Mother 3 is Fantastic. Captain America? Meh.
Of course I would finally return to GGG! on the same day that Kyle responded to our inactivity — I’ve never been known for my timing. But regardless of his post and not knowing just how much I’ll be able to contribute in the future, I just want to add… Mother 3 is a fantastic game. And I wouldn’t have known about it if it wasn’t for GoodGameGet. Well, I would have heard of it, but I wouldn’t have cared and I wouldn’t have played it. For that I owe GGG! so much.
I really understand how Kyle is feeling, though. Sometimes it’s so easy to get caught up in the hype and commercialism, not to mention the “professional enthusiasm”, but then just end up feeling like your soul is being sucked dry. All entertainment industries are like this. They exist to try to get you to consume easily and cheaply produced crap because of your interest in the good stuff. I won’t claim to know where exactly Kyle’s head is at right now, but I think we’ve all been there to some extent.
Seriously, if I hear one more person try to convince me that the Captain America game is worth “checking out” I’ll go nuts. It might not be a bad game, but there are so many games that have been released in the last thirty years that most people haven’t played, cost much less than $60 and are far more worth our time than a stupid Captain America movie tie-in. Games like… Mother 3.
Or the sublime Retro Game Challenge. Seriously, go buy that game, it’s like $15 now.
But then, I think, we just have to stop and embrace what it is we love so much about this hobby. Mother 3 is the perfect example. I can’t read a word of Japanese. If it wasn’t for the fan translation — or the passion others had for the game — I would never have played it.
The original Cave Story is another great example of this, and all kinds of people still love it enough to encourage remakes on other platforms. Just today, I received this fantastic case made by Etsy artisan whataboutki. All his work celebrates what’s great about games.
I guess I don’t really know why I’m writing this post. Partly, I’d love to encourage everyone to go find a classic you haven’t experienced and relish something that played a role in making our favorite hobby great. Partly I wanted to rant about stupid movie tie-ins. But mostly I wanted to say, “Hey Kyle, I hear you, man.” And I think I’ll go play some more Mother 3. I haven’t finished it yet, which is just a shame… I think I’ll do something about that tonight.
- Andy
Mother Creator Tweets - Shigesato Itoi On Twitter
While everything he says looks like this:
もうひとりITとナイスな距離感をお持ちの方に電話取材。「ほしいような気がする。ロケのときなんかに‥‥そうね、ひまつぶし」「旅行のとき？‥‥持っていかないような気がする」「家では‥‥パソコン見ちゃうかな。夕ごはんどうするの？はい‥‥はい」と、そんな感じの樋口可南子さんでしたぷう〜。
And he’ll probably only talk about things like the iPad and his cute dog, Bouillon*:
Maybe someday, just maybe, he’ll say something that looks like this:
今日の「ほぼ日」で、赤瀬川原平さんせっど。 MOTHER 4 っぱり「お札」って「複数が命」というか‥‥。
- Kyle
via Earthbound Central
*Bouillon has his on web store with his own branded merch! I want my dogs to have official merchandise!
Fantasy Life
The newest collaboration from Mother 3 developer, Brownie Brown and the Professor Layton series creators, Level-5 is a fairly original sounding RPG.
Fantasy Life will be a “slow RPG” according to Anoop Gantayat’s translation on Japanese gaming news site, Andriasang (who have been covering the Level-5 Vision 2009 conference.)
As Eric Caoili of Tiny Cartridge pointed out, the game looks incredibly similar to Mother 3, but of course, that’s probably because the same art team at Brownie Brown that worked on Mother 3 is working on Fantasy Life.
The game doesn’t focus on combat, but instead focuses on living the lives of various characters that you create, and by playing through the game multiple times, experiencing multiple “small endings” to hopefully collect enough information to piece together the bigger picture.
Level-5 merely said the game doesn’t focus on combat, so does that mean it doesn’t have any combat at all and is a game purely based on interaction? That’s a possibility as Level-5 did mention two stats your characters would have based on your decisions. Richness, which measures your money and wealth, and Happiness, which of course measures your happiness.
High happiness levels, means more charisma, and Level-5 says that the happier your character is, the more likely that character will be able to speak to more people that might have not wanted to talk to that character before.
Fantasy Life boasts some rad production values as well, since Final Fantasy composer Nobou Uemetsu will be composing the entire score for the game. Oh how, I wish the DS had better sound.
The game looks absolutely awesome, yet little is known about the interactivity that will go on within it’s world.
- Kyle
Shigesato Itoi Has An Online Music Store
I’m really not trying to post three back to back Mother 3 related posts, but I really can’t help myself when I find awesome stuff like this.
I was browsing Mother creator, Shigesato Itoi’s website when I found a link to this Mother 3 inspired online music store. The background music for the store is absolutely awesome, and the store itself has so much to click on, read, and do.
It’s a bummer that I don’t understand Japanese because it looks so exciting. I was, however, able to find a couple of really cool easter eggs in the store. One being the Mother 3+ soundtrack and the other being an ultra cute Clay Man action figure. Both of the finds are featured in the above screen capture.
You can visit the store, here.