MOTHER 3 Fan Translation English v1.

1 Released July 16, 2009 This is an unofficial translation of MOTHER 3, a Japanese RPG released for the Game Boy Advance in 2006. MOTHER 3 is the sequel to the 1995 Super NES RPG, EarthBound. Please support the MOTHER/EarthBound series by purchasing official merchandise, including the official translation if one is ever released. For more details about this translation and the project, please visit: http://mother3.fobby.net ========================================================================= HOW TO USE THE TRANSLATION PATCH: 1. Unzip the contents of this zip file to a folder/directory. You should find the following files: * * * * * mother3_windows.exe mother3_macosx.app mother3_linux mother3.ups mother3.txt (that's this file)

2. Second, you will need to obtain a ROM of the Japanese version of MOTHER 3. This clearly steps into promoting piracy, so you will have to find this on your own. Search engines are useful for this sort of thing. Once you have the ROM, ma e sure it is unzipped/uncompressed. The file should be 32 MB in size. Put this file in the same folder as the files from above. 3. If you're using Windows, run the mother3_windows.exe file. If you're using a Mac, run the mother3_macosx.app file. If you're using Linux, run the mother3_linux file. (This was compiled under Ubuntu, if it doesn't wor , try manually applying the UPS patch with something li e byuu's tsu uyomi UPS utility. Also don't worry about the fact that the program still says "version 1.0". We couldn't get anyone to recompile a 32-bit version for this new patch version, but the program will still patch the 1.1 patch despite what it says) Note that the patching process may ta e a while on and old computer or if you're running it off of a flash drive. For most people, it should only ta e a matter of seconds to patch. 4. The patching utility is very simple. Simply tell it where your ROM file is, and then hit "Apply patch!"

If your ROM is a bad dump or if something is wrong with the ROM file, the patching utility will inform you of this. Ma e sure you have a correct dump of the original Japanese ROM, and that it hasn't been modified in any way. 5. Once the patch has been applied successfully, you're now ready to play the game in English! You can use a GameBoy Advance emulator of your choice, or, if you have the proper hardware, you can play it on the handheld or console of your choice. For details on the latter, please see the project page. NOTE: If you're using a recent build of VBA-M, you can s ip steps 3 and 4. because the VBA-M team recently added soft-patching support for UPS patches. If you don't understand what this means, just ignore it and use the normal patch procedure listed above. ========================================================================= TROUBLESHOOTING: Q: I can't save my game! What's wrong? Help! A: This happens primarily with Mac emulators. There are several possible fixes to this: - If you're using Mac VBA 1.7.4, perhaps try 1.7.2 instead. - If that still doesn't wor , try another emulator. - Trying fiddling with emulator's preferences. Setting the flash save size to 64K might get the game to save properly. - Try downloading someone else's save file and putting it wherever your save files normally go. This seems to fix the saving problem for some people. - If you're not on a Mac, try using the Save Fix option of the GBATA utility. It shouldn't be too hard to find GBATA. - If all else fails, try applying the save fix patch that's available at the translation project site. Some flash carts also have saving problems, and this save fix patch seems to wor equally as well on Mac emus and flash carts. Q: The patching utility says my ROM is bad/corrupt, but it can't be! A: There do exist bad dumps of the ROM out there, so if you wind up with a bad copy, try getting the ROM from somewhere else. Q: The patching utility says it can't find mother3.ups, but I see mother3.ups right there! A: You need to unzip the .zip file fully. Running the patcher program directly from the .zip file won't wor . Consult your .zip program instructions if necessary. Q: I tried using the patch on a ROM with the old menu patch/the 1.0 translation patch. But it won't wor . What's up with that? A: This translation patch can only be applied to the unmodified Japanese ROM. Q: I double-clic on the .zip file but nothing happens!

A: If your computer doesn't have .zip file support (most computers in the last 10+ years have support by default), loo on Google for things li e 7-Zip or WinZip. Q: The game gets stuc at the intro screen. Help! A: You can s ip this normally by pressing any button. If you're using an emulator, eep in mind that you might need to set up what eyboard eys act as what GBA buttons. Q: I can't get the battle combo system to wor right! Help! A: To get combos in battle, you have to tap the A Button in time with the beat of the music. Some songs are more difficult to combo to than others. Also, because of the nature of emulation, the precise timing needed may get out of synch. If you're having trouble getting combos on an emulator, try these things: - Try a different emulator, or a different version of your current emulator. - Try turning the emulator's frame-s ip setting to 0. - Close all other programs that you might have open. You might want to restart your computer, too. This may help speed emulation up a bit. Sometimes some songs are just made to be difficult to combo to. There is an item in the game that will let you hear the beat more clearly, and there's another item that will let you practice combos on any enemy you've fought before. Ta e the time to gain some real-life experience to ma e combos easier. Note that combos are NOT needed to get through MOTHER 3. They're just an added bonus for players who ta e the time to master them. Q: The game crashes/freezes on my hardware! A: This may be a hardware-specific problem. See if you can't find more info about your hardware. Consult this forum thread if you have any problems running the translation on actual hardware: http://forum.starmen.net/forum/Games/Mother3FanTranslation/47933 The M3 brand of hardware seems to be the most problematic. Q: The music seems to speed up in the main menu sometimes, but not always. A: This is an issue with VBA-M and other emulators based on VBA-M. The problem doesn't occur on other emulators or actual hardware. Q: I'm experiencing slowdown in the forest area at the beginning of the game. How can I fix this? A: This is actually entirely an emulator issue, and occurs with the original game, too. Try twea ing your settings a bit. It may help a bit, but probably won't fix it completely. Q: I want to use save files from the Japanese version or the old menu patch version, but the names get screwed up in the English version! Help!

A: We made a save file convertor tool for Mac, Windows, and Linux. See the online version of this readme at the project site for a lin to the convertor. ========================================================================= REPORTING BUGS, TYPOS, AND THE LIKE: With something as complex as this, it's almost a given that bugs and other issues will turn up. We tried very hard to get rid of as many problems as possible, but there will surely be some we missed. If you encounter anything bug-li e or find a typo or grammar problem in a rare line of text, you can report it to us below. Also note that the original game had a few bugs of its own - we did fix some of these, but not all. Please note that there are some issues we are already aware of. These problems may be fixed in a future version of the translation. Since we are already aware of the following problems, please do not report them. KNOWN ISSUES: * Name Summary Slowdown: After you've named everything at the start of the game and select "Yes", the screen will fade out. But the audio will sound jittery for a few seconds. This is due to the sprite text welding we had to do to allow more text per screen. We optimized this code a lot, but the fadeout is still not as good as we'd li e. Please overloo this tiny problem for now. This is the only place where this issue occurs. * Menu Text Glitch: If you scroll through main menus too quic ly , sometimes the game won't have time to catch up, and text won't be fully erased. This is pretty rare, and happens mostly when there's a lot of text on the screen but little on the screen you're switching to. In many cases, you almost have to purposely try to ma e it happen. Fixes were attempted, but for now, if this happens, you can easily fix it by switching to another menu or scrolling text up. This glitch will happen in most main menus, not just the item menu, so please don't report it. We hope to fix this in a future patch, if possible. * Temporary Main Text Slowdown: For reasons un nown, main dialogue text might seem to slow down on rare occasion, but will revert to normal speed a few letters later. The cause for this is un nown, and all attempts to figure it out turned up absolutely nothing. This problem is rare and it also fixes itself soon after. We hope to fix this in a future patch, if possible. For now, please overloo this small issue. * Extra/Missing "The": This issue probably doesn't happen anymore, but there's always a possibility for it. Sometimes, during battle, a player's name might have the word "the" in front of it, usually involving a line of text about a status effect. Conversely, the word "the" might not appear before an enemy's name during a status effect line, when it should be there. The Japanese language doesn't use things li e "the", so the original programmers didn't design the game for this, and as a result, enemies and players share many (but not all) battle text lines about status effects. Fixing this will require a ton of wor to reverse engineer the whole battle system, but we hope to have it 100% fixed in a future patch. For now, if you notice any of this stuff, please overloo it. * Gift Box Transformation: Very rarely, when wal ing around, open gift

boxes will turn into status ailment icons. It turns out this is actually a bug in the original Japanese game. * With the VBA-M emulator, sometimes the main menu music will seem to speed up. This is an emulator issue. This doesn't happen on other emulators or actual hardware. NOTE: If you used the debug room at any point in your game, please don't send us any bug reports. Even if it doesn't seem li e the bug is related to the debug room. The debug room is very crazy and does (and neglects to do) many things in RAM that aren't immediately obvious.

If you've encountered a bug that isn't listed above, then send an e-mail about it to: mother3bugs@starmen.net It's important that your bug report be very detailed, so please include the following, if possible/applicable: - A detailed description of the bug - A description of what you were doing in the game just before the bug happened - A picture of the bug in action, if possible - If there was a typo or a grammar issue, first ma e sure *you're* not mista en, then provide the exact sentence that is wrong. Keep in mind that some misspellings are intentional, and some characters spea strangely on purpose. IF YOU'RE PLAYING THE VERSION 1.0 PATCH, PLEASE DO NOT SUBMIT ANY BUG REPORTS! ========================================================================= TRANSLATIONS INTO OTHER LANGUAGES: Currently, there are eight projects to translate the English version of MOTHER 3 into other languages. These translations should ta e significantly less time than the English version, as they are all based on the same hac s and tools. The current projects are as follows: SPANISH - LATIN AMERICA (ESPA OL LATINOAMERICANO) http://m3.ohui.net/ SPANISH - SPAIN (CASTELLANO) http://mother3spanish.blogspot.com/ PORTUGUESE - BRAZIL (PORTUGU S BRASILEIRO) http://www.earthboundbrasil.com/ PORTUGUESE - PORTUGAL (PORTUGU S EUROPEU) http://www.mother3pt.blogspot.com/ FRENCH (FRAN AIS)

http://mother3enfrancais.blogspot.com/ GERMAN (DEUTSCH) http://germanmother3.wordpress.com/ ITALIAN (ITALIANO) http://mother3italia.blogspot.com MALAY (BAHASA MELAYU) http://m3bmtrans.blogspot.com/ ========================================================================= GAMEPLAY QUESTIONS: If you have gameplay questions, there are several resources available: - http://handboo .fangamer.com/ MOTHER 3 Handboo A fan-made guide that's ind of li e the MOTHER 3 equivalent of the old EarthBound Player's Guide. Filled with tons of awesome! The online version is free, but you can also order an actual print version of it to have at all times! - http://wal through.starmen.net/mother3/ Starmen.Net MOTHER 3 Wal through A detailed step-by-step wal through with accompanying screenshots, maps, enemy stats, item lists, s ill info, and tons more stuff. - http://forum.starmen.net Starmen.Net Forum The Starmen.Net forums are pac ed with EarthBound series fans, and you're bound to have your questions answered quic ly on the MOTHER 3 message boards. - http://wal through.starmen.net/mother3/routesummary.php This is a bare-bones wal through, telling you what to do if you're stuc , but without revealing any story or spoiling anything in advance. ========================================================================= EXTRA GOODIES: For the translation, we added a few extra features not found in the Japanese game. These extras are unobtrusive and will only be found by completionist-type players. - In the game, there is an item called the Battle Memory. This eeps a record of every enemy you've fought. If you manage to completely fill this log up, a silver star will appear on the Battle Memory screen as a badge of your greatness. - Similary, if you find every enemy AND log all the possible front-facing and bac -facing/alternate sprites for all enemies, a gold star will appear on the Battle Memory screen. - There are a few other hidden features, but you'll have to discover them on your own. They're sure to please, for those who try hard enough.

Note that no new enemies were added in the translation. No unused bosses were added. No unused music was made accessible. No new areas were made accessible. Only the extras listed above were included. If you'd li e to mess around with unused content from the game, see this topic about hidden/unused stuff: http://forum.starmen.net/forum/Mother/3_GameHelp/47543/first There will also be detailed discussion about the unused content later on in the online translation notes/commentary. (See below for details) ========================================================================= WHO WE ARE: The translation project was mostly a two-man team consisting of Jeffman and Tomato. Jeffman just entered college this year, and is majoring in electrical engineering. Tomato is a professional Japanese to English translator and co-founder of Starmen.Net. Both also helped create a community around hac ing the EarthBound ROM years ago. Additional help was done by many generous people, most of whom are still in school and aspiring to be programmers and translators once they graduate. This project has given a lot of hands-on experience to everyone involved. ========================================================================= THE PROJECT: Below is a list of the wor that went into producing this translation. Many things may be missing, and the trial-and-error process of most of it is left out, as are all the fixes required due to single hac s brea ing others. About 95% of everything listed here was done by Jeffman and Tomato. This was all done in spare time, while juggling things li e full-time jobs, school, life stuff, relationships, sleep schedules, etc. Translation for this particular project really began around June 2007, and major hac ing began around October 2007. TRANSLATING: - Main script, ~800 pages - Battle text, ~60 pages - Character names, 300 lines - Playable/assist character names, 16 lines - Default names, 69 lines - Item names, 256 lines - Enemy (+misc) names, 329 lines - PSI names, 100 lines - Item descriptions, ~11 pages - Enemy descriptions, ~25 pages - PSI descriptions, ~5 pages - S ill descriptions, ~1 page - Map names, 1000 lines - Menus 1, ~11 pages - Menus 2, ~14 pages - Menus 3, ~2 pages - Sound player trac list, 250 lines

- Misc sound player text, 6 lines - Misc text, 50 lines - Status text, 52 lines EDITING/FORMATTING: - Main script went through a second draft for text improvement, translation fixes, etc. and was also all formatted and polished by hand, just as Shigesato Itoi did with the Japanese version, which left Japanese reviewers in awe. Draft 2 too approximately 6-7 wee s. - After Draft 2, a full, very-detailed playthrough of the game to find context issues, bugs, typos, etc. was done before moving on to the last hac s and the final testing. - All other text also went through revisions, and, in the case of things li e names and descriptions, were all tested over and over in-game to ma e sure everything was formatted properly and sounding just right. - Some more slight revisions and fixes were made to the text during the final testing phase too. MAIN SCRIPT HACKING: - Figured out how the script is stored * Figured out how individual bloc s are stored/pointed to * Found the many different control codes and figured out what they do - Wrote a custom application to dump the script to a text file - Wrote a custom text editor application that can load, save, and preview the translated text as it would appear in the game - Because some individual lines of text were so big (12 KB+) that they bro e the above app, some extra tric s were needed to ma e these lines get processed properly. - The English script was over two times larger than the Japanese script, so an ASM hac was needed to squeeze the text bac into the game. Without this, major cuts to the script would have been necessary, ma ing the whole game sound li e the old man in Zelda 1. - Even with the above, we were going to be a couple dozen KB over the limit, so we did some more tric ery to save space. After all was said and done, we wound up being under the max limit by about 100 KB in the end. Awesome. - New fonts, ta en straight from EarthBound, were placed into the ROM. - A hac was necessary to ma e the game load 16 lines of font data; the original font was only 10 pixels high. This also required changing the way the font was stored in-game, so extra hac s were needed to load from the proper locations. For technical and layout reasons elsewhere, the main font could only be 11 pixels tall. - Because fonts were now 16x16, the text positioning on screen had to be changed. This was ind of tric y, they used hardware VBlan tric s for this. - A new variable width font routine needed to be written for the main text. - The game allocates only enough memory for 21 letters per line. When exceeded, the game would crash horribly. To fix this, we had to change how the game loads the text from the ROM and how it places it in RAM. - Somewhat related to the above, the game would seem to ignore control codes after the 21 letter limit was passed. This turned out to be due to how the game handled each line of text in RAM. This was fixed. - The game only allocated enough memory for 42 letters of main script text to be on screen at once. Fixing this was hell, but eventually we tric ed the game into using only two "slots" and constantly swapping bac and forth. - Even with the above fix, the game would still stop displaying text every so often, and the cause for this had to be found and fixed. Had to do with the game not clearing out RAM properly.

- Different text speeds handle text slightly differently, so this required a few extra hac s to ma e things display properly. This was tough, and there's still one tiny bug, but it's very rare and usually not even noticeable. - The game would try to do an auto-linefeed every so often, and this had to be illed. - Even with these fixes, memory limitations meant we could only have li e 40 letters per line, which is only half the screen across in some cases, so some RAM rearranging was necessary. Eventually we were able to allocate 250 letters per line - which is more than we'd ever need, since the GBA screen isn't even 250 pixels wide :P - Custom control code hac s were made so that items would have "a", "an", "the", "some" (or nothing at all, in some cases) printed in front of them. Not even the EarthBound programmers bothered to do this, which is why items in EarthBound don't start with vowels, except in cases where they forgot at the last second. Because of how strangely the game is programmed, this hac had to be redone in many different places, very annoying. - Routines involving names of nameable things (players, fav food, etc.) had to be hac ed to allow for the new longer lengths. Easy-ish, but still constantly annoying. - Since we reorganized the font, the routine that converted numbers to strings had to be hac ed to display numbers properly. - Main script menu choices were very strange and after trying to figure it out for a while, we basically rewrote those display functions. - Three-choice menus also had to be hac ed to display and act properly. - Four+ choice menus were a huge pain to hac to display properly. These mostly appear in the debug room, but since the debug room itself is such a big part of the post-playthrough experience, we went ahead and fixed it too. What a pain. - The routine that prints PSI names had to be hac ed to 1. display the name properly, even if it was at the longest length possible, and 2. to ma e it turn into PK/PSI + space + name + space + proper Gree symbol. This was all ind of tric y, as there was very limited RAM and we had also reorganized the font earlier. Even EarthBound didn't go to such lengths, which is why you'll get things li e "Roc ina" instead of "Roc in a" in that game. - Bloc 0, a strange bloc of text in the main script, had its own problems. * Bloc 0 needed its own variable width font routine, even though the rest of the main script already had one * In scrolling text, the name control codes somehow bro e, so this had to be fixed. I'm wondering if this might've been an anti-piracy thing. * Scrolling text text loading had to be hac ed, just as the main script hac ing needed to be. Many things needed re-doing for Bloc 0. Very annoying. * Scrolling text would often ma e sprites blin every few seconds. Fixing this required some tric ery. * Scrolling text was repositioned slightly to allow for more text per line . * [CENTER] codes in Bloc 0 had to be hac ed to wor properly * Some more name-length things had to be hac ed, which bro e other things, which also needed to be fixed (which is where "Welcome to th :|" comes from) * Bloc 0 cut scene text loading routines had to be hac ed so the game would load text properly and position it properly. In this game, a letter's location in memory determined its position on screen, which is a huge huge pain, especially when trying to expand text and when a VWF is involved.

* Misc. ey items li e the Stin bug Memory use Bloc 0 text, and these had to be extensively hac ed to wor properly with all the new English text. The game would crash horribly or cause very strange things to happen, including video glitches resulting in Moonside-li e stuff. BATTLE HACKING: - Battle text stuff had to be figured out * The location/storage method/pointer system had to be figured out * Had to figure out the many different control codes used in battle * Had to locate other misc. battle-related text bloc s - All the battle text bloc s had to be dumped to a text file - Because there was so much more English text, the battle text had to be relocated elsewhere in the ROM. - Even after doing this, there was so much text that the pointers couldn't address it all, so a hac that did some pointer math magic was needed to fix it. - The font-loading routine had to be hac ed to load the new font letters from their new positions, since we now used a new-sized font. It also had to be made to load the new # of lines per letter. - The text-erasing routine had to be hac ed to only erase the proper amount. The game would cause strange graphical glitches in the player names otherwise. This hac also sped up text refreshing in battle menus too, which was a nice plus. - The game only had enough memory for 40 letters of battle text on the screen at once. Fixing this was assumed impossible, but a fix was figured out anyway, allowing for infinite text per line. - Very closely connected to the above, a variable width font routine had to be added to the main battle text. - Things li e auto-line brea s every 20 letters had to be illed. - Because the original game didn't do it how we needed it to, we also had to write our own new "move text one row up" routine. - A custom routine to ma e battle text do auto-word wrap was added. That's word-wrap, not letter-wrap. The original game didn't have this, but because something similar was done for EarthBound, it seemed fitting. And it loo s really great and professional in action, too. - Code for several battle text lines had to be hac ed to wor with English word order. (item stolen text, enemy encountered text, etc.) - A hac that determines the # of enemies at the start of battle was added, allowing the game to say "and cohort" or "and cohorts" at the intro text. - A hac that determines the proper pronoun to use for an enemy was added. - A hac that determines the proper article to use for an enemy was added. - A hac that determines the proper article to use for an item was added. - Custom control codes to use the above new hac s were added. This ma es the text much more natural and fluid. Our hope was that it would be natural enough that people wouldn't even realize we had to hac that stuff in. EarthBound's localizers did a few of these things, but for this project, we went much further. - Since enemies and players sometimes share battle text, a hac had to be added so the game wouldn't add articles before player names. This used to cause things li e "The Flint attac ed!" to happen. - A variable width font needed to be hac ed for the battle menus. - Had to fix things so that items without the Equip (E) symbols were positioned properly in menus. - Since we reorganized the font, the routine that converted numbers to strings had to be hac ed to display numbers properly. - When your inventory is full and an enemy leaves behind an item, the programmers programmed all those routines separately. So most everything you see above had to be done a second time just for these

few lines of text. - Late in the game, there are some special 3-line text boxes. The text display routines for these were all separate from the main routine. So most everything you see above had to be done yet again, for a third time. - In the final battle is special text without any boxes at all. This was programmed separately from everything else, so we had to redo everything above yet again. Argh! - 8-letter player names had to be hac ed to wor properly. Other long nameable stuff had to be hac ed to wor properly as well. - The character name-centering routine had to be hac ed to position the names in the HP/PP boxes properly. - The routine that prints PSI names had to be hac ed to 1. display the name properly, even if it was at the longest length possible, and 2. to ma e it turn into PK/PSI + space + name + space + proper Gree symbol. This was all ind of tric y, as there was very limited RAM and we had also reorganized the font earlier. - Item descriptions that had control codes for displaying status icons (most status-healing items, basically) didn't appear how we wanted them to in battle, so a hac was made to display slightly alternate versions of these eight or so descriptions in battle. - A hac for the Recollection Bell was needed, so that it would use the proper palette. MISC OUTSIDE HACKING: - All inds of text stuff had to be figured out * NPC name text had to be located and figured out * Misc text had to be located and figured out - The above text had to be dumped to files - A reinserter for the above had to be programmed - The character name-centering routine had to be hac ed to position the names in the HP/PP boxes properly. The names were also moved up a pixel to loo better with the new font. - The routines that determine the lengths of the gray names boxes had to be hac ed. These were very weird and there were multiple instances of the code, all of which had to be found and hac ed. Very strange stuff. - The positioning of the names in the gray box were twea ed a tiny bit. Also, the 8x8 font loading routine needed to be hac ed a tiny bit to load with the new 8x8 font properly. - Sometimes the game loads names for the gray boxes from the enemy name list. Some of these names are long and caused problems, so we had to write a hac to ma e the game load from a list of abbreviated enemy names. - Several things had to be hac ed to allow for 8-letter player names. This caused some problems with some main script routines, so some untangling was necessary. - Outside menu text had to be hac ed to load the font properly - A VWF had to be written for outside menu text - Outside menu text had to be hac ed to display in the new, proper locations. This was all hard-coded and annoying. - Some of the Sleep Mode text was annoying. The game only allowed for a limited number of letters, and not enough for something professional in English. This had to be wor ed around. SOUND PLAYER HACKING: - Various text had to be figured out * The list of actual song names had to be found, its format understood, etc. * The bloc of misc sound player text also had to be found, its storage method understood, etc.

- The above all had to be dumped to text files - Reinsertion code had to be programmed - Because of the lac of space, the translated song text and the misc sound player text all had to be relocated in the ROM - Hac ing code to load the new font properly was needed, much li e everywhere else in the game - A VWF was needed, but luc ily the battle menu text and this text seemed to share some of the same code - Code to properly erase text in the sound player was required - Code was needed to ma e misc. sound player text center properly NAMING SCREEN HACKS: - A variety of text bloc s had to be figured out, dumped, etc. - Code to reinsert the text had to be programmed. - These bloc s had to be relocated in the ROM due to their new sizes. - Hac s to allow 8-letter character names were implemented. The Japanese game only allowed for 6 originally. This also allows "Kumatora" to have her full default name. - Hac s to allow 8 letters for your "favorite thing" were implemented. The Japanese game originally only allowed for 6 letters. - A VWF-li e routine to ma e names loo extra professional while entering text was implemented. - A cursor-related bug in the original Japanese game was fixed. - Similar to what was done in EarthBound, the two separate "what is the name of you, the player" screens were made to share the same name. The Japanese version of MOTHER 3 had you first type your name in one Japanese alphabet, and then later on in English letters. Because we only have one alphabet, we made the second one a "confirm your name" type thing, and, because we no longer needed two strings in RAM, we combined them to allow for one extra-long string. This means the player's name can now be 16 letters long, much longer than before. - The letter layout for the second "player's name" naming screen had to be hac ed to use the normal layout, and to automatically load the name given earlier, since it's now a "confirm your name" screen. - To ma e the above wor , some slight text box expansions/graphical twea s were necessary. - Other misc. text repositioning, fixes, etc. were made to ma e all the new text loo and fit better. - The "Don't Care" text on the naming screens where there are no default names needed some special attention to ma e it not appear. - The Japanese version of the game lets you choose from several different alphabet sets; these had to be disabled and the naming screen code had to be hac ed to ma e these things unselectable in all naming screens. - Also had to disable the L/R Button alphabet switching. - The naming letter selection screen had to be figured out, rearranged, and redrawn. - Had to ill the game's auto-formatting on the name summary screen, as it loo ed horrible with English and with a VWF. - After doing the above, fixed coordinates were given for things on the name summary screen, ma ing the English VWF text loo much more professional MAIN MENU HACKS: - Many, many text bloc s had to be located, figured out, dumped, etc. - Code to reinsert all the above had to be programmed. - Most (if not all) of the above text had to be relocated in the ROM due to space limitations. - The main menus use several font-loading routines for some reason, and these all had to be hac ed to use the new font layout and all that. It also had to be hac ed to load the full letters rather than just the

first 10 rows. - The main menus utilize sprite-based text to a considerable degree. The problem here is that the GBA can only have so many sprites due to hardware limitations, and because of other issues, things li e item descriptions could only have 40 or so letters. The use of sprite text throughout the menus is so widespread that a solution to these limitations was needed. And, since a variable width font was also needed, the sprite text routine had to be hac ed considerably, spanning wee s (if not months). This was probably the hardest thing in the game to hac , and if hell had a taste, it would be sprite-flavored. - Even after getting the "sprite-welding" VWF mentioned above wor ing, the game would come to a crawl whenever sprite text was on-screen. Major optimizations and bug fixes were necessary to bring the game bac up to a decent speed. Even after all this additional wor , the game will still sputter as the naming confirmation screen starts to fade out. - Because of how sprites wor , and because sprite text can change suddenly, a weird sort of "text morphing" would occur whenever text changed. It's difficult to explain, but fixing this was another hell of its own. Without this, sprite text would seem to frea out every time a change in text occurred. We needed the text to remain loo ing roc -solid, as a professional release would certainly have. - Certain item descriptions also include status icons in the text, and these interfered with the new sprite text routine. Because of this, the status icon routines also had to be hac ed to play nice. - Even with the display routines wor ing now, the game would still crash and die when various menu messages/lines exceeded various lengths, usually because text was being passed on the stac . So the way the game would copy these messages from ROM to RAM had to be redone. The way the game allocated and cleared this memory also had to be hac ed. Otherwise, some menu messages could have only been li e 10 letters long. Very WTF. In any case, in most of these cases, we were eventually able to ma e it allow 240 or so letters per message. - Misc. menu messages, such as when you're selling an item or buying an item and it as s you to equip the new item, had to be hac ed to use the proper word order and spacing that we use in English. - Some custom control codes were added so that the game would now to use "a", "an", "the", "this", "these", "some", etc. before item names in menu messages. - When you "Use" a piece of equipment, the game tells you it's just a piece of equipment. For the translation, we made this better by having the game tell you what ind of equipment it is specifically. Just a tiny improvement over the original game. - Non-sprite text (item names, s ill names, other misc. stuff) in the main menus needed a VWF written. - The main menus only allowed for 8-letter item names, and 128 letters of non-sprite text on the screen at any one time. This was absolutely unacceptable, so after a wee or two of difficult hac ing, we managed to allow for 21-letter item names and 600+ non-sprite letters on screen at once. Now items can have long names and loo professional. There is one tiny, rare display bug related to this, but if it happens, it will li ely fix itself very shortly after. - Text on the file-loading screen had to be hac ed, and auto-positioning code had to be illed and replaced with positioning that wor ed better with English. Due to repeated code and rare test cases, this had to be repeated a few times. - Text on the file-saving screen also had to be hac ed similarly, but the code was different and was basically its own separate thing. - The file-loading/file-saving screens had to be hac ed to allow for longer map names. This involved changing how the game copied the text from ROM to RAM and what it did with it after that.

- The text speed box in the file-loading screen was expanded slightly. - A crapload of misc. text and labels had to be moved/re-aligned. It was ind of annoying because nearly all of it was hard-coded, and there were multiple instances of everything. - A small hac was made to allow "dare ni?" to become "To whom?" or "On whom?", depending on the context of what's being done. - Similarly, lots of cursor positions were twea ed to ma e things loo better. The cursor would often obscure the first few letters of text otherwise, which was very strange of the original programmers. - Most main menu message text was moved left considerably to allow for more text per line. - A hac was needed to ma e numbers convert to strings properly now that we had a new font layout. - Names in the Battle Memory screen needed their own VWF written. - The text layout for the names on the Battle Memory screen was pretty ugly, so we balanced it out a bit. - The text used for the Battle Memory names used to use the 8x8 font, but we managed to ma e it use the main font for the translation. - Because long enemy names wouldn't fit in the small Battle Memory name box, a hac had to be made to load enemy names from a list of abbreviated names. - Enemy description text was repositioned slightly, to allow for more text in the very limited amount of screen space. - In various menus, hac s had to be made to allow for 8-letter names. - Tons of fixes for obscure submenus and such to allow for the expanded item names. MISC. OTHER HACKING: - At first, we used Goldroad to compile individual hac s, and then a custom program I wrote to insert them all in the right place. This was INCREDIBLY tedious, so luc ily byuu showed up and wrote a THUMB version of his x as assembler over the course of a few wee s or something li e that. We had to port all our hac s over to x as, but this new environment sped the project up incredibly. It was li e a dream come true. - Because the MOTHER 3 ROM is so big, normal IPS patch files wouldn't be usable, as they can only alter files up to 16 MB in size. A new, easy-to-use patch format called UPS (developed by byuu) was created for the project, and UPS patching programs for different operating systems were made. - We had to do some interesting hac magic to ma e room for our assembly hac s, especially after the THUMB version of x as was finished. - The cast roll had to be hac ed to allow for 8-letter nameable character names - The ending cast roll used sprite text, and because of hardware limitations, there weren't enough sprites available to print all the names in English. So we decided to pre-draw all the names rather than use one sprite per letter, li e the original. This involved ma ing a program to automate the process, and some hac ing to ma e it wor . Nameable characters still use the one sprite per letter deal, but luc ily even with expanded 8-letter names, we just barely ma e it under the limit in those cases. - Another hac had to be added to ma e the above wor right in all cases; apparently using the debug menu at any point in the game would result in wrong names being used for the characters, eventually leading to a crash. The debug room is weird. - While doing this hac ing, we made a few more names in the cast roll appear - it seems the original programmers had the same problem we had as above, so they were forced to remove a few names from the cast roll (though the characters still appear). Since our fix allowed more text

at a time, we were able to put those names bac . - Two sound clips, one .4 seconds long and one 1.3 seconds long, were replaced with English clips. They were simple sound effects; had the game had actual voice acting, we would've left them untouched and figured something else out. Figuring out how to replace this data too a bit of time and another program was written to speed up the process. - A disclaimer screen of sorts was added to the beginning, before it shows the company logo screens. The first time you play, you have to wait 2 seconds at least, so that people will hopefully read what it has to say. After that, you can press a button to instantly s ip it. - We modified all our text tools to use a table file, thereby ma ing it much easier for people to translate the game into other languages down the road. - Hac ed the end credits to display the full player name (now that it's much longer than before) properly. Also, because of credits font size issues, we had to write a table-ish hac to ma e lowercase letters act li e uppercase letters, etc. - The font for the above had to be redone, since we had redone the normal font too. Because of limited memory, we couldn't do lowercase letters, which is why the above was necessary. - A hac was added to display a silver star on the Battle Memory screen when all the enemy entries are obtained. - A hac was added to display a gold star on the Battle Memory screen when all the enemy entries + all their alternate sprites are obtained. - Some special stuff related to the above was also added, but it's better to eep the secret secret for now :P - Some extra stuff (also secret) was made accessible in the game. Play the game in great depth and you may eventually discover this stuff. - Had to loo into why the original game can't save or will crash on certain types of hardware, in an attempt to fix this. We decided to leave the fixes for this outside of the patch, in case the fix winds up causing more problems than we started out with. - Wrote a save file convertor so that save files made with the original Japanese game can be used with the translation. Changing the font's layout causes old names to loo and act li e garbage with the translation. The convertor can also auto-convert names to the new format most of the time, if a player used English letters for their names in the Japanese version. - Wrote a program to edit character inventories in save files, for testing purposes. GRAPHICS HACKS: (NOTE: Many changes were made from MOTHER 2 to EarthBound. If you're not aware of what these changes were, see http://tomato.fobby.net/m2eb In many cases, we followed these same patterns for MOTHER 3.) - Since our goal was to ma e the translation very close to what an official one would be li e, we changed the health warning screen at the beginning into its English counterpart. - Most of the text speed/window color confirmation screen was done graphically, and had to be redrawn into an English version. - Data for the chapter title screens had to be figured out, dumped, and then the chapters had to be redrawn, retiled, and put bac in the game, all within the limited amount of space available. - Similar wor had to be done for some overlay text at the start of Chapter 4. There are two instances of this. * The first instance lac ed the space and the dimensions for any usable-loo ing English text, so we simply blan ed out the text. It says "Three Years Later", which is redundant anyway, since a few

seconds later it says "Three Years Later" again. Also, the lac of text ma es the daylight lightning and the thunder more noticeable in this scene. * The second instance happens about 10 seconds later. We managed to squeeze text in the limited ROM space and limited sprite/screen space available. - The money withdraw and deposit screens were redrawn into English. - As was done with the EarthBound localization, the "YOU WIN!" graphic was changed to "YOU WON!" - The "OFE" and "DFE" things in the main menus were changed to "OFF" and "DEF". These were compressed graphics, but luc ily we didn't brea anything with our slight changes. - The "By Some Chance/Some Sort of Beat" item was changed to the "Recollection Bell", and the graphic for it was changed as well. This also required a few palette hac s in various places. - The building that says "LABO" in New Por City was changed to say "LAB". This was done in EarthBound's localization too, though we didn't add any extra little bolts li e they did with EB. This was comprised of lots of tiny little compressed graphics, so getting it to wor wasn't straightforward at all. - In the movie theater, the scene of the "MONOTOLY" building from MOTHER 2 was changed to the "MONOTOLI" building, as it was spelled in EarthBound. This was also comprised of compressed graphics that needed luc to fit bac in the original space. - The o eshi statue and the octopus statue (both from MOTHER 2) in the hall of memories were changed to their EarthBound counterparts, the eraser statue and the pencil statue. These graphics were compressed, so getting these to wor and to fit in the tiny space allotted wasn't easy. It also required a new palette hac . - In the next room is another octopus statue. This was again changed into its EarthBound counterpart, the pencil statue. In the box is an item that will erase the statues (an homage to M2/EB), and a small animation plays as the octopus statue disappears. An animation for the edited pencil statue also had to be made. TESTING: - Approximately three wee s of in-house testing was done to help ma e sure the game wouldn't crash and die or act too buggy or anything. - We also wrote a bunch of tools to ma e extra-sure that various lines of text sounded right in all possible situations and combinations. ========================================================================= TRANSLATION NOTES: (by Tomato) As with many of my ROM translations, I hoped to include very detailed translation notes in this readme file. But as I'm swamped for time and I'd rather not delay the patch's release, I decided to briefly cover only some of the bigger points of interest for now. My plan is to do a detailed translation "commentary" of sorts on the translation project site over time. That way I'll have more time to cover things, and I can explain said things in more detail, with images, lin s, and such. If you're interested in the translation side of things, you'll probably find the commentary stuff to your li ing. For now, I'll just briefly cover some of the more important things. First off, I should mention that I'm a professional Japanese->English translator. I translate Japanese games, television, movies, anime, manga, and all that stuff for a living. I co-founded Starmen.Net way

bac in 1999. Long ago, I started a site examining the translation and localization of EarthBound from MOTHER 2. I recently re-started the site from scratch, but if you're interested, you can see it here: http://tomato.fobby.net/m2eb In the past, I've also wor ed on ROM translations of things li e Bahamut Lagoon, Star Ocean, Live-A-Live, Famicom Detective Club 2, and a whole bunch more. As for MOTHER 3, I'd been translating Shigesato Itoi's (creator of the MOTHER/EarthBound series) interviews, articles, and whatnot for Starmen.Net as far bac as '99. So following that all this way - even through the cancellation of the Nintendo 64 version of MOTHER 3 and through all of his diary entries during the GBA version's development - was a neat experience. I feel all that bac ground nowledge and info helped a lot with this translation. One of Itoi's quir s when writing the text for his games is that he says it all aloud. For example, during MOTHER 1 and MOTHER 2, he didn't now how to use computers, so he had to say the text out loud to an assistant sitting at a computer. He's also notorious for being unhappy with huge bloc s of text and suddenly throwing them out and redoing them later on. Also, he intentionally writes the game's text entirely in the phonetic ana syllabary. This is because he wants the text to seem more li e someone is spea ing it. This is a coincidence, because whenever I translate, I translate out loud until a line sounds right. I'll be the first to admit I'm not a world-class writer, and definitely nowhere near as s illed at English as Itoi is with Japanese, but I hope some of the text still retains at least some of its natural "flow". I apologize if it doesn't hit the mar . But I thin it should be o ay for the most part. The goal of this project was to ma e a translation as close to an official Nintendo version as possible. This was made more difficult by the fact that we lac ed the game's source code and data files, but in the end I thin we came pretty close, and that we probably surpassed what the official version would've been in some aspects. This translation patch has no censoring, though, which probably would've been li ely in an official translation. So let's say the patch is very close to what an official version would've been li e, but not exactly. There is also something that all official games have to go through called "lot chec ". If the strict requirements of this chec aren't met, a game will be rejected by Nintendo (or other console manufacturer) and things will have to be fixed until requirements are fully met. One part of the lot chec is that all hardware and all components of a console/handheld MUST be referred to in specific ways. For example, with the GBA, you can't just say "Press A." You have to specifically spell it as "Press the A Button." Since I've wor ed on a few professional game translations, including a GBA game, I have the list of these requirements handy and tried my best to ma e sure MOTHER 3's translation followed them. It doesn't mean much, and most people won't notice, but I wanted to strive for that extra bit of quality, to ma e the game seem almost as official as possible. Another part of this goal also meant localization. Sometimes puns and plays on words just don't transfer between languages and cultures, and in these cases, suitable, similar equivalents that evo e similar responses were

chosen. Some place names were localized slightly, and a few character names were also localized. Overall, I'd say we didn't localize the game quite as much as an official version would have (EarthBound had a whole bunch of stuff changed, often for no reason), but I thin people will enjoy it just as much. The character "Yo uba" had his name changed to "Fassad". I wasn't the one who thought this up, but when it was suggested, I was on the fence for a long time. It too me about a year to finally go with it, and once I had tried it out in-game, it just fit so well. "Yo uba" comes from "yo ubari", the Japanese word for "greed". Because this wouldn't be pic ed up by the English-spea ing target audience, an alternative seemed appropriate. "Fassad" comes from the word "facade", and in the case of this particular character, the name fits in many different ways. Po ey, a character from EarthBound, ma es an appearance in this game. However, the translators for EarthBound were unsure of how to romanize his name and wound up naming him incorrectly. It's clear from this game that Itoi intended his name to be spelled "Por y" all along. This left me with a problem: which name do I use? I mulled it over for maybe 8 months or so, and decided to go with how the creator intended it, rather than go with what was a mista e. Additionally, Nintendo of America also seems to ta e this stance, as he's now referred to as Por y in Super Smash Bros. Brawl in many places. The name "Por y" also fits in with the big "pig" theme of this game. Leaving it as "Por y" also meant we didn't have to go through the trouble of hac ing a large number of compressed graphics. I considered trying to add in a little line somewhere saying that maybe Po ey changed his name to Por y at some point, but that didn't seem quite right. I decided I'd just cover the issue briefly in the translation notes. I hope this helps explain some of this issue. It's one of those things where whatever choice you ma e, someone won't be happy. It's funny though, because between EarthBound Zero and EarthBound, the antagonist's name changed from Giegue to Giygas, despite being the same character with the same spelling in Japanese. And now something similar has happened again. Switching gears, I thought I'd mention that there are many subtle text references to MOTHER 2 in MOTHER 3, so I used some old EarthBound hac ing tools to dig up lots of the corresponding EarthBound text. Things li e the Hungry HP Suc er, the Slime Generator, and the Heavy Bazoo a can be found in rarely-seen battle text. When applicable, enemy names were localized in the same manner that they were localized between MOTHER 2 and EarthBound. There are also tiny references in the main text that only an obsessed fan would notice. Keep your eye out for things li e this, because this is one area where the unofficial version would probably outclass an official version! There is a whole lot of text in this game, and a lot of it is easy to miss. Characters will often say new things even after the tiniest event happens, so ta e your time to explore the game and tal to everyone and everything often. There's lots of neat stuff to be found. This is getting quite long now, but if you're interested in more detailed discussion about specific translation choices and other misc. info/trivia about things, chec out the translation project site from time to time. I plan to go through the whole game chapter by chapter and provide little pieces of commentary and little- nown info.

Anyway, if you have specific questions about certain things, whether they be translation/localization-related or about the hac ing side of things, you can post them in the MOTHER 3 area of the Starmen.Net forum and one of us will try to respond when we can. Everything said, I hope you enjoy this translation and ta e your time exploring the world of MOTHER 3. ========================================================================= NOTES FROM JEFFMAN: Being a sort of designated ROM hac er for this project, I had to learn a lot of new things. I really didn't now any assembly programming coming into this, for example. Given the right tools, a logical thin ing process, and a hec of a lot of free time, though, it eventually became second-hand nowledge for me. I did have a solid foundation in general computer programming and EarthBound hac ing, however. If it weren't for the PK Hac community I definitely wouldn't be where I am today in terms of ROM-hac ing nowledge and programming prowess. I didn't start as early as Tomato of course, since he's the one who co-created PK Hac , but I came early enough that I was able to establish the fundamental nowledge and be ready for an immense project li e this. ROM hac ing itself is more of a discrete and technical thing so it's hard to explain individual aspects of this project without going into heavy detail, for those of you who don't now much about programming. There's a massive list of things earlier on in this file that shows just how much we had to do -- and for each item, I could probably write a full essay on how it was accomplished. Although it was a lot of wor , I learned a great deal not just on assembly programming, but on logical thin ing and problem-solving altogether, things that will definitely help me later on in my engineering program at university. When thin ing on such a basic level -- the assembly code level -- it's not that hard to get lost easily, and it's incredibly difficult sometimes to figure out what's going on, especially without having the original source code. Some of the really simple problems that presented themselves during the project would ta e hours to complete, only to be tested and then I would find a dozen more problems that come as a result. Multiply that by the majority of the items on the above list, and you get... a lot of hours. Days, wee s, and months. That's how much time I spent trying to ma e each hac complete and perfect. Loo ing at the end result, it was definitely worth it. ========================================================================= DEDICATIONS:

I was originally only supposed to be the translator for this project, so as for how I wound up being a main hac er too... I don't even remember at this point. Both Jeff and I basically learned how to assembly hac just for this project, which turned out to be one of the toughest ROMs to be hac ed to date. We both learned fast and it was mostly sheer determination and the goal that got everything done. If I could go bac in time though, I probably would not ever do this hac again ;)

This translation is dedicated to all fans big and small of the MOTHER/EarthBound series. It's been over 13 years since that "The End...?" screen. And now the next chapter is here. This translation is for you. The translation is also dedicated to Shigesato Itoi, who needs no introduction. His wor has inspired countless people, and his creations only seem to age better with time. Here's to hoping there will be fans of the series 10 years from now who will have grown up with MOTHER 3 just as many of us grew up with EarthBound. The translation is also dedicated to the fol s at Nintendo, and the people in the Treehouse especially. Than s to those who tried to help bring out MOTHER 1+2 and MOTHER 3 here, even though it never wor ed out. This was a very fun game to wor on, so it's a shame you weren't given the chance. Lastly, this translation is dedicated to you. Yes, you, the one at the eyboard. ========================================================================= PROJECT TEAM: Main Team: JeffMan (hac ing) http://jeffman.net Tomato (hac ing, translation) http://tomato.fobby.net Chewy (misc. translation) http://www.yomu a.com Additional Help: byuu DoctorFedora sblur Exophase harmony7 (ex. RPGe) Kevin_b_er Gideon Zhi demi reidman Jon Klarth http://byuu.org http://doctorfedora.livejournal.com http://www.sappharad.com http://www.pex2.com http://agtp.romhac .net http://www.demiforce.com http://reidyoung.com http://jon aydesign.com

Additional Than s To: mitch NinjaBoyNeo Zinco Ninten1 npjp ac post_it HoshiNoRyu a Classicworth butsu oy Ben Cocchiaro chrono (and all the vba-m guys!) Anthadd Nutsjesmoar psychomax PKGINGO BRPXQZME PoeTrader nightshade Giovanni Dr. Hobo Jatopian Phone Artemis251 Tansunn zyboser Difegue LarryTheCucumber Gemini Zip Code Ness Fugitive alezicarus Meeellla Plo Firegirl Kevin Sling Mr. Sword PriestessPaula Dr Shlub EmpoleMew Smash Bass Clayman Elobo ...and many others. Many apologies if you were accidentally not listed. But your help is what made this patch possible.