country in the Western release. Happiness and peace are not the same things, and the cult wants to achieve happiness through violent means, not peaceful means. Even the cultists themselves are supposed to be called Violent Cultists, not Insane Cultists, in order to help drive this point home. These are things which need to be changed back to Itoi’s original wording in order to get the right message across.
Speaking of Happy Happy Village, the guy who screams for no reason behind the desk at the foot of Carpainter’s stairs is supposed to be yelling “intruder” and not knowing what else to do beyond that. The localized line is completely senseless and baffling while the original line makes actual sense, making it a particularly bad localization choice, so it needs correcting.
When Ness finds Paula in the cabin, she’s supposed to say that if he hadn’t shown up, she’d have started crying, which shows her to be an emotionally vulnerable and sensitive character, but this was changed to her saying she’d have had to bust out of there, which undermines Itoi’s sensitive characterization for her in favor of some macho girl power garbage, and this is further undermined with the way her line about her PSI power being pretty dangerous was changed to say “pretty deadly”. Itoi is vehemently against killing enemies in games because he sees it as tainting our souls and humanity to think it’s okay to pretend to kill those who move against you instead of working to save them and better them. He would never have Paula saying her power is deadly, and her saying it’s dangerous shows how sensitive she is with the knowledge that she has to be very careful with how powerful her abilities are precisely so as not to kill enemies with them.
The “Cave Boy” enemies are supposed to be called Bigfoot. This is important to correct for the thematic cohesion of Winters being a place full of tabloid-style mysteries: Stonehenge, a lake-dwelling plesiosaur, Bigfoot, aliens…
These examples are just the smallest tip of the iceberg, but that’s the kind of project this patch is going to be: the perfect blend of honoring Itoi’s creative intent and giving the game the localization it deserves. It’s to be the end-all, definitive English version of MOTHER 2.
So, you see what I mean: big ideas, huge creative inspiration, but no technological know-how to bring it to fruition, hence why I’m here. Thank you both very much for your help. I’ll start digging into things sometime within the next week, and if I run into any snags, I’ll be in touch.
