Nintendo's announcement of a new translation of a previously unreleased Fire Emblem game has inevitably led to fans making Mother 3 trend on Twitter. The Mother series, known as Earthbound in Japan, has had an uneven history in the West. American gamers first got a taste of the series on Super Nintendo with the second game, and its star character later appeared in the Super Smash Bros. on Nintendo 64. Mother 3 released on the Game Boy Advance only in Japan in 2006 and has seemed on the edge of a translated Western release pretty much ever since. Lead character Lucas has joined Ness in Smash Bros. and Nintendo has joked about the game in E3 presentations. Despite that, there has been no announcement on an English translation being in the cards.
The game that is getting translated is in a similar boat, hailing from a series that got popular in part thanks to Nintendo's crossover fighting series. Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light is the Famicom game that kicked off the Fire Emblem franchise. Lead character Marth joined the Smash Bros. roster on the GameCube, leading to fan demand for Western releases, which started on the GBA in the mid-2000s. Now, after remaking the game on Nintendo DS, Nintendo will let players play through the 8-bit original on Nintendo Switch.
Announced via a teaser trailer this morning, the Famicom rendition of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light is coming to Nintendo Switch with a brand new English translation on December 4. Not only will the full original game be playable in English for the first time, but it will also get upgrades like rewinding turns that go poorly and fast-forwarding through enemy movements. The game will be available for a limited time on the Switch's eShop, disappearing in March of 2021. While that's all well and good, it's clear that the announcement sparked the imagination of Nintendo fans hoping to see Mother 3 localized for the West – as the game began to trend on Twitter.
With Fire Emblem coming to Western shores 30 years after the original, it only stands to reason that Nintendo may be that much closer to finally giving the same player base Mother 3. Nintendo has certainly not been known to rerelease games so directly in the past, with one of the only other cases being the release of the first Mother game as Earthbound: Beginnings on Wii U. This new direction will likely only further fuel fan demands to finally play through the title in an official manner.
Nintendo's Mother 3 situation is a tough one, but it seems closer than ever to a resolution. The original release on Game Boy Advance was after the debut of the Nintendo DS, making it hard to justify investing in a translation effort for an outdated machine. Since then, it's only been in the last few years that Nintendo has dug into its archives for strange and unusual releases that never made it to America. If Star Fox 2 can somehow find a home on Nintendo's hardware, it's hard to see a world where Mother 3 stays locked up in the Nintendo vault forever.
Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light will release on Nintendo Switch on December 4. It will be pulled from digital storefronts in March of 2021.
Source: TAKH0 - Twitter