Get Played - We Play, You Play: Mother 3

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

Heather, Nick and Matt talk through the unreleased in North America Nintendo RPG Mother 3. They discuss how the game was translated by fans, how the game deals with grief, Shigesato Itoi, their reactions to the ending and more. SPOILER COUNTRY is from 1:51:15 to 2:24:52 (time codes may vary with ads so it ends about 33 mins after we enter spoiler country) Check out our brand new merch at kinshipgoods.com/getplayed Follow us on social media @getplayedpod Music by Ben Prunty benpruntymusic.com Art by Duck Brigade duckbrigade.com For ad-free main feed episodes, our complete back catalogue including How Did This Get Played? and our Premium DLC episodes and our exclusive show Get Anime'd where we're currently watching Gurren Lagann go to patreon.com/getplayed Join us on our Discord server here: https://discord.gg/getplayed Wanna leave us a voicemail? Call 616-2-PLAYED (616-275-2933) or write us an email at [e-mail] Advertise on Get Played via Gumball.fm All of our links can be found at linktree.com/getplayedpodSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a HeadGum Podcast. The new McCrispy Strip is here. Dip approved by ketchup, tangy barbecue, honey, mustard, honey mustard, Sprite, McFlurry, Big Mac sauce, double dipped in Buffalo and ranch, more ranch, and creamy chili McCrispy Strip dip. Now at McDonald's. All right, Nintendo of America, we have some great games lined up for 2006. Chief among them, this one, there's a lot of hype for in Japan. I think the American audience is really going to respond to it.

Mother 3. Yeah, I think it's time. The American audience is ready for a game with adult themes and not just a you know silly characters like jumping around doing crazy stuff kind of game They're ready for grounded characters in a human story And I I just want to say like I'm really happy that you guys put me in charge of translation Be that you guys put me in charge of translation I'm hi for those you don't know me recognize me from the Department of Translation My name is Doug yet. Yeah, hi Doug. I dug it. Hi Doug. You introduce yourself every meeting

So you don't need to say hi to yourself any what you just you don't need to say hi to yourself Okay, goodbye Doug. Yeah, no you don't need to do that. Oh, okay. Sorry, please continue what I just want to say Thank you so much for putting me in charge of the translation There has been an issue So I deleted everything the North American release of mother 3. Yeah has been completely erased I was drinking an orange Julius and Perhaps I was slightly too close to my computer and there was an accident and I deleted it But I'm sure that we could put it back together because I can't have had the only copy of English translation of Mother 3

Yeah, I mean there have to be you know Recovery like where do we keep those where do we keep those files in the archives downstairs? Okay, well on accident. I was down in the archives downstairs the other day And I spilled an orange Julius on some of the archives But I'm sure we have like another place where we might have backup files we do in Very extreme circumstances like this for such a high profile release Yeah, we would have them not just in the archives But we'd have one in the Colorado server in the Colorado server. Yeah, we would have them not just in the archives, but we'd have one in the Colorado server in the Colorado server

Yeah, so last week I went to Colorado to see my folks and I did on accident I was inside of the mountain facility called deep prime and I had the the Security code cuz you know I last time I was there I left one of my shoes So I was just gonna pick up my shoe, but I tripped because it was right on the other side of the door I thought I was farther into the facility. I did spill orange Julius inside of the mountain facility in Colorado. There's so much to be mad at I do I

Do want to express deep concern for the amount of orange Julius you're to express deep concern for the amount of orange Julius you're consuming on what seems to be a regular basis. I'm just punching in the zip code for Redmond, Washington here, which is obviously where Nintendo of America is located. We all know that. I'm not seeing an orange Julius in the Pacific Northwest. So where are you getting these?

So wherever you're getting one from, it's far away, and I'm gonna guess hot You mean it's hot where I get them no it's like the temperature Okay, I get I get orange Julius from Louisiana where there's a nice orange Julius, and I do bring it back on ice Thank you very much if you're thinking thinking you might wanna call Nintendo of Japan to see if you could get a new version of the source code, I wouldn't do that either. Why is that?

Cause they just built an Orange Julius in Tokyo, and I was there last week for the grand opening, and then after I got my Orange Julius, I went to say hi to Mimoto, and I tripped on his shoes, and I fellpped on his shoes and I fell down the stairs and I did dump Orange Julius inside of Nintendo Japan. We have to hope at least the Japanese version is untouched. The good news is, yes, for the Game Boy Advance version.

The bad news is, I did destroy the N64DD version. So this was some time ago? Yep. That's why it wasn't released. Can I just say... I think it's amazing that you have a PhD in Japanese literature that justifies your employment here as the chief translator for Nintendo of America. The Tale of Genji is the first novel ever written by, and it was a Japanese novel. I think that that was a fundamentally, you know, challenging moment for Japanese and Western literature. Well, what do you do with that or Julius?

Oh! My first copy of Tale of Genji! We rhythmically battle wildlife chimeras and visit Club Tittyboo as we play You Play Nintendo's Never Localize JRPG Classic Mother 3 this week on Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between. It's time to get played. I'm your host, Heather-Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Weiger.

That's me, Tiger Weiger, along with our third host, Matt Apodaca. Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere of Video Game Podcast, where this week we are talking about our We Play, You Play game of the month, game of the year, game of the decade, game of the century, Mother 3.

We're back! We're back! So we had a, yeah, we were, I mean, we had a couple new, we had new episodes the previous two weeks. They were previously recorded. We're now back, caught up, basically to the present. We're recording this on May 29th. And we've all been playing Mother 3.

And it's a game that Heather loves. It's a game that Matt and I and Ranch have now played for the first time. And we're gonna dig in on that. And this is partly to pay off of our Switch 2 release date bet, which we're right before, we're coming right at the fuck up

on the Switch 2 release. It at the switch to release on the heels Oh, man as of as a release of this episode the switch to is coming out this week. That's wild Isn't that weird? It's so weird. It's weird. It's very weird. It doesn't feel like It is it doesn't feel like it is for some reason also when you look at the games like on the like splash page Yeah, it's like four games. Yeah, it's basically not coming out yet like the games that are coming out are Mario Kart world Mario Kart at launch is like the big one yeah, and then patches for Like tears of Kingdom and Breath of the Wild yep and some other ones so like games that are already on the thing yeah But I'm I can't wait to play that Mario Kart the other games that are coming out there I'm a little bit more excited about are coming out later. Here on the thing. Yeah. But I can't wait to play that Mario Kart. The other games that are coming out there

I'm a little bit more excited about are coming out later. Here's the thing, I just wanna have a new thing. Well, that's a big, you got a new console, because I was like, I got a new thing, how about that? No, don't get me fucking started. I love having a new thing. I'm gonna have a bunch of new things. I ordered, I went crazy on accessories.

I got, so when the, this is way back in the day, before even Mother 3 comes out, when the Nintendo GameCube was coming out, it was still, there was still a little bit of lead time with the Japanese release versus the US release. And I was like, ah, fuck, do I spend extra money to import a Japanese GameCube? But they weren't region free at the time,

it would have been a whole pain in the ass. So I was like, I'll- You would have been too popular. Yeah, so I was like, I'll just order order a controller just to be holding a GameCube controller So I just there was whatever the month however was like three month period however long it was I just had a GameCube controller, and I was like okay Well, I'll have an extra controller that I can plug in when I actually get this thing the North American release But I think it was pretty nice to hold that controller. It's pretty no matter matter what it is, functional or not, it's nice to have a new thing.

I got a new thing, how about that? It's good. Kind of the opposite of the message of the game that we were playing, but... Hmm, yeah. But also... The message I got was that you're supposed to buy more stuff. Buy more stuff, sit in front of this damn... The happy box? The happy box. Man, by the way, I love the happy box.

I was like, I gotta get one of those fucking things. Yeah, I was like, oh wait, this is gonna solve my fucking problem. That's why they can't release this game here, is they're like, Americans are going to have the opposite reaction to the happy box? They're gonna think it's good and want one. Like every dipshit Silicon Valley guy

who reads a sci-fi story about some foreboding possible inventions, like I gotta make that. I gotta make this happy box. But honestly though, if there was something called the happy box available at Best Buy and it showed anything, I would get it. Yeah, sure.

Why wouldn't you? Yeah, I guess why wouldn't you get it? That is what a Switch 2 is, it's a happy box. It's gonna, for a while, well, yes. And the box itself is gonna be a happy box. I think the packaging is confusing. Hmm, when I'm looking at this bad boy. Why, because it says Nintendo Switch on it?

No, because it looks exactly like the regular Switch except it has a big 2 on it. And I think that's not differentiated enough for the average mother or father who's going into a store to buy it for their kid. No, this is gonna be an unmitigated disaster for Christmases for the next couple of years, at least, while they're still making and releasing regular switches.

Yeah, yeah. I think it should say, switch small and two giant. And that should be the front of the box. Yes, because nobody's going to understand that, I mean, you can play Switch one games on it, but nobody's going to understand, too, that you can't play Switch two games on the regular Switch one.

But in some cases, you can, which is also confusing. I think they should call it the Super Switch. Yeah, I would have solved a lot of problems. I was hoping for the Super Switch, but I'm kind of amazed that they actually just kept the Switch branding instead of coming up with some new thing, which Nintendo always does. I'm looking at this box now, and yes, I could see this creating confusion at retail, but also, I wonder what percentage of purchases are someone walking into Target and being

like, oh, the new Switch, I'm gonna get one of those versus like ordering it online, especially in the early going, I don't know. But yeah, this does seem a little bit too similar to what's already out there. Too similar. They could have made it blue. Oh, blue's an interesting choice. It doesn't have to be red.

It's the warmest color. Oh no. Is blue, I've seen parts of that movie is blue more new than red huh what like cuz you got red and then you got like the switch one is red that's the color way the switch to is blue does that does blue feel better than red better yeah so you're newer I this is some wiger shit and I just don't think blue feel better than red. Better? Yeah. Or newer. This is some Weiger shit, and I just don't think we can really abide by it. We can't get into this.

So you think that if you made it a blue box that people would be like, well, this is older than the red one, that's the way your brain maps color? I'm just wondering. Do you have color ranking in your head? And does that ranking also apply to new versus old? Well, okay, so some of this comes from just like how

we already kind of ascribe value to colors, right? Like blue is first place, the blue ribbon. Right. Green is eco. Yeah, sure. Yellow is piss. Yeah, brown is shit. Yeah.

Sure. I was gonna say yellow is old. Yeah, yellow is old. Yeah, about yeah, like something yellowed. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I could see. I think they were right to stick with red. But you're right. It is very similar. What if it was shiny red? I mean, now you're talking like it could have been like a glossy finish on the box shiny feels newer I mean, now you're talking. Like it could have been like a glossy finish on the box. Shiny feels newer than Matt.

Yeah, well hey, watch yourself. That's just a little fun for everybody. I liked it. Everybody got to like that. But red is like the Nintendo color, right? Like I mean, like, I mean, is it though? No, I mean like, it's one of the Nintendo colors. I think of Nintendo as red. Oh boy, I don like it's one of the Nintendo colors. I think of Nintendo is red

Oh, I don't think I've Wow I mean I guess the I guess the the we're going back to the Famicom Nes we're going back to that era. We're taught like yeah, the dominant colors were red white and black yeah, but I Don't know I feel like like the the super Famicom super NES or a completely different colorways I don't know. I feel like like the super Famicom super NES were completely different colorways That's great. I'm gonna call away purple the DS silver the 3ds is white and 64 was like black and gray I like that the multicolored buttons, you know, go with me with this. Yeah, okay PlayStation is blue Sure PlayStation is blue. Yeah, PlayStation is blue. Yeah, PlayStation is blue. Xbox is green. That's pretty straightforward.

That's pretty straightforward. That one I don't need any convincing. But Nintendo is red. And Nintendo is red. You heard it here first on the premier video game podcast. PlayStation is blue. Yeah. Xbox is green.

Nintendo is red. Sega is dead. Yeah, and by the way, oh, we're back, baby. We're back, but we have some... Does the Steam Deck have a colorway? I think it's kind of black. Yeah, I think it's black. That's not so great.

Okay. I mean, PC, you could generally say is kind of like RGB. That's kind of the aesthetic. It used to be beige was the PC aesthetic the steam logo is a sort of gradient blue Where it starts light blue at the bottom to a darker blue almost black at the top I think of steam because I'm also thinking of this just the digital storefront. I think it was so black and white Yeah, I feel like it's just sort of like that. That's that's the that's all it is playdate is yellow Yes, which everybody and it's in the conversation. Everyone's talking about it as it's on par

with the rest of it. I was just thinking like what other systems exist. Yeah, season two of Playdate came out today. Yeah. I gotta get it. There you go. Should we do a color tier list on the podcast? No.

I mean, video game colors? No, no. I think it's, here's the case for a Nintendo being red Mario Red and so like if you're like what like like red is a video game color That's pretty high up in the tier list because you got like you got Mario You got M bison a slash Balrog you got blood which isn't a lot of video games You got hearts which are like like an essential health bars. Qbert's orange.

Yeah, orange is down there. Orange is way down. Maybe the orange box might push it up a little bit. Should we pivot today's topic? No! What if we don't do it? We all played through Mother 3, we just don't talk about it.

We talk about colors. Ranch, you got a favorite color pink pink. Oh wow Yeah, we talked like what intensity like wow like how pink we talking? Like a peachy pink. Oh like a peachy me. Yeah. Yeah, I'm with you like a salmon to, which is something we talk about at the top of every episode, which is video games we've been playing lately. The question for the room is, what are you playing? What are you playing? And I had to read the Resident Evil Merchant,

and I've had a rough couple of weeks. Oh boy, I'm sorry to hear that. I'm aimless without you guys as I'm wandering around. You were on the other ones? You were on the banked ones? Yeah, yeah, but we haven't recorded in two weeks I know but you sort of knew that I think you yeah, we knew this get you Didn't have any goals. I

Feel like You just need something I was aimless. I was a wanderer. Well, not all who wander are lost, they say. Do you know that there's still some food in the burnt refrigerators in Malibu? Oh boy, what are you doing crawling around up there? Last person I'd want to see over there if I'm being honest. Good God.

Stay away. They've been through enough. No, nobody's there. I wasn't in a place where people are rebuilding. That's sort of the concern, I think. Anyway, I'm really happy to be back and I love asking this question. Nick, what are you buying? to be back and I love asking this question. Nick, what are you buying? Resident Evil Merchant, thank you so much for asking.

You're welcome. Real quick on Elden Ring Night Rain, we were recording this on May 29th as I mentioned. I have it installed, I opened up Steam this morning, I was like, oh, play some Night Rain, just to try it out for a little bit. It wouldn't let me play it, so I don't know if the actual release date is tomorrow or yeah

I think it's the 30th. It's the 30th. Okay, cuz it's team said the 29 Yeah, and then but anyway pre-installed 29th cuz I I pre-ordered it on PlayStation also So it's I think it's installing it must be installing now Anyway, no night rain impressions from any of us But I did play another game that released in May of this year, Drop Dutchie. This is developed by Sleepy Mill Studio. This is a roguelite tile based game that combines a Tetris block placement, like literally like

you're basically moving Tetris blocks and then, you know, strategic elements and then also deck building. So I'm going to this sumbitch and I was actually pretty hyped for this game because I'd read some some pre-release impressions and I really like the aesthetics and the aesthetics absolutely hold up as you're playing it. So I'm going in hot with this bad boy. So basically what it is is you have a grid. Pieces are you know come to you one at a time.

It's basically just like Tetris. You can, you know, stash a piece away and swap it out later if you wanted to, you know, for whatever reason you want to delay putting it on your grid. And so they're shaped like Tetris blocks, but they also have attributes like they could be, you know, towns, they could be, you know, different biomes, like they could be forest or plains, they could be, you know, military installations, they could be buildings that provide upgrades, and you're basically just like one by one placing all of these to make some sort of functional play space, which

will get you additional resources for your runs, and or some of of functional play space, which will get you additional resources for your runs and or some of these are combat encounters. So you're trying to defeat an enemy armada or in, you know, at the end of each stage of each run, a boss. And it's one of those things where I'm playing this, and I really admire everything they're trying to do, and maybe it'll all come together in a follow-up, like, you know, maybe like just like a DLC or a full-fledged sequel or something like this,

but it's kind of like I'm more in admiration of its ambition than I am actually like really clicking with it, with playing it. Part of that is, it almost feels like it has one too many elements. Like I talked about the Tetris thing and it's just kind of strange to be, to have such an explicit Tetris mechanic

that's kind of grafted on to these other existing like systems. It just feels a little bit awkward. The way that pieces automatically descend, very slowly, but in a way, there is a ticking clock in the same way that there is with Tetris. Maybe if you get deeper into the late game that accelerates or whatever, but it is a sort of thing of like this just has a different sort of vibe than what I want from this sort of game,

where I want to be able to really think through every single turn and figure out exactly how, I want to build my grid here, and how I want to set myself up for combat. The other thing is the way combat plays out is a little bit awkward because you are assigning what the enemy units do as well as your own. So you'll get a, you might get a few different building

and grassland tiles or whatever the fuck, and you're placing those down, you get one for one of your own military installations, but you also get a tile for like an enemy military installation, which you can try to stash, but they're enough where you have to place some of them. And then when it actually get,

when the grid is filled up, you basically run out of room on the Tetris board. You go into combat, but the way it's set up is that you prioritize the order of attacks down to where the enemies attack as well. It's got a rock, paper, scissors element in terms of which units defeat which other ones. Archers defeat swordsmen, swordsmen defeat, axemen. I don't remember exactly what it is.

It's not super important, but you get the idea. You're saying, okay, I'm going to have the enemy Axemen attack my swordsmen because they're disadvantaged and then I'll use my swordsmen to attack the enemy archers and it's it's one of those like kind of like abstract kind of just like feel things yeah where it's like I don't know it just isn't my sense of video game combat the idea of like tasking the enemy units with attacking me, if that makes any sense. I don't know, it just feels kind of awkward.

It's just sort of a thing that makes it, it all just feel like, again, really ambitious and really cool in some ways, but in other ways, it like isn't quite clicking for me and didn't quite get its hooks in me as much as I'd hoped It would pre-release. I don't want to pick the moves that my enemy's gonna do. I don't want to I don't want to lose Yeah, I do a good job picking the moves that are gonna beat the enemy. Yeah, it is kind of like I

Feel like I'm doing a poor job of articulating, but it's kind of like the difference between saying The difference between like hey, I'm playing basketball, I'm gonna put my hand up to block my opponent's shot to make it harder. Like I'm playing defense versus like, I'm playing basketball and I'm going to decide where my opponent is going to attempt a shot from because I think they'll have a lower percentage of hitting it from, you know, this part of the court.

It's like, it just feels a little bit different and a little bit less, you know, satisfying from a gameplay standpoint. It's kind of like going into a subway and they ask you what your sandwich is and you ask them, well, what do you think my sandwich is? Right, yeah, right. Yeah, it's exactly like that.

Anyway, all that said, it did get me into run-based roguelites again, and also I've been traveling, so I've been fucking playing Bellatro again. I'm playing some on Apple Arcade Plus on mobile, which I try not to play games on my phone, but it is just so fucking good for playing on a train, for playing on a plane, or playing in a place where you're just waiting on something. And then it's also on Game Pass. So I think it's been on Game Pass for a while, so I got it reinstalled on my PC on Game

Pass and I'd previously played it on Steam, but now I get the dumb lizard brain thing of like, oh, I'm on a different platform. I get to get all the achievements on this new platform. So I'm just going through on Game Pass and beating runs beating runs with the different decks and and what-have-you It's really such an impeccable design. I mean it just might it might be the best one of these these sorts of You know deck building run based games and I don't know. I mean look looking back on my

My best of list of for last year I throw I probably kind of undersold Bellatron a little bit It might just have been the best game that came list for last year. I probably kind of undersold Bellatro a little bit. It might just have been the best game that came out last year, I mean, but it's so fucking fun to play. I can't get enough of it. I learned this week that Bellatro's Platinum Trophy on the PlayStation has only been earned

by 0.1% of all players. What do you have to do to get that plat? Unknown. Unknown? I don't know. No, I'm saying I don't know. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. We can look this up.

I'm sure we can. Anyway, that's what I've been playing. Heather, what have you been playing? Well, this last week wrapped up the Pokemon card game pocket season. I finished this season in ranked mode with Ultra Ball for a full two ranks above last season's win. I think if I had known when the season was ending,

I would have finished at Master Ball because I had finally constructed a deck that I enjoyed playing and also was giving me a pretty consistent above 50% win ratio, which is really all you need to achieve Master Ball. But the thing that I want to talk about today is about a game that we don't talk about much here on the show anymore because it is a struck company

by SAG-AFTRA. But there was an extremely monumental thing that happened in that game this week. It has, or over the last two weeks really, it has ended in an unfair labor practice charge from SAG-AFTRA to llama games and I'll say Fortnite. And it involves what I think is a watershed moment in video gaming and a point of no return

that has been crossed by Fortnite. And that is two weeks ago, Fortnite allowed you to battle and then recruit Darth Vader in the game. Darth Vader is powered entirely by a large language model AI and voiced by James Earl Jones, whose estate licensed his voice to the AI, to Disney,

which is co-owners of Fortnite. And so when you are playing the AI, to Disney, which is co-owners of Fortnite. And so when you are playing the game, you now have a fully AI NPC that you can have full conversations with, and they respond in character and give you tactics updates and do bits with you, et cetera. And it, I think, is a moment that people will look back on and be like, this was the moment that games shifted.

Because if you can do that with one character in one game, and it is definitely a testing ground for upcoming Disney implementation of this AI feature, then very, very, very soon, within the next year and a half probably, you are going to have RPGs that are entirely populated by voiced, interactive NPCs that you can form relationships with.

It is fucking insane. I cannot stress to you guys enough how crazy it is to talk to a NPC in Fortnite who refers to you by your character name and has a memory. So like, for example, you know, every time we recruit him, somebody says some insane thing to him to start the conversation. Typically something like, hey, Darth Vader, what do you think of macaroni and cheese? And he'll say something like,

macaroni and cheese is a diversion. We need to be focused on the enemy and we need to push forward in order to strengthen the Empire and our squad. But if you keep hounding him on stuff like this, he will eventually start getting agitated. BLAIR LAUGHS And he has an emotional intelligence

as a squad member, where if you hound him enough, he will leave the party. So, like, it's not like you can just do whatever you want to Darth Vader. If you keep being like, yeah. So like, it's not like you can just do whatever you want to Darth Vader, if you keep being like, yeah, but like if you had to have, what kind of cheese would you have on your macaroni and cheese, he'd be like, stop it.

This is unimportant to me. And if you like, if you like fuck up in the game and you're downed, he'll say something like, maybe you had too much macaroni and cheese. Like he's a fucking asshole about it. And he remembers and contextualizes based on your actions in the game. It is alarming.

Yeah, it's very scary. But it's also, I think, I don't understand how the sag, so let me read the language here from the unfair labor practice charge, which is, "'Lama Productions chose to replace the work of human performers with AI technology. They did so without providing any notice

of their intent to do this and without bargaining with us over the appropriate terms. We celebrate the right of our members and their estates to control the use of their digital replicas and welcome the use of new technologies to allow new generations to share in the enjoyment of those legacies and renowned roles. However, we must protect our right to bargain terms

and conditions around uses of voices that replace the work of our members, including those who previously did the work of matching Darth Vader's iconic rhythm and tone in video games. I think the problem here is you cannot have an actor do this because it is on infinite instances of the game simultaneously and voiced by an AI.

Like you can't have a person on every instance of, you'd have to have 400,000 actors constantly interacting with the team members in that particular drop of Fortnite. And as such, I find it dystopian, alarming, but also insurmountable. Yeah. It's a...

I believe what's going on here is, obviously, yes, you are correct, that technically there is no way to achieve this with even an army of live performers on this level. However, I think what SAG-AFTRA's complaint is more has to do with the fact that these companies are currently struck because there is not explicit AI provisions in the current a collective bargaining agreement. The idea is we have this extremely highly visible instance of this happening on one of the biggest games in existence. This is the kind of thing we kind of have to explore as a test case and make sure that

like, hey, this is maybe happening here in this particular game in this particular way. We want to make sure this does not become extremely widespread and is completely out of our control before we actually get it litigated through collective bargaining. I don't know that there's a way to, because like... I think there is a way to do it, which has to do with, we're just going to make explicit the provisions of how this, and what instances this is allowed, and what compensation is due any particular party whose voice likeness or physical likeness is used

in any sort of interactive entertainment. I think it's more like we just want some specific guidelines for how this will be used in the future before it gets completely out of control. Yeah, so my feeling is playing the game that it gets completely out of control. Yeah, so my feeling is playing the game that it's already out of control. Like I think that the Rubicon was crossed, the point of no return, the threshold,

all of it's in the rear view mirror because interacting with Darth Vader in Fortnite is like haunting and ghastly. Like it is crazy to know that one, it's an official license. Like it's not like his estate. This is the voice of a dead man. It's the voice of a dead man who you can con into

talking about Skibbity Toilet because it is an official licensed interactive part of Fortnite. And it's like, how, it's so terrifying and so rapid, this shift. And three years ago, what you're doing in Fortnite was literally unimaginable. And now it is present and advertised.

And it's Great. I can't it's it's you guys aren't playing the game. It's fucking crazy Yeah, I've seen the clips and I've heard you know secondhand what these experiences are like it is I think we're maybe we're maybe you know talking Kind of or you know across each other likely because I get exactly what you're saying, that I think that yes, a rubicata has been crossed, this is something that there's no going back from this, this is the promise of Seaman, of like at last realized.

I don't think we're going back to an era where this isn't happening. I think more the union's concern is because this is involving the voice likenesses of real human beings, we want to make sure that something shady doesn't happen and someone gets, maybe the estate of James Earl Jones is being massively ripped off here. We don't have a way to know what the financial terms are. And also like, or maybe he's being extremely fairly compensated and everyone there

is really happy with how this is all working out. But what could happen is that, you know, Joe character actor is maybe being paid an extraordinarily low day rate and then their voice is used in perpetuity. And it's happened with, I personally know voice actors who are in League of Legends. And like their voices are used over and over and over again without additional compensation, without residuals, which are something that we'll get if you're in a film or you're in

a television project and that airs or commercial at least, that's how it used to be and it airs repeatedly, you're going to get additional compensation for it. There's no provision for that in video games. Now I would argue that needs to be not just for performers in it but for everyone who works on a video game, should be compensated in perpetuity every time their game is sold or played on some cloud service or whatever the fuck. But because we don't have any sort of contract language

for that, there's maybe danger in something like this becoming so prominent and so widespread, again, before this can be litigated. I, when you said this sort of is the triumph of Seaman years later, I realized that I have never told Darth Vader I'm gay, and I want to know what he's going to say. The Seaman was inclusive and supportive. Yeah.

Let's see if you can handle this better than C-man. Matt, what have you been playing? So, I had been nose down in Mother 3 for a while. I hopped off Clare Obscure, but I hopped back on, I finished Act 1. Hey! Act 1 is good. I was shocked. Wow.

I'll just say, at the end of Act 1, I was shocked. Wow. Good shit. Can't wait to see what else is going on there. I also played Clare Obscure over the last couple of weeks. Where you, did you get to finish Act 1? I don't think I finished Act 1, but I was shocked that I sat back down and played some more.

It's a good game. It's nice and crunchy. It's good stuff. It's good as hell. I have paused it because of Mother 3. That's all I used to say. I only have bandwidth both time-wise and in terms of mental real estate

to dedicate to one intense RPG experience at a time, but I'm gonna go back to it. Having is having a three in a game indicator equality hmm mother three Claire obscure expedition 33 I think I'm gonna be on this all those gate three all those gate three things super mario brothers three Oh shit, he's got more Street Fighter three. Hey wait a minute. Holy fuck. What are we doing? Have we just cracked the code red and three? Did you crack the code? Red and three? What else will we get to the bottom of today? But I want to circle back to Bellatro real quick.

Because Bellatro led to a fan sighting while I was on my vacation. A fan of the podcast. Wow. Shout out to Gambler and the Discord and the Patreon. Clocked me because I was talking about Bellatro loudly at a pool with my brother-in-law Talking about He goes are you mad? You recognize your voice yeah, you talk about a video game about Bellatro so funny

But my brother-in-law also put me on to something Called guess the game have you guys encountered guess the game at all? You set the link and I did not dig into it. This is a travesty I don't click any links. You know I guess nobody does Nobody gives a fuck about my links. No I give a fuck about your links But I won't click guess the game is like framed It's like it's a daily guessing game. Yeah, where it's like it's like framed or like wordle or something

But it's more closely to framed because it's exactly framed the movie one where it says it's screenshots of video games and the more you get wrong the more specific they become okay and It would more specific that what do you mean like in turn that hints become? Well, it'll start to give you hints. It'll be like, this is the Metacritic score, this is the genre, this is the platforms it's on. So I pulled up the link and I see this image of a background. I'm gonna guess this is Final Fantasy VIII.

So I'll type it in, right? Yeah, it's a, so we've got a cloud scape, we've got a skybox, and then we've got a pretty pixelated texture. It's definitely a 3D environment, then we've got a pretty pixelated texture. It's definitely a 3D environment, but it's like some sort of hillside, but it has a sort of like the lack of texture filtering. It was not Final Fantasy VIII.

That makes it look like a PlayStation 1 or Saturn era 32-bit game. And so the thing about it, and so it gives you a little bit more clues, but then the scope of the screenshots will broaden a little bit more clues, but then the scope of the screenshots will broaden a little bit as well, where it'll show you just a little bit more up into a main character of the game,

or the HUD or something like that. And what's cool about this one is that, shout out to my brother-in-law, Aram, by the way, for putting me onto this. It rocks, because it's just like, you can go back and play the ones that you missed, so they're all just available there. And I don't know, I was doing a lot of them,

and I was doing a pretty good job. Even for games that I haven't really played, like Outer Wilds or something, I was able to figure out in like three, before I got to, you get six tries. And so if you don't get it in six, it tells you what it is. Right.

But getting them sooner, getting them on one, let me tell you something. Okay, Heather got it, it's the Legend of Dragoon. Oh yeah, hey, you were right. That is a PlayStation 1 JRPG. And Heather got it on the third one. That's very good. I recognize that eyeball from the the HUD and so this is the thing I

Think recognizing stuff is fun Yeah, it's fun to recognize stuff. So like you're playing this and you're like, there's kind of nothing to that Yeah, sure, but then when let me tell you something when you get it in one You're like, I'm really good at recognizing stuff. This is good. It feels good to recognize. It feels good to recognize. And it's sort of like, I don't know, your brain, like for me, I'm sort of like,

oh, my brain is not as bad as I thought, or it has worse, it has bad information in it. I wish it had good information instead of me being able to clock like Prince of Persia Warrior Within from the first one. Wait, see, the archives are open. You can look at- Like Prince of Persia warrior within from the first one We see that the the archives are open you can look at yeah, you can go all the way back to the very first one And and and and go from there. It's extremely satisfying

Yeah, that's that's that's sort of what I'd had been doing and then I got back into Yeah, that's that's that's sort of what I'd had been doing and then I got back into Claire obscure expedition 33, and I'm very interested in getting into Elden Ring night rain, but I'm hearing that it's a little bit more fun if you have a squad Only there was some way we could assemble a squad of three. I'm not quite sure Boy, I don't know that sounds like a good time boys instead of trying to kill me, why don't you join forces?

And we squad up perhaps. Oh man. Can't wait to sink every run. You beat Sekiro, you're gonna be great. I'm interested in just seeing what it is. They said it's like, it's just, it's challenging, that it doesn't feel completely balanced As a solo game which I do understand right but I kind of I kind of want to take a crack at it I do it. I'm 100% gonna mess around with it. Ranch you gonna mess with any Elden Ring Night Rain?

No, it's not really in your wheelhouse for get for gaming. Why you don't play Elden Ring first? I don't think I mean it probably would be helpful play Elden Ring first? I don't think, I mean, it probably would be helpful. Do you mean, it would be a little daunting to just jump in? Yeah, yeah, because if your first souls experience is Night Reign, God bless you. That sounds like a disaster to me. You know this guess the game thing, it is cool.

I ran into this with, there's these fucking grids that like there was an NBA grid I was doing and there was also like a movie grid and I was like, I can't do these daily games. They just like, all of a sudden like that's an hour of my day, it's been doing some like multiple like doing those and then doing my fucking whirl or I was like, I can't do anything

that demands me to maintain a streak. I just have to stay away from it, like cigarettes. Well, the good thing about this is that you're not punished for not doing your streak at all. You can just go back to the other ones. So for me, I'll just do like five or like 10, or however many I want, and just be like, I'm done right now, I'm done guessing,

I'm done recognizing stuff. And then just kind of go back to my life. I just don't have the the patience to do anything like Anything at all. Yeah, I know I could do things like once or twice and I'll be like, yeah This is pretty great and then I don't there. I don't want to do it anymore Yeah, you think you'll go back to it after doing it that one time. I don't think so. I Was pleasurable while I did it. Yeah, but I don't think I want to do it I think the information that they give you also is like

helpful, but not so Not so much that it gives it completely away. I think I think the clues are parsed out very well it like the Metacritic score the Game Council of origin yeah, etc. Etc. I wonder they pull these screen get these screen grabs Uh I think there's a, when you complete one, it tells you the source of the screenshots, which is very cool, actually. That is pretty interesting.

Well, God bless them. Yeah, hats off to whoever's maintaining this. It's a very cool project, and I really enjoy it. I looked up the Bellatro, by the way, the platinum trophy, and you know, obviously the platinum trophy is just getting all the other trophies, so I was trying to figure out The Bellatro, by the way, the Platinum Trophy, and you know, obviously Platinum Trophy is just getting all the other trophies, just trying to figure out what the possible, you know, bottleneck could be.

And it looks, I think it's the gold stakes. Matt, as you know, like as you go through, you will have like the base difficulty is white stake, but then you've got a bunch of other stakes that make it progressively more annoying to try to complete a run. Gold stake is the highest. So you basically have to complete a gold stake with every single deck. And that's just the kind of thing of just like,

you know, you have to dedicate a lot of time and be a pretty high level player to be able to pull that off. I certainly haven't. It's just not something I'm gonna do. Yeah. Cause like I, that's my go-to. I'm in between games.

What do I wanna do to pass the time? I'm just gonna play Blatro for a little while. You know what part of this is, I think I brought up on a previous episode of just wanting a game that kind of chills me out. And I am realizing that that's part of the appeal for Bellatro to me. Or that's the thing I've been realizing

in the past couple of weeks of just like, I can play that game before bed and not get riled up. And the way that even something like Slay the Spire, which is a very similar sort of experience, but I think because it's like a little bit more intense and because the vibes are a little bit less chill wave, like I'm more like, then I'm lying in bed thinking about it as opposed to just sort of like, all right, hey,

you know what, sink or swim, whether I finish this run or whether I have to pause in between or whether I lose it, I can just hit the hay. And I think it's cuz I'm not pressured I don't feel the pressure to gold stake anything right or do any of it I'm just like if I win this run great, and if I don't that's all right. I'll just play another run Yeah, I also just love the sounds great sound design the sound of the chips Oh, baby, and I have like I know it's one music track. It's that's like 18 minutes long and looping. I have never muted it I just don't like it's I love it. I can listen to it forever I

Will I was on a plane? I did mute it because I had I was I was being iPad kid behavior Yeah, had a had a show on in the corner and on the on the iPad I'm playing I'm playing Bellatro, but then I have in a sort of minimized window on my iPad, I'm watching something, I was doing two, I was two-screening on one screen. Wow. I love it. I was living in the future, I don't raw dog flights, no way, you'll never catch me raw dogging nothing.

I don't want that. Nah. I don't wanna catch. Nothing. I don't want. And I mean nothing. Okay. I did do that for a bit of a flight, it was kinda nice. Yuck. Yuck. I can't, I can't. for a bit of a flight. That's kind of nice. Yuck. Yuck Just sat still I don't want to be bored and if I saw you put in Particular on a flight. Yeah sitting still and doing nothing

Chest to see wasn't ticking Wasn't sure if he's gonna go first performed on our heads. Guys, should we get into it? Let's get into our We Play, You Play of Mother 3. All right. Well, I've got a little thing prepared here, and I want you to imagine a video game that opens with a family tragedy, critiques capitalism,

wraps it in absurdist humor, and never officially left Japan. Welcome to the WePlay YouPlay of Mother 3, the half-lost masterpiece of emotional storytelling. Today, we'll tell you the story of Mother 3, its cursed development, its bittersweet tale, its strange sense of humor, and why it continues to move people around the world,

even those who have never held a Game Boy Advance. The Mother series, known as Earthbound Outside of Japan was always a bit odd. It wasn't about saving princesses or grinding for loot. It's about growing up and about the strangeness of suburban life. It's about grief. Creator Shigesato Itoi is a novelist, an essayist,

an ad man by trade. He thinks that games aren't about numbers or rules, they're about feelings. And in 1994, Mother 3 began development for the Super Famicom. It then moved to the Nintendo 64 and eventually the 64DD or disc drive. Its scope grew wildly, full 3D graphics,

real time environments, an ensemble cast. Nintendo showed off the 60DD build of the game at events, magazines hyped it, and there was a fully playable version of Mother 3 on the Nintendo 64 at Space World. But it was too ambitious and in 2000, after six years, the project was cancelled. A whole generation of fans mourned the game that never came. But Itoi did not walk away. Years later, Mother 3 was reborn, this time as a 2D title on the Game Boy Advance.

It launched in Japan in 2006, and it was very quiet over here when it was. No Western release, no translation, except one. Fans made their own English patch. They treated the game like scripture, preserving its tone, jokes, and sorrow, because this was no ordinary RPG. This was Mother 3.

They expected maybe thousands of downloads in the first week, and instead, more than 100,000 downloads in the first week of the Mother 3 fan translation. Now, at its heart, Mother 3 is about loss, personal and collective. You begin in a utopian village, Tasmily, playing as a young boy named Lucas.

His mother dies, his brother goes missing, his father becomes lost in grief, and slowly chapter by chapter the town changes. Technology arrives, currency is introduced, people begin comparing their homes to one another, happiness boxes arrive, TVs that sort of hypnotize the populace, the town that once shared everything becomes normal and unkind. Behind this transformation is the Porky Corporation run by an immortal

time-traveling child tyrant, but Mother 3 doesn't end with a grand boss fight, it ends with a question. Can innocents survive progress? Your main character, Lucas, well, one of your main characters, Lucas doesn't save the world by force, he saves it by feeling. What makes Mother 3 so unforgettable is how it balances grief with absurdity. You'll fight enemies like Reconstructed Lion

or Carpet Monster. A talking barrel might help you sneak through a factory. There's a club run by an octopus. It's funny until it isn't, because beneath every joke is a real feeling, something real. Lucas's dog, Bony, still recognizes his brother even after he's been mechanized into a soulless weapon.

You meet a robot who falls in love with kindness and he explodes to protect you. As Itoi once said in an interview, paraphrased, the thing that matters most to me is that the player feels something they can't put into words. There is no better way to describe Mother 3. Let's talk about some things that aren't obvious on this first playthrough, or if you haven't played the game. The combat system is rhythm based. Each enemy has a hidden heartbeat. And if you time your attacks to that heartbeat, you can combo. It's not just a mechanic, it's a metaphor.

You're listening to the rhythm of what you're fighting so that you can understand it and empathize with it. And when you've reached that final battle, you don't defeat the villain with strength. You simply withstand pain. You endure. You press forward despite heartbreak. And when it's over, the screen

goes black and your characters vanish. Mother 3 is a story that asks what happens when a community forgets itself, when joy is replaced with comfort, when grief is ignored. It's not nostalgic, it's aware. It's a game where the final boss isn't a monster, it's lost itself. And the only way to win is to keep feeling. Mother 3 isn't about fighting, it's about kindness and being gentle to the person sitting next to you. Maybe that's why it never got a Western release. It wasn't designed to sell here, it was designed to last, and it has, because Nintendo hasn't brought it overseas,

and even if they never bring it overseas, we've already brought it home. Thanks to the fans. Wow. That's this week's Get Played. Heather, I love that. I thought it was great. And like you had a lot of context there,

some of which I was aware of and some of which I learned in researching this game, which I know that you have, are such a fan of and that I'd never played before. I wanna get back to Shigesato Itoi because he's such an interesting guy. And I do feel like this is such a vision that is so clearly like his,

like when you dig into it a little bit. But before we do that, I'm just curious about, I just wanna ask you as a person and as a gamer, when did you first discover Mother 3 and when did the game, when did it really connect with you? I have no idea when I first discovered this game. I don't, oh my God, he spilled.

It's fine. You can't just say that, it was not bad. Ranch, back me up, it's fine spill. It's fine. Thank you. Don't let him treat you this way. It's good. This feels good, actually. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

How much liquid by volume do you think you've spilled in this room? Ha ha ha ha ha. All right, we'll just pick up the edit from here. So Heather, when did you first? Ha ha ha ha ha. This is staying in. Ha ha ha ha ha.

Get into Mother 3. So I'm not certain when I first discovered Mother 3. I know that the first time I played it, it was just the straight up fan translated ROM. But being a bit of a purist, I got the fan translated cartridge and played it on a Game Boy Advance. And then being a very specific

kind of purist, I decided that I wasn't going to beat it until I was playing it on a CRT using the Game Boy Advance lock-in for the GameCube. And so that's the way I played Mother 3 was on a CRT, which isn't the way that it's designed to be, but goddamn did it look amazing. It was so warm and so nice. I had a couple of false starts

when I first started playing it, again, for the aforementioned attention issues. But once I got rolling with the game, I can't remember if I beat it while this podcast was happening or right while this podcast was happening or right before the podcast was happening. But I mean, when I finished it, I was like, oh, oh, oh, oh my God, this is not a feeling

I've ever had in a video game and definitely not one that has been conjured by like a 2D sprite-based RPG. Like I felt emotion, I've cried during The Last of Us. You know, I felt a lot of feelings during Death Stranding, during Disco Elysium, but the ending of this game was like, I need to know people who've played this so that I can talk about the ending of this game. It's kind of an undeniable.

I feel like it's a kind of thing of like, I've heard, I've had this game hyped endlessly, not just by you, but by, you know, it's fandom in general over the decade plus since the fan translation has become widespread. And it really does live up to the expectations that you, the very high expectations someone has for it. I just to talk generally real quick, I don't

know what at what point we're going to dip into spoiler country. I don't know how deep we're going to go because I do feel like some of our audience is going to end up playing this game as a result for the first time as a result of this episode. Yeah, so I don't know. I mean, I feel like your overview was pretty general. Like you kind of talked about some- I tried to keep it as general as possible. But I guess what I'll say is,

we should have planned this out a little bit more, but I'll just say this now for our listenership. If we are gonna go into spoiler country beyond, I think we can talk about the first chapter, the first couple of chapters. You know, I think we kind of have to do that. But if we're gonna go deeper than that. I think we kinda have to do that. But if we're gonna go deeper than that, I think we'll give a pretty clear warning.

I do think we gotta get into very, very deep spoiler stuff because I have some things to say about it. Matt, how did you play through this game? I played it on, well, Heather obviously gifted us the cartridges for the Gameboy Advance, which then I had in, I had some false starts with it since you gave it to us, which I'm now realizing by this point, has it been anywhere between five or six years ago at this point, which is insane to think about. Because not as, as of this release release it'll be a couple of weeks away

we will have been doing this show for six years which is insane Jesus Christ but I know, I know Just like Nazi melting We recorded the pilot six months before that too right so like So like in 2018, we had our first recording ever. But I had played it, I had played like through maybe half of the first chapter, I think four times. Yeah.

And was sort of like, this seems cool, maybe someday. Yeah. It's not like I'm in a rush, I'll have this forever. And so I had planned to play it on my analog pocket because I got and I because I have the the dock for it and a like a Super Nintendo Bluetooth controller for that I'll play this on my TV Yeah, I did start to do that a little bit and I didn't love how it looked in that presentation because it's not

CRT it's not built for that. And so I loaded the ROM up on my Ambernik Game Boy Advance and played through it entirely on there. And what was great about that is I would just basically put it into sleep mode and then just pick it back up and then also like I did like in some instances utilize save states which was incredibly helpful for some of the parts that were pain points I think for me. It has some fairly difficult combat sequences which I was not necessarily expecting no and so Knowing that like in or sections that maybe it may be a better way to put it sections where you know

You have to grind a little bit more or you know you have to maybe get a little bit more lucky and with R&G And then counter or sometimes so same states are helpful and then sometimes too like the You would get sent sometimes not always you get sent back Just far enough or I'm like I'm gonna have to go through like these guys again I kind of don't want to really engage with them anymore So like if I got through it unscathed and got to a point where I could then just kind of continue with even what? Minimal health I have left. I would just try to do that as best as I could but That game would the game will advance health I had left, I would just try to do that as best as I could. But that Gameboy, the Gameboy Advance form factor. Yeah. I talk about the SP as being the Gameboy Advance,

I think. Yeah. I think it's the flat one. I think it's the long boy. It has to be. The wide guy. The wide guy. It's easier to hold. It's easier to hold, certainly on your wrists. It's easier to hold. My issue with it is just the- Do we all agree that it's easier to hold? It's easier to hold. We all agree it's easier to hold. I think it's easier to hold. It's easier to hold.

Okay. The SP, you're a little bit cramped and your hands are a little bit, your wrists are not in line with your forearms, which is a huge ergonomic thing. That was a problem with the fucking Dreamcast controller. But the, Ergonomic thing that was a problem with the fucking Dreamcast controller, but the

the It's just like having the the the front litter backlit screen is so huge Yeah, and so with this they amber nick obviously it has it has a backlit screen or It might be front lit. I don't know which one is the one that is supposed to be better backlit backlit And it's it's nice, and it it's nice and it has a couple extra buttons, but it's basically the exact one-to-one form factor. And the screen presentation is one-to-one with the Game Boy Advance, or it's I guess not one-to-one, it's bigger than the Game Boy Advance screen,

but it scales properly. So it was a gorgeous experience. I put in wired headphones, I was playing with earbuds on an airplane. Having uninterrupted time to play this game on an airplane was one of the great blessings with maybe of my entire life. It was really, really great. But yeah, I played through it all on in a ROM, which is I feel like in the past, it's the only way to play it, to maybe a few years ago, harder to find

than say now in the year of our Lord 2025. You know, there's been some discussion about why it isn't being released by Nintendo in the West, and certainly there's like questions of theming. Reggie, who was the old, what was he? The director of Nintendo of America? He said it was, that the controversy quote is not the issue at all why Mother 3 never made it

to the West, it was all based on the business needs and the business situation at the time. Obviously, that quote applies, I think, to a physical release. It is surprising to me that a release that can be done via the virtual console, especially when Mother 3 has been released in Japan on virtual console, has been met with this sort of like,

invisible barricade. There is theorizing that it is because of the music, which is so integrated into the experience of playing it. And you talking about your earbuds reminded me of it. But also the music is full of sound sampling and also thematic, what did you call it? Intonation? Interpolation.

Interpolations. Interpolations. This was pre-recorded, I kinda dropped some knowledge. Yeah. Everyone was really impressed. Matt was super smart before the show began. I don't know why he doesn't do it during the show. Yeah, I saved that stuff for before the show. But like, so there's like, one of the bass lines

and like musical phrasing and one of the combat encounters is from Michael Jackson's Beat It. There's just like a ton of like larger named, unlicensed musical riffs in the game. And so that has been the theory on why it hasn't come out here. It's entirely possible. The composer, by the way, is Shogo Sakai

and it's a fantastic score. I mean, it's just, it's... It matches what the story demands emotionally. And also those combat encounters, like just to talk about it, it's not one battle theme. Like there's different battle themes for each individual enemy.

They all kind of have their own leitmotif, which comes up and then as part of the combat, like you're talking about. Nick knows music words too. When you're fighting the little bat, the beginning of the Batman TV show starts playing. Like the old Batman theme, da da da da da da da da.

Like that's, it's all, like you can't separate that from the combat encounter. If you even could literally separate, even if they have the source code or whatever you need in order to like strip the music from a game and then rebuild it. I'm sure it's a solvable problem technically

if that really was the issue. And maybe it is. I also kind of feel like Nintendo's just so fucking weird. And so like, they're like the best and the worst in so many ways. Like this is the kind of thing of like, letting, giving Shigesato Itoi this enormous budget and this extremely long development cycle and on multiple platforms

to make such a singular vision is like – that's the thing that only Nintendo would do. That's the thing that only they would do with their resources. But also them deciding, we're only going to keep it in Japan and we're not going to like localize it anywhere else and we're never going to explain ourselves. That's also Nintendo like something only they would do. It's them being so fucking, like, they're so great and also so frustrating at the same time. And what's wild about this game in particular is it's not, as you described it, it's undeniable, right?

Like, it's not a game where it's like, I'm gonna flash some of my gamer cred and be like, oh, rule of Rose for the fucking PlayStation is a great game. Like it is a straightforward, extraordinary experience. It has tone and it has authorship and specificity, but it's not like a game that like Earthbound already exists and Earthbound was already released everywhere. Yeah. So it's not- It did bomb commercially a game that, like, Earthbound already exists, and Earthbound was already released everywhere. Yeah.

It did bomb commercially in the US, but I mean, like, also they did a horrible job marketing it. And it came out at a weird fucking time. Came out 30 plus years ago. Yeah, so like, this game, for the people who've played it, it's like you're getting to see an alternate version of the year 2006 or 2008 or whatever would have come out here. And you're seeing it being, like playing it,

you're like, this would be a cultural touchstone. Like this would be one of the big games. And, you know, Lucas's like exposure in Smash Brothers is testament to that. You know, Lucas's exposure in Smash Brothers is testament to that. Like he's already an international figure, but like the source material is not. It's so weird. It's really strange.

I will say that I am someone who is introduced to the Earthbound franchise in general via Smash Brothers. Like NES, you know, I think was the very first Super Smash Brothers has been a mainstay of the series and then Lucas of course when he was added. That was my knowledge and then Mr. Saturn who's also has a presence in Smash Brothers and some items as well. Like that was my introduction to the kind of like the mother slash Earthbound sort of

IP. But like this game was outside of Lucas and knowing its fandom and certainly having played some of the games that it was influenced by or that it influenced rather such as, I mean Toby Fox's Undertale is the most obvious example and that one you can see so much Mother 3 and Undertale. But also things like, and I honestly don't know

if concerned ape Eric Barone actually has cited Mother 3 as an influence. I didn't, I should have looked into that, but like certainly there's elements with this sort of tranquil rural village being blighted by capital that I definitely feel is an element in Stardew Valley. And there's like, you can basically choose the bad play through, the dark play through by in Stardew Valley, there's a community center which you can choose to repair.

Heather, your mom knows all this obviously with all the times she's been to Stardew Valley. There's like a community center that you can repair to repair. Heather, your mom knows all this, obviously, with all the times you go to Sardin Valley. But there's a community center that you can repair, and that's kind of like the good or canon sort of playthrough. But there's also this onerous corporation, Joja, that has Joja Mart there. And you can instead choose to side with Joja, and then Joja kind of takes over the town and kind of strips it of its identity.

It's not as overt as what happens to Taz Billy Village in Mother 3, but it's like the same sort of thing, and the same sort of like, oh, this is a heavier theme than maybe games of this era, of the Game Boy Advance games. And certainly when it began development in Super Famicom and on to Nintendo 64, we're not really like, not as many games were digging into things like this, and now it's a lot more prominent.

I think about like, my Game Boy Advance was extremely important to me. And obviously one of my white whales of gaming is on the Game Boy Advance, the Final Fantasy Tactics Advance cartridge that is just gonna sit on my fucking coffee table for the rest of my life. When I think about the state of mind I was in,

the age I was, like the sort of feeling of that pre-smartphone era of 2006, the idea of this game being in my life, I think would have been like a trajectory change. Like it would have been like, I know I would have made it part of my personality. I would have been like, because there wasn't, to my knowledge, in 2006, there's nothing like this at all

coming out on Game Boy Advance, certainly. There might have been PlayStation 2 games that had more emotionally charged adult themes, certainly like Final Fantasy X deals with death and grief. And you could argue that Shadow of the Colossus also is an adult experience. An adult in terms of like, I wanna say like the literary feeling of the game,

because like Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City are also on PlayStation 2 around the same time. And those are adult games because you can kill people. But like a game where you experience sadness as an intended effect of the game was very few and far between. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to paint

with too broad of a brush for that whole era of gaming, but yes, it is certainly for the Game Boy Advance. I mean, because I was trying to think of other Game Boy Advance JRPGs or RPGs in general. And there were a lot of good ones on that system. But it's things like Golden Sun, which is, I really like the Golden Sun games. Those are pretty straight ahead.

They certainly weren't dealing with these heavy, heady sort of themes. Or you talked about the Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced, the Final Fantasy IV Advanced, like the V and VI Advanced remakes, you know. It is more stuff that's a little bit more, again, all great games, but a little bit more straight ahead. Yeah. That said, you know, even with Final Fantasy, we did a whole episode on Chrono Trigger earlier, but like also, you know, even on Final Fantasy

four and six, you're dealing with some pretty intense emotional moments, but it's not the sort of thing that's kind of like as overarching and as thematically dominant as it is in Mother 3. Yes. Can we talk about Shigesato Itoi a little bit more real quick? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So he's the writer director of this game, scenario by is the credit. The mother franchise in general, along with the late Satoru Iwata, basically his brainchild, his baby, he's the chief creative voice of it. And he's this, I mean, I just did a little, like, you know, kind of peripheral research about him.

But, you know, it seems like this Pauly Mathos is this eclectic career. You mentioned that he was an ad man. He was a renowned copywriter, like a celebrity copywriter, which is such a weird thing. He also co-wrote a book with Murakami. Yes, he's got all these, I mean mean, he was a he was the Japanese voice of the father and my neighbor Totoro. He's like, he's got all these like insane sort of credits

that have nothing to do with video games. Here's an anti war print ad he made in the 80s. That's entitled after you Mr. Prime Minister, which is just such a like I just would want a poster of that. That's awesome. It's really cool. It's these two soldiers who are gesturing at a, like, you know, they're in full combat gear and they're gesturing for someone else to take their place. And the text says in Japanese, after you, Mr. Prime Minister. So like, he seems like, I don't know, just, and also the other thing is, when this game releases, he was born in kind of like what we call the baby boom era in the States.

In 1948, I think. In 1948, so when this game releases, he's almost 70 years old, you know? Like, it's kind of like, we don't see it as much in video gaming, and maybe it's because it's such a young art form, but a thing that you'll see in like, for instance, film, like we had a recent year, maybe it was last year, I don't remember, it may have been two years ago, but Killers of the Flower

Moon, Martin Scorsese's movie comes out, and then also Boy in the Hair and Miyazaki's movie, both of these artists who are very much elder statesmen of their crafts, but it's just because they are at that level, they're like these old masters. They have such an intense awareness of their own voices and they're able to make stuff that it's so meticulously crafted. That's kind of what it feels like with this game too. It's just like, oh, this is a guy who is so confident in his own voice and just like, is like, fuck it, I'm gonna do exactly what I wanna do.

It's also like that tone, that voice that he's brought forward in this game is both funny and horrifying at the same time. Like one of my favorite moments, early game, is obviously if you've played just a few chapters, you know that the sort of inciting incident of the game is the death of one of the main character's mother or one of the main character's wife.

They're sitting around a fire after she's gone missing and a guy says to Flint, the husband of this woman, hey, I found a tooth, it's gonna make a great weapon. And it's awesome. I did find it in your wife's heart. Which is structured as a joke, but it is like the motivating moment for the entire, like it causes Flint to go into a rampage

until he's knocked out and thrown in jail. And it is the first moment of grief that Tasmally can remember. And it's delivered funny. Yeah, it's the grotesque, right? It's the barrage of the horrifying and the hilarious. I mean, that's kind of what you're dealing with. It's also just like really bad bedside manner

from this fucking guy. Yeah. Who really with your wife died. The town's never experienced anything like that. It's true, he doesn't know what to do. He didn't know how to do it right. Yeah. But also what that gets. That's a funny read. It's like he was doing his that. You didn't know how to do it right. But also what that gets.

That's a funny read. It's like he was doing his best. I don't know. I did find it in your life, Zach. It's just dumb. The writing there is really great, and also the localization, which we should talk about as well, the fan translation.

But also that is a sequence where just like, holy shit, the animation in that. Like it's like all the sprites look great, but the way they're animated is just like, I mean, it feels like the sort of thing of like, oh yeah, this is partly the benefit of having such a lengthy development cycle is that you're allowed to get this like granular

with character animation. Well, you don't, like you'll'll see really lush, one-off sprite animation in modern games. But at the time, in Final Fantasy 6, for example, if somebody's angry, they make the same face and hopping motion as if they're shocked or if they are confused. They'll just hop up and down with the same exact animation loop.

Nick does it too. Yeah. Yeah. Hands out, hair up. Like they'll just hop up and down with the same exact animation loop. Nick does too. Yeah, yeah, like hands out, hair up. Don't get me started. But in this, the things that Flint do, does at that fire are never repeated anywhere else in the game. It is just for that sequence. It's the, and all the, I believe all the NPCs in Tazmily Village are all unique sprites, which is its own thing. It's another thing that just like,

you always see assets being reused. But then thematically, all of those characters have like individual names, but once the town of Tazmily becomes gentrified, then you get generic NPCs like guy, girl, you know, dad. I did see one late game, like guy, girl, you know, dad. I did see one late game, this guy, he kind of looked like Ali G, like the character Ali G, and I saw somebody on Reddit, I guess, being like,

who is this? Why does he look like Ali G? So, Itoi is like, you know, the strong creative voice behind this game. So much of our ability to play it is owed to Clyde Mandolin, AKA Tomato, and their team, who are just absolute heroes overseeing this fan translation.

Mandolin, go on. Well, I was gonna say, it's not, it's also not the case where this is a translation made by somebody who's not a part of the industry. He is a working translator. Like this is his job. Professional Japanese to English translator, worked on Dragon Ball, One Piece, Lupin the Third,

Kingdom Hearts 2, Matt. Hell yeah. And I think they're, like first off, it's, the internet is awful except when it's great and this is one of those instances where God bless them. But also this is the kind of thing where she's like, it's kind of awesome on a game that seems so stridently anti-capitalist that it's a fan community who volunteered

their time to make this freely available to people just to experience as not for any sort of profit seeking or anything like that. It's just like, hey, this is just purely a labor of love just so we can share this with other people. God bless them. I think it's so awesome when shit like this happens. I'm sort of like, I mean, that sounded like I was gonna denigrate this project in some way.

That's not what I meant to say. What I mean to say is, it's baffling to me because you hear about things like this, and then like, I feel like you hear about other stuff like this, or even stuff that's tangentially Nintendo related at all, like a Super Smash Brothers tournament being shut down by Nintendo or something like that. But this persists.

This, and they have to know about it. They 100% know about it. They're completely aware of it. Like, in multiple interviews, they're like, aware of the fan translation, and I believe at one point, there was even discussion of using the fan translation as the official translation, were that the game were to be released here.

Like, they are, it is above. Like, it is above water. It is not like... It's on Mario's desk, he knows. Yeah. But they're not ceasing and desisting everyone on the internet. And it's like, how much of that is... Like, of the mysteries of Mother 3,

part of the mystery is why isn't it localized? And part of the mystery is why aren't they stopping it? Yes. Both of which are like, is it about, you know, it's why he's like, is he in some way involved in being like, just let him have it? Like, who knows? There's no way to know.

It's a very fascinating circumstance, because like any other, there's a reality where this, we didn't get to do this. Like, because it got stopped in 2006. Right. You know what I mean? All of the WonderSwan games that I play are absolutely untranslated. They may be masterpieces, but my command of the language and ability to read it is so low that I will never know.

And so that means there's not an official translation by Nintendo that they're just holding on to. Because otherwise they would put that out so that people could, they're not afraid, well they are. Who fucking knows? They don't know, they don't like money the same way, it's bad for them. They're an infuriating company. And also, it's also like part of the, I think part of at this point, the allure of the game is the sort of unwoven mystery of why it isn't released,

why it isn't being stopped, have you played it, sharing it with people who, like the fact that you can't go on the Switch and just click a button and play it, to me makes it special enough that when you do seek it out, that there is an added layer of like, this is special because it was a little bit tricky to get. Well, and also that Nintendo did go to the trouble of localizing Mother 1.

Like, they eventually released that one. What do they call it, like Earthbound? Earthbound Beginnings. Earthbound Beginnings. And it's, I don't know, it's just so fucking, they're so fucking weird. They're such an annoying company. I will of course buy and rebuy everything they ever put out.

But it's just like, but I also think this game would be just as beloved if it wasn't such a, you know, like a hidden object. Like this isn't like the fact that this is like a, oh, this is a hidden gem, this is a buried treasure. Like this is worth seeking out and part of the, like what makes it great is that you have to jump through the hoops to try to get it.

I think if this was just released at retail, it would have been still as rapturously received. It would just be more popular because it's like, it's that good of a game. I think Nintendo should do not just a digital release of this, but a physical release on a Game Boy Advance cartridge in the United States of America. Can you imagine?

It'd be great. It would sell out instantly. I, I'd never have one. If it was a limited run, it would sell out instantaneously and it would be on eBay for like $10,000 the next day. Oh yeah, and it would be a limited run because that's the kind of dumb shit they do. What was the super, there's a Super Mario compilation. Super Mario 3D All-Stars. Yeah, and then they were just like, they released that one and it was like, but that was like a limited run for some reason.

Yeah, and on digital storefronts as well, as well, you can't buy it digitally now for some reason. Why the fuck do they do this shit? Because they're fucking stupid and dumb. It's fucking ridiculous. It's a company that's sitting on like 20 billion in cash. Yeah, they're certainly smarter than me, because they figured out some way

to permanently frustrate its biggest fans and also get them to continue to be their biggest fan. Well, maybe part of it is a psychological game where you're like, well, what if I can't play it later? Like how Wind Waker HD is not available. Yes. Like that's crazy.

It's so crazy, because I'm also, because there are, like you were were saying Reggie has said like Reggie has commented on it. Yeah. He's been like it's not because of the music it's not because of the content. I'm sort of like one of those is bullshit one of those is not true because if it wasn't one of those things it would be out like because those are the those are the concerns I think those are the things that would typically be flagged. You know, well because there's There's some insane stuff

really crazy stuff there are Robotic merman that you have to kiss to get air. Yeah underwater. Yeah, that's wild That's really crazy ghosts that are just drinking. Yeah, it's nuts. I was like, what did Reggie Fils-Aime leave Nintendo? He left in 2019. So it's been, you know, it's, he still looms large because he was such a prominent figure

for Nintendo of America. You know Doug Bowser's never gonna do it. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. Like, it's cause the Reggie thing, the Reggie on Mother 3 thing has been so memed and was like, you know, like reference on Robot Chicken or whatever the fuck. It's like, has anyone gotten Doug Bowser on the record on Mother 3?

I think Bowser's gonna pull a Bowser and not do it. I, the game is so packed full of like loving details that it's kind of hard to talk about. Like there's so much. Even just the, I've read a lot of complaints about the way you run in the game. I love the way you run. I wish I could run like that in other games.

I think it's great. Yeah, like that you hold and release to run instead of holding to run. It's great. It's very similar in a way to the way that you hold and release to stab in Shadow of the Colossus. To run is something, like that's also the way you feel

when you're a kid, is you're like, ah, I'm gonna go faster and then you go. And then you feel a little out of control as you're moving around. Yeah, I mean, I'll be honest, just from a control feel standpoint, I did find it a little bit awkward I like I'm not the hugest fan of the way running works in the game, but certainly not a deal-breaker for me I love it. It certainly it feels like a decision

I would say this I will defend the decision because it again it feels like like like everything every single detail in this game was it was extraordinarily thought through. I'll also just say that like, I don't know, it's been so long since the game actually came out that I guess it's kind of hard to talk about the length of its development cycle, but like I, as a man now in my 40s, remember reading about Mother 3 as a kid.

Like I remember AGM Magazine and GamePro Magazine seeing like previews for this game that was coming out for the Nintendo 64 that it was excited to play. And like that it was like there and then by the time it came out, you know, I was like a grown man and it had gone through three different platforms

that it was gonna go for. It's like crazy that it even exists at all. Cause it feels like it's like it's like crazy that even exists at all, because it feels like the sort of thing that, again, any other company would have killed at some point in the development process. Yeah. Yeah. I can I say another thing I like, I wrote down some stuff I liked once in a while. Yeah, I also wrote down some stuff I like. I like that you get a fever when you're learning an ability.

I like that, too, and I like that it slows you down. Yeah, you can't run because you're like, I don't feel so good. No, it's fun. I mean, I like, I love when a game is like, hey, we're gonna tax you on your time, your real world time as a person, but like it's to make some sort of point, it's for some sort of purpose.

Like it's not just like waiting for a cool down, it's like actually there's something you're going to feel from this. And for me that's just like the spa experience. Like when you go into one of the baths and it's like I just gotta sit in this bath for a second. And it's also, it's kind of making you feel like, hey I just gotta chill for a bit.

The same way my character is chilling, I just gotta chill for a bit. And I can't really touch my controller and there's no way to speed this process up, I just gotta wait it out. That did soothe me every time. I felt so amazing. It's very soothing, yeah. It's great. Yep. Really, really good. It made me want to get in one.

Yeah, I was thinking about getting into body water. What? Just getting in some water. I don't know. Yeah, getting in some water, why not? I haven't done that in a while. Take the rocks out of your pockets. That's what you're doing there. Matt, you discovered the origin of a meme.

This completely shocked me. I'm playing the game. Well, there's a couple things too, because I recognize Mr. Saturn Yeah. from, I guess, people posting him online. You know, people posting him. I feel like that made me sound a hundred years old.

I feel like I've seen Mr. Saturn before. He's in Mother 2 or Earthbound as well, right? So he's like a fixture of the series. I get to one of these rooms in one of these caves and I stumble upon negative man right, and I'm sort of like this fucking guy negative man is a yellow square man for rectangular man who

Is on his hands and knees in such agony? his hands and knees in such agony and I've seen him just like online as a meme they'll post it as like a reaction or something and when I see him in the game I was like no fucking way this is from this this is from this yeah it it shocked me it absolutely shocked me just to see him because I just didn't know what he was from. But it makes 100% sense he's from this, because he looks like everything else in this weird game. It's also the kind of thing of like,

he's kind of just like too beaten down by the world to even muster up a fight, right? Like it's kind of like, and it's not really even, it doesn't really necessarily even have a ton of, there's a lot of stuff in this game that doesn't necessarily have a ton of gameplay consequence. It's more just like, hey, here's just a moment to experience. It's one of those sorts of things.

But then as such, it lingers in the collective memory because it's so distinct and so weird. Yes, because he's in one place one place only he's the only one I Think you can one hit him. He has like basically no health and you get nothing from beating him Yeah, he's just there and he his face. I Just need to talk about the emotions on his face a little bit because he looks like god damn it not again He looks like he's so like just end it just fucking kill me. I'm done. I'm done and

It was just so it was just so surprising to see him. There's a lot of just like I Mean gosh it is it is hard to talk about because I there's like stuff that I want to say That's like about the later stuff, but like I'll say well cordon off a part where we can talk about endgame I'll say in the beginning of the game to like when I was starting it my first my the first initial pain point that I was Experiencing was the very first boss. Yeah, you have which is the Mecha Drago Yeah, and I was just like getting housed in every playthrough that I was playing with it I was like, I think I'm just not being calm calm I think I'm just not thinking about this in a way that is helpful to me like beating this thing and then like once you like

Like I think my final play time for this game was somewhere around like 35 hours Which is above the average I think completion time if you go on like something like how long to beat or so It's a big boy. It's a commitment And also the thing I was surprised by is how deep into the game you finally take control of Lucas in earnest Yeah, that's like let's like like ten hours. Yeah, like a third of the way. Yeah you first you start as Flint, right? Yeah, and then you go on to duster. Yeah, you have like a little cold open where I think you are Lucas for a little bit Yeah, and then Chapter You have like a little cold open where I think you are Lucas for a little bit. And then, chapter three, one of my favorite chapters,

you get to be Salsa the Monkey. Here's the thing, if I knew there was a monkey named Salsa in this game, I would have played it 10 years ago. Yeah. I didn't know. I had no idea. I didn't know there was a fucking monkey in the game, not that you get to play him.

Got a girlfriend, Samba? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, not just that. He fucking dances. His dances are hilarious and adorable. They're so cute. And yet you also are like, to extend the themes of like grief and sadness, like this monkey is in trouble.

His girlfriend's being held hostage and he's being tortured. He's being abused by Fassad, which of course is his his name he's a fucking phony facade by the way that that's just like a nice little bit a little bit of a localization so I look this up because his name is Yokuba in Japanese Yokuba means it's a it's a play on the word Yokubari which is greedy or avaricious and so it was like okay we need a name that sounds like a name like sounds like it could be a name and so it was like, okay, we need a name that sounds like a name, like,

sounds like it could be a name in the way that Yakuuba sounds like a name, but has that same sort of meaning to an English speaking audience. So facade, like, people like the homophone versus facade, it's, I don't know, it's very clever. I will admit something. And it just thought, again, thoughtful localization

from a team that's working for free. I have to admit something about some character names real quick. I didn't change any of the character names, which you can do. It took me entirely too long that Lucas and Klaus have the same letters. Yeah. It was like, oh, they're brothers. They have the same letters in their names. Yeah.

I forgot what that's called. called anagram an anagram. Yeah One thing I like is in the character creation. It's just a lovely character creation Yeah, by the by the way, there's just like a lot There's these animations that are all playing in the corners you're going through and meeting each character But the option to use the canon names which which exist, you can change the character names, but the canon names is don't care. Yeah, that's really funny. I really like, that's a home run to me.

It's really funny. And I like the stuff that's like, then you can pick like what your favorite food is, or whatever. And what your name is. And yeah, you gotta put it, which comes in huge. Look, another thing that, like you see the long tail

influence of this game, Metaphor Riffontasio does the same trick. Yes. And what it hits in Metaphor, which I finished in the first part of this year, started playing at the end of last year, it's not quite on the same level as in Mother 3 in terms of how it's deployed, but it is still extremely effective.

It's a really good tech. Did it make you cry in Metaphor Refon-tazio? Because it made me cry in this. No. No. No, because he doesn't. Yeah, nothing. He can't.

It's not possible. I knew that. I was just taking a second to reveal that it made me cry. For years, he's just been using super glue as eyedrops. No. No. Here's the thing using super glue as eye drops. Yeah. Yeah. Like here's the thing, Weiger don't leak.

Why? That's complete bullshit. You spill constantly, dude. Weiger don't leak. Yeah, right. You have a character trait that is leaking. Well, that's external leakage. That's a different thing.

I'm pissed. It also made me cry when I finished it. I was like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, because also you don't know that it's gonna be that effective. No, let's just say, look, I mean, also, I did finish this on an airplane on my flight back home. Yeah, well, it's a higher than typical oxygen saturation.

My wife rubbed my back. Nathan Fielder flying the plane. Yeah, Nathan was up there. Yeah. Michelle, while we're talking character names, because I know you're playing this game too, and you also shared some screenshots. So you did rename some characters. I did rename all the characters. Every single one of them that it prompted me to.

Were you at one point standing, what was like, because I'm sure the screenshots that you sent to the group chat, but I feel like at some point it was like maybe Matt standing at Weiger's grave, what was it? It was Matt standing at Heather's grave. Yeah. Yeah.

And then Weiger trying to console Matt. Trying would be the correct word. You would not be able to succeed. They're there. It's fine, buddy. It's okay, buddy, I'm still here. What did you, I don't know how deep you got into the game. I know you put some hours into it

But like you're also coming into this without any point of reference right really like what were your what were your impressions playing mother 3? I was yeah, I was shocked how deep and thoughtful it got really quickly There was definitely an added a flair to it because I named all of our characters after us. But yeah, just like, okay, wow, like this game is all about capitalism immediately. And it was cool to see that in like a, I don't know, a game that I thought was gonna be kind of just like a chill thing.

Right, for sure. Yeah. That's probably the thing that threw me the most is, and obviously it hits so much, you know, like, yes, you have a little bit of a tell because the first chapter is called Night of the Funeral. But it's like, but like when it really does, that moment we've already talked about hits is like,

oh, I see what I see what I'm in for. And you still only kind of know what you're in for at that point. But just like the idea that like that again, this is this type of game is so often built on accruing treasure, right? And like accruing currency and that's how you make yourself more powerful, is by getting more stuff, and to have a game that completely, like, you know, it works, it counteracts that,

and where the introduction of money is like the original sin in this game, is like, you know, this evil man is bringing money to this village. I don't know, it's, it feels subversive. I think one of the items that you can purchase from the official like like storefront for mother three yeah, which is part of

It always like personal website which I think is called some like the translated name is something like almost always daily newspaper It's like a blog that has been kept up for years and years and years. Yeah, he like started in the 90s Yeah, but one of them is a bag of money. Yeah. Like a bag of coins. Which is a funny thing to purchase after playing Mother 3. It's very, yeah, sort of against the whole thing.

Yeah. I gotta talk about something I loved. Yeah. Save points are kind of just like whatever, typically. Yeah, like whatever, like a little apparition, a crystal. A green swirl. A safe room.

The save point in this game is a little guy. He's a little frog. Yeah. Yeah, they're save frogs. And let me tell you something. I didn't think there would be another frog frog in an RPG. I'd like more than frog This fucking guy he tells you he's polite. Yeah, he's very friendly He tells you to say hello to the next frog frog you see yeah

I think maybe just encouraging you to save as often as you can yeah He and he He bids you farewell at like the last one. Yeah. It's great. It's what it is cute as hell Yeah, I say a safe point that talks to you is pretty great really good. Sometimes. He's in different things Yeah, right, right. He's in a little car a lot of fun He's in a little look in the trash can or something. He might be behind a door Yeah, it's it's detail that doesn't need to be there Yes behind a door. Yeah, it's detail that doesn't need to be there. It's detail for the sake of it.

And I don't know, that's part of why this feels like such a magical experience. We talked about- I was gonna say, there is a late game frog that is a bit spoilery that was very funny to me that I'll try to remember later. We talked about, as far as since we're in animal territory, we talked about the saved frogs, we talked about Salsa the monkey, we had talked about as far as since we're an animal territory do you we talked about the save frogs

We talked about salsa the monkey. We had talked about bony bony Perhaps number one good boy bony really good great dog great dog I like that is like I like his sniff ability like just reveals enemy weaknesses Yeah, I don't know. It's just it's it's also just nice to have like a dog in the party. Yeah, I like that he's faster than everybody. Right, right. In terms of like the turn lineup. Kind of always has initiative.

Because he's a dog, of course he's faster than us. He'd be faster. In, is it chapter five when you go to the club? I think it's chapter four. Chapter four. It's the club tidiboo. He has to put on a little disguise, and he has to dress up like a guy,

and then the guards are like, you smell like a dog. But then you're like, you're just like a weird guy that smells like a dog. You smell like a dog and a kid. It's funny how often people comment on smells in this game. Yeah, they talk about smells a lot. They're like, Daz, you stink. Oh man, but there is also a moment

where smell is referenced, it's like late game. It's its own thing too. It's a, yeah, I don't know, it's such a... What? Is it, oh no. Yeah. It's such a wild experience, because it's just like, it's... I feel like there's always something new.

And even the parts where I feel like the game was kind of like chugging a little bit, or was, you know, like I was less engaged by it. There's still always something that's just like, oh wait, this is something unique to this area, that is unique to this experience, that makes it all feel like, oh wait, this is something unique to this area that is unique to this experience that makes it all feel like, none of this game feels like homogeneous or samey.

It all feels like you're just having these endless surprises. Even just the existence of a super tall guy. Man, I love that tall guy. Just like the fact that there, it's like, there doesn't have to be a super tall guy, but it's a game that embraces so many different creative instincts that when you're in an area

where it does feel a little grindy, where it does feel a little samey, you'll still meet like an enemy that's like, and I don't have the words to describe, but it'll be like a fly that's trying hard, is like the name yeah enemy or like a an ultra-con like that a table that's concerned a stinky guy yeah yeah so you're still being you're still being fed like new stuff constantly no totally and then like you the stuff that you then learn about the world of these games, this game in particular, you

then see somebody like the tall guy, is his name Letter Leader? Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking at this guy, I'm like, what's his lore? Why is he so tall? And then I think I maybe do have a reason for why he's this way. But it's not like what the game is about even. I almost am like. I just, just to clarify,

because I know there's people listening to this who haven't played this game. This guy's tall as fuck. You don't fucking get it. Like, it's just like, he's not like just like a little bit taller than a regular guy. He's like four times taller than a regular guy.

Yes, I mean, I'd go as far as maybe five times. He's like a giant. He's's like a Titan from attack on Titan, but he's like Long he's like a long boy. Yeah, he's a long guy. He's a long tall man Like if Victor Wemba nyama was 20 feet tall and I'm my size. Yes And there's nobody else like him he No, he's the only one. So it's not like you're like, oh, there must be a group of tall people and we'll meet their town later.

He's just one tall guy. He's also old. He's old and he's tall. I think I'll explain my theory to you off pod, I think. Oh, okay. I don't know, because I don't know if it's worth bringing up, but I have a theory about what his lore is

I Know we're kind of all over the place here, but I do want to comment on the gameplay a little bit I did really like the JRPG combat. I think it's like I things like the Yeah, I messed around a little bit with earthbound never really got deep into it But I know that like the the odometer spinning for your resource pools is like part of the mechanic there. I think that is really fun in this. It is really engaging, does add a little bit of tension to something that can feel kind of monotonous and turn-based.

I do really like the, especially the timed rhythmic presses for additional damage that you reference, Heather, that are tied to the different music themes for the enemies, but also that there's an element where if an enemy is asleep, it's easier to time. That's really satisfying. Also just in general, I like it when a game like this has a combat system where status effects are actually useful and paralyzing an enemy with staples or just things like that, the facing of the enemy matters

when you start an encounter. They're just like these little bit of added layers to depth that like, it's not the most revolutionary combat system that I played in an RPG, but it's really satisfying and it has a good amount of death. I love, so to sleep as a status that makes it easier for you to hear the beat of the music, which makes it easier for you to attack,

is such a wild, so in all fucking RPGs, if the enemy is asleep, you get a good hit on him, right? Sure, yeah. This is a way where you are personally making that hit and it is easier because he's asleep. Does that make sense? Right, right, right. Yes, it does, yes.

It's not your character doing extra, doing a critical hit because they're asleep and that wakes up the enemy. Yeah, it's you, because the beat is easier. It's so great. It is cool. I also liked, I liked the combat. I liked, but like I liked the combat,

but the boss fights I almost were like I don't need to be doing this kind of like I'm enjoying Walking around yeah, I'm enjoying Fighting little guys. It's good that there's a boss fight I think to break it up and stuff like that, but oftentimes if I would just kind of be like Okay, like who just like same some of them are very memorable, of course. But some of them I'm sort of like, oh well. Maybe overstay their welcome a little bit,

like giving the enemy too high of a health pool is part of where the challenge comes from and it starts to be a little tedious. Yeah, and I also think this part of Lee comes from coming from a development lead who does not seem necessarily super interested by video game, like the video game part of video games. So I think that's maybe part of it.

But it's also part of the time that it came out. Like 2006 is an era where RPGs were more challenging and less like, oh, you know, the whole reason Elden Ring and Dark Souls and Demon's Souls all had that PS3 era resurgence was because games had gotten soft. Like Uncharted is not a hard game to play. Yeah, no, I don't have to play it on Easy or nothing like that.

And so when you go back to playing a game like this from 2006, you're reminded that, oh yeah, stuff used to be a little bit tougher. Yeah, it's weird though, because like, there's an element of challenge, sure, but I think it's also kind of like, more just kind of grindy and time consuming, and I think more unforgiving rather,

as opposed, like, because it's like, I don't know if it's necessarily like the most testing of player skill as much as like kind of like testing your patience at times. But again, these are relatively minor things and I think this is like, you know. It reminds me of Dragon Quest. Yeah, sure, yeah, sure.

Where there's a lot of like, oh, part of the joy of this game is that you, maybe you play 30 minutes or 40 minutes before you go to bed and you only attack like five or six of the same dudes and then you go to sleep. Like it's like a bedtime game. And I think Mother 3 also is a really great nighttime experience.

You get a little bit farther in the story and I think that's a place where save states are so great in modern gaming for Mother 3, is that you can break down those chunks into a little bit more personal time. I think that was maybe the number one reason I was able to finish it when I did, because I was just like, I was plowing through it,

I was spending a lot of time with it, but it was sort of like, if I was only able to just save when I could get to a save point and not even put it to sleep or something like that, it would've taken me a lot longer to do, I think. But I do think, to go back to the save frogs, there's a lot of save frogs. It does seem fairly forgiving from that standpoint.

They're everywhere. Well, and that's, okay, there's one, there was one, there was one frog in a place where I will say it was shocking to see one, and then, and I talked to him just to see if I could talk to him, and I could, and he let me save my game there, and then in the next room, there was also one. Should we, I don't know if anyone else has any general general thoughts or if now is a good time for us to go deep

Into spoiler country and talk about the the end game. I will say just from a character Design standpoint. I love all the characters the way they look all the main characters of this story They're so unique and they're so like this story. They're so unique and they're so like, Blint's a cowboy. Like that's really funny. Like it's, it's cool that he wears a cowboy hat. Lucas, obviously a little boy, Kumatora, uh, extremely cool red hair, bony a dog, Duster. Duster has a lot of funny stuff happened to him. He's in a band at one point and it was very, very funny.

He's in a band and like sort of like, itance it. He has a wig. Yeah loses memory. Yeah, he has amnesia Yeah, which is very very funny. So he's just like an idiot Steals the wrong thing. Yeah, he steals the wrong thing Sausage, okay, I love I just love all the characters designs So so much yeah, the art direction is pristine and it takes full advantage of the hardware, the platform that it was released on. I also just really like a sort of vivid palette, which this game has. Thank God it came out.

Well, I guess it didn't. But thank God it was developed for the Game Boy Advance. I feel like Game Boy Advance games have aged so beautifully. And have aged in a way where like, games from other generations before have not aged as well. Well yeah, Nintendo 64 games are very kind of milky, and there's like an in-between-ness to them. Whereas Game Boy Advance feels like

the pinnacle of that style. Yeah, they'd already basically already perfected, you know, 2D game design with the 16-bit era. It's like we kind of reached the endpoint of what that could be. And then when we have the Game Boy Advance, which is kind of like an extension of it, then things got to be even more refined,

both from a gameplay standpoint and from an art standpoint. Yeah, you mean going back to the, guess the game we were playing earlier, that Legend of Dragoon screenshot from the first true 3D console generation. You look at a game like that, it's just like, I do have some nostalgia for that sort of look, but it certainly is not aged as well as like a game from the Game Boy Advance or even from the Super Nintendo. Yeah, no way.

All right. It's time. We're going to get into spoiler country for Mother 3. So we've talked peripherally about some of this stuff earlier. If you don't want the end game spoiled, go ahead and jump ahead to the time stamp where we will get to our segment where we'll get to our Ryu crew that time stamp will be inserted right here if you're on the free fee the time code is 2 hours 24 minutes and 52 seconds if you're listening with ads you can skip exactly 33 minutes from this point

to get a spoiler country as for everyone sticking with us, you've been warned. Hold on to your hats and glasses. We're getting into Spoiler Country. Yee-haw! Spoiler Country. All right, here we are. I guess, I mean, where to start? Should we just get into the end game? Should we talk about, is there anything late game that we haven't gotten into yet

as we're here in Spoiler Country? I mean, there's like a couple like very specific late game things, like near end of game things that I would like to get into. Maybe the place, I could be wrong. Maybe the place to start is the chapter six sunflower field. Yeah, that's a good place. That's great.

So non-Spoiler country is snake rope. Spoiler country is sunflower fields. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everything before is snake rope. Which by the way, just to circle back to the rope snake real quick, when he becomes like a bigger part of the story, he's like, hey now I'm like part of it. He was a functional item to traverse the gaps. And he's like, by the way, I talk and now I'm like a big part of the story. Very very funny.

But yes, the sunflower field. So it's just kind of Lucas is, you know, this is – I mean, hey, Death Stranding 2 is coming up. I think we got Death Stranding on the brain. But Death Stranding is also divided into chapters that are of wildly varying duration. And it's an interesting pacing thing. It's definitely the case here because this is like – yeah, I think easily the shortest chapter.

It's pretty abrupt and it's kind of gameplay like. It is just kind of tonally, you know, as Lucas being kind of in this liminal space of the sunflower field where he's seeing visions of his dead mom. And I don't know it's just a It's just it's it's just like an interesting sort of Just transitional sort of device basically it's very different too because You are sort of in the rest of the game It's a it's a 2d game But you sort of exist in you know like in a 2d 3d sort of world right where you can yeah traverse in many different Directions more of an isometric perspective correct and so in this you're just going

Side scroller style through this through this field, and you don't you don't know What it is you're just kind of walking through it I just I realize I just use the word isometric and realize that people are talking about the difference between earth brown and Mother 3 might get a little pedantic Earthbound is closer to isometric. This is more like a top-down game over technical, but it's, you get what I'm saying. Because you're playing, you're up here, your eyes are at the top and you're looking down

to the screen. There are so few side-scrolling games that have a moment as beautiful as the Sunflower Field. Absolutely. And it's very simple. Like, it's just artistically honest and pure and well executed. And so you're just like, wow, this is gorgeous.

Yeah, I think it made me the saddest I've ever been. Like, it was brutal. It was just like, oh, Jesus. Yeah, because it's after a point where, like, because there's a big boss fight before that, and then you wake up in this field, and you're just like, what the hell? And then you see, yeah, your dead mom.

Yeah. And it's just, it's a travesty. It's, and then, sort of like, from that, it's sad travesty. And then like, sort of like from that, it's sad throughout the game, but then like from that point on, it's just sort of like, it doesn't get any better. What I kind of like, I realize it's quite part of what I like about this game

and part of my response to it is just comes from being older and having endured more. Yes. It's just like, it does sort of having endured more. Yes. It's just like, it does sort of explore how life is just kind of like punishing. And it's just, there's a series of things

that you encounter that aren't like obstacles to summit, but are just like things that forever alter the course of your life, and then you just live in their aftermath. And that's just kind of what this game is about so much of is just dealing with grief. And as a gameplay, like as a tangible manifestation of that theme,

the end boss being something that you just endure. Right, right, yes. As like a story, a story on a story about, here is grief, here is trauma, here are the things we've been through, it is kind of relentless. And then like the apex moment, the climax of that idea is not throwing a punch and just having to take it

is so fucking clean and good and effective. I had not read any spoilers about that final fight when I played the game and I went through a first a wave of confusion yeah, and then understanding and it was like it was like getting it was it was like getting somebody put a key in my hand and

I didn't even know I was in a locked room you so you it's a it's a one-on-one fight with the It's a one-on-one fight with the – like Lucas and the other party members are debilitated. It's a one-on-one fight with the masked man who is the kind of like the enforcer, the Darth Vader if you will of Porky and who's the main – who's the emperor in this analogy. And he's at this point – he's at this point revealed to be Klaus. Yes. Like in this fight. Yeah. So you're fighting your twin brother who disappeared earlier and has been recruited and the abilities

that are inherent to Lucas are being used for ill and you're fighting him one on one and you just get the message when you're trying to fight that something is stopping you, something is preventing Lucas from attacking his brother. And it's a medium where, obviously, with video games, you're in control as the player, and this game so effectively has moments where it wrenches control from you,

and where what you're dealing with is your circumstances are completely out of your control. It's really effective here. Before we get into the final fight, like in depth, I also wanna say, I think this is pretty light game. When you're hallucinating, that you're in a hot spring and then you stop hallucinating

and it's just a puddle of fucking mud. Yeah, and Boney won't get in because he's in like that fucking sting. Yeah, it's very funny But in the hallucination like he's like it Is just like it's like confusing what your dog is an interest Your dog doesn't get in because yeah, you're hallucinating because you ate mushrooms that you found One of the things that I'm sure Has delayed the localization of this game. But it's just so funny too because when you get in, typically when you get in the hot

spring, it heals you as we said. But Boney doesn't get in, so Boney doesn't get healed from when you guys go in the hot spring. It's very, very funny. That whole area, that area is scary Yeah because you're having like a bad trip kind of because then you're seeing other characters that you've interacted with and they're running at you or Like they're like following you and stuff and they say really scary things One thing I one thing I read about this or maybe or maybe watched in someone's analysis of this of this game is that

This specific thing this this the sequence where you're hallucinating and you're encountering all your loved ones and they're saying horrible things to you is a specific nightmare of Shigesato Itoi or a specific thing of just like, the worst thing that can possibly happen to you is someone you love telling you that they hate you. Yeah, absolutely.

Can you believe that this game, in all his interviews, talks about how much darker the N64 version was? Jesus. And that because of the length of time it took to develop the game, he became a quote, good person in that time, and so he softened it up quite a bit. But he's like, the original ending,

which I don't think he's revealed, was much darker. That's crazy. God. So this is all, that's all happening. I, yeah, the hallucination's happening in chapter seven, I believe, and that's where you're going, you're kind of doing this world traversal, going to all these different things

to find these seven needles. Yeah, that's when you've gone, that's after the point where you've gone underwater and have just been walking around underwater having to kiss robotic mermaids to get air. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I do think that is like part of the game, the part of the game where it does kind of feel

a little bit meandering, but I also feel like that is just such a JRPG convention. I mean, you know, a game of a similar era, the GameCube Paper Mario, which recently got remade has like a late game, like world traversing quest where you have to go all this just like it's really bogs down an otherwise really engaging game. I don't think that's, it's even that much of an issue in this one, because I think that there's interesting stuff that's happening as you're progressing.

And then, yeah, and then we go to the, you know, the final chapter where you get the face off. There's a, there's something I want to circle back to that I forgot to mention earlier. There's different, like, vehicles that you can kind of ride sometimes in the game like there's like a ship that you can Sort of like fast you know it's not fast travel because you are doing it But it speeds you around the the map faster than normal But at one point you can just get on a table and the table sort of gallops like a horse and yeah

It clip clops around that's really good, clops around. That's really good. That's funny. That's really, really good. Really good. It's really good. That's all. So the ending of this game, after you withstand these attacks by your brother,

you hear the voice of your mother who's compelling, he's begging you not to fight anymore, the two of you. And I would say that the ending of this game is a cross between the end of Evangelion and the never ending story. Because your main character is faced with a, like, are you going to rebuild the world

or are you going to destroy it? Power, very, very akin to Shinji getting the choice to rebuild the world or liquefy everything. Yeah. But shockingly, in this game, you choose to destroy it. Because you are, in theory, not a great person anymore. Possibly?

Possibly. Because I don't know. My reading of it is it's intentionally sort of ambiguous. Yeah, yeah. And I don't know if that's necessarily what happens. I almost wonder if it's supposed to feel like a misdirector. That's supposed to feel like a possibility, but then also because you have this coda where you know you can

In the blackness sort of interact with all these the characters That you've experienced with previously and and also that that that that you get interacted with you as a player From the the game's voice as well. It's like, that to me makes me feel like, oh, that's not actually what happened. We've just like sort of entered a new sort of realm of existence, I don't know. I think that even though the coda is positive,

the ending before that is bleak. Like it's not like, hey, we did it. Like everyone theoretically survives. Yeah, but we're starting over kind of. Yeah. Well, yeah, and also like, I think there's maybe something to this is just a fallen world. Like that sort of like, you know, you get to do Pork City,

you sort of see how everything has been, Pork City, you sort of see how everything has been—basically everything has been completely scoured and ruined and the world has been abiserated. So maybe it does need to be destroyed to be rebuilt. But like, it's—yeah, in that sense, I get what you're saying. But there's also that. There's the big thing that Lucas is doing and the big world altering choice and then that coexisting with the fate of Porky, who's the main bad guy who you don't actually kill because he effectively cocoons himself in this, you know, mechanical tomb that allows

him to exist as he is, but he can never exit. And so it's kind of like, it's, you've got this guy who is like, you know, basically wants to build this capitalist dystopia that he can be a top of, but he wants to remain like completely static forever and would rather numb himself to all experiences than ever confront like changing the way that he is. You've got that versus like another character, the player character who is basically perpetually having to be altered by the moment and ultimately having to alter the nature of the world itself. I don't know, it's just like,

I really like that you have this, what's happening to Porky also, I feel like that also just doubly emphasizes what's happening with the player character in the end game. This, did I make any sense there? You made absolute sense. I think we're all just kind of sitting in the space of the ending of the game

and thinking about it. What were you gonna say, Matt? I was gonna say this game fucked me up. I know you have a brother, I only have brothers. I have a twin brother. This game fucked me up. I was crying on the fucking airplane. Like it was like, this is like, this,

anything like brother stuff really just gets me. Like Iron Claw, I was miserable. It's a horrible, horrible story. Obviously a true story. Well, there was one extra brother that's not in the movie. They didn't get it all right So I guess I couldn't have been as sad as I would have been if they had done it There's one more brother who dies in the real story

Artistically it's rude kind of too because they're like well he died in the same way as the other one So he's combined them like that doesn't seem right but a great movie and Zach Efron's great in it. I like so like you get to this climax you get to like I'll be honest. I was able to telegraph that Lucas was the masked man. Yeah. Yeah, it's not that it's not that obvious It's pretty obvious. It's obvious. It's obvious But he's feeling kind of obvious by design. Yeah, and also this is the other thing of so a lot of people who played this game,

certainly in Japan, where you don't have to go through a bunch of steps to have a localized version, but I mean, I don't know, in the US as well, I'm sure a lot of, or in English speaking territories as well, I'm sure a lot of people played this when they were very young. It's like, because it's like kind of like an all ages design that also deals with adult themes

and I think like a thing like that is supposed to be there for kids because if you're if I'm a kid and I'm playing this I feel like a genius that I figured out who like the identity of the masked man before it's eventually revealed. Yeah, I think that's a really satisfying but yeah narrative thing figuring like sort of not even figuring it out. Yeah knowing immediately that that was Sure Wow, go to Klaus. Yeah, I was like it doesn't that doesn't take away from the impact It has on the story right you know what I mean, so like

Just like the mom like in her interrupting the fight you not being really able to fight you can but you get Not sure like it's not it's not helpful. And then the mom also stops you from trying to I Thought it was just so beautiful and so just deeply sad and just like I like If I had played this game Even Like, if I had played this game even five or six years ago when you gave it to me, I probably wouldn't have even been as affected of, I don't know, just that I'm a little older

now and like, I don't know, just like a different guy than when you gave it to me, which is weird to think about too. It just, it really, really got to me. Not even in a bad way, I was happy to be experiencing that, because it was such a beautiful moment in a game full of experiences. And because of that, I'd like to issue a very sincere apology for taking this long to play.

Oh, well... What a beautiful gift you've given us. Oh man, well thank you. It's all, I didn't. You made the game. I didn't make the game. I just liked it. Well, as somebody with as pristine taste that you have,

it shouldn't have taken us this long to get to it. Yeah, I only had to win an impossible bet. Yeah, I only had to win an impossible bet. Yeah, I only had to guess that the Switch 2 would have came out on the 4th of July, if I'm not wrong. I like that it could pull its punch with what happens with Klaus, and there could be a version of this where it's like, oh, hey, we're bros again. Let's, you know what I mean? Like, whatever, the's like oh, hey, we're bored. We're bros again

Let's say you know I mean like I would have whatever I'm no the spells broken. Hey, we're back together, but instead No, it's just like no. I'm gonna be with mom now, and it's just like oh It's just like oh No This is another bit of heartache that you have to endure both as a player and the character has to endure and he's just again Yeah, I'm repeating myself, but again. It's gonna have to live in the. One of the most emotionally effective moments in the final fight for me is when it goes from being these massive damage attacks that you're constantly having to mitigate to,

because think about what you're seeing on the screen. You're seeing a stagnant image with numbers at the bottom and a little icon, and like a sort of wavy background, but it's a static image of a dude. And the numbers are moving slower, like he's attacking weaker, but all you're experiencing as a person looking at the game

is the numbers are going down less. And you know what is happening, and it is so powerful to be like, oh, I know that he's barely able to hit anymore, even though he's never visually struck anything. Yeah, yes, it communicates that very well. Also, not to go back too much, like the juxtaposition between the fight with Porky

and the resolution of that, The juxtaposition between the fight with Porky and the resolution of that, then straight into this, it's very, it's, there's just this whiplash there because Porky's in like a big ball that he can't get out of and you can talk to like the guy there and he'll like push the ball around a little bit and it's like funny. And then this part is, I mean, it's just, it's brutal.

It's just, it's all just, it's very emotional, very sad. Yeah. And it's, again, I admit that's maybe what I was kind of trying to get at earlier is just like, it's either like you can deal with life's experiences or you can insulate yourself from them. I took the ball. Yeah, ball seems pretty good.

Put me in there with a happy box. The podcast is the ball. The podcast is the ball. No, but I mean, like you look at these two characters, these characters' fates, it's like, that's a much worse fate. Oh yeah. Being trapped, like, just by yourself for all of time,

but you never have to worry about anything hurting you. Versus like, hey, I have to deal with this fucking horrible shit that, cause that's what life is. Life is just a series of miseries that, like whatever you just have to endure. I don't know. It's interesting.

It kind of makes you grapple with that. Yeah, the freedom, you would, I, you know, I would rather experience the freedom of feeling misery than never feeling anything at all. In the fucking balls. I've had enough. I just, yeah, I loved it and then when it,

so like that hits you from an emotional standpoint and then when the screen goes black and then the game starts talking to you starts saying hey thanks for helping us yeah like thanks for doing all that stuff Matt Apodaca I put my full name I was like I don't know what this when I put it in I was like I don't know what this is gonna do yeah but I think it would be funnier. I was like, I don't know what this, when I put it in, I was like, I don't know what this is gonna do, but I think it'll be funnier, because it has enough space. I was like, I'm just gonna put my full name. So when it starts calling you by your full name,

it felt very personal and very, it just like, I don't know, we talked about Uncharted earlier, it's like a game that's not hard. Uncharted would never do something like this. The Last of Us would never do something. Well, they would name you a character in the game and then kill you in front of your game's family.

I mean, when Sam gave me a cake in Death Stranding, I was a little bit like, huh. I mean, but just any time, why it works so well in Mother 3 is that you've forgotten But just to, just any time, why it works so well in Mother 3 is that you've forgotten that this is an element. Yes. Like you, it's not like you keep being reminded of it throughout, it's like suddenly a gut punch of like,

oh right, it knows who I am. Yeah. Whereas like when you play these other games and they like ask you to put in your birthday in an Animal Crossing or whatever, it's like, oh, I know on my birthday something is gonna happen inside of this game. Whereas in Mother 3, you don't know.

It could never happen. I'm just about to sound like a big crybaby. When it happened in Animal Crossing, I cried too. But it was like my pandemic birthday, so all my friends were in my house different different vibe, but um So when it says your name it then also says your name in the credits like you get which is crazy like that That's even a part of it I just was like so This is what I wanted to say. I was just am old enough to remember

Any yes games where the end credits would say and thanks to you the player I'm also like I'm skipping the credits I sat on the on the airplane with the Game Boy Vance in my hands just watched all of the credits and and then saw all my guys against all my friends and just like with tears the credits and then saw all my guys against all my friends and just like with tears in my eyes, not like sobbing, but like just like experiencing the full heart of the game. And I do think there is something to like the intimacy of holding a game. Yes.

Right? We're like, it's one thing where like you're experiencing it on the TV and like that's like there's something there too because it's an active experience. But the intimacy of holding a Game Boy Advance in your hands, you're the only person that can see what you're experiencing. But everybody can see you doing something. Yeah. And there's just like, I don't know, it's just like right here, like kind of like,

that's not that, it's not right there. But like, it's just so close. Yeah. To your brain and heart kind of, that you're just sort of like, I don't know, it's more intimate than any other gaming experience you can have. Well, you're holding the whole thing.

You're holding all of it. The totality. Like, when you're holding a PlayStation controller, there's an element over there, then the system's over there. But with a Game Boy Advance game, you're cradling a little thing. And so it does feel a little,

I think that's a really astute observation. Nick looks like he's gonna laugh at the two of us. No, I mean, I played Mother 3 on PC on emulator, so fuck me, I guess. No, you get to experience it, but there is just, I don't know, you get to experience it, but there is just like, I don't know, you also didn't cry, right? So I had this very emotional experience with,

not to say that you did not, yours was just different than mine, but I was holding it like a little, little baby. No, I totally get that. Hey, I loved the Game Boy Advance back in the day. I loved my GBSP, it's my favorite handheld I ever owned. Did it scale to the 16 by 9? What's the wide monitor you got?

The ultra wide? The ultra wide. Lucas is over here, bony's all the way over here. 32 by 9 is a ratio. That's absurd. 5120p. I did. So this is a deep, deep, deep, deep aside real quick.

I recently saw the final reckoning on IMAX and I got there a little early. So they were showing normal commercials. And they showed a screen, or they showed a commercial for Mario Kart World on the IMAX screen. It took up the full IMAX screen. And I was already hyped for the Switch 2. I was like, yeah! I was so excited. I think, so just talk about something that I touched on

in What Are You Playing and the emotional impact of reading your own name on a Game Boy Advance game. I think we are in, again, you guys haven't engaged with Darth Vader and Fortnite. I think it's extremely dangerous territory for the amount of emotional manipulation you're going to be able to feel in a story that is mostly constructed,

but has you interacting with something that learns about you is gonna be really, really, really weird. Yeah, I, that learns about you is gonna be really really really weird Yeah, I that's you know It's toothpaste. That's like out. I know the tube right I know I know it's like it's it's it's gonna come for all things but I do I was having a polite argument with this old guy on vacation that I was talking to

polite argument with this old guy on vacation that I was talking to. And he was telling me about how he likes AI and stuff. And I was just like, it got to a point where I did have to raise my voice a little bit. And I was like. How did this happen? How did this come up? I was at a family friend gathering thing.

This one guy kind of cornered me and started talking. So this was a relative or just? This was not a relative. It was like a friend of friends of a relative. Okay, who was also at this event. Yes, and I was like, I hope this guy doesn't want to talk to me because I could overhear him talking about

how much he prefers Grok. And I was like, that's insane. It's an insane take. Not all of them are bad, but come on. And so he was talking to me, he was like, what they can do now with creating images and stuff like that, and voices, it's like, we're gonna maybe see movies,

like full movies like this. And I was like, I can just guarantee you, you'll never ever see a movie as good as, or anything. You'll never see AI make something better than people making something That was the thing that I loved about this games. I you could tell people made this yeah, and like that is like it's a work of of people and And like coming together and like putting ideas together and like it's just this. This is a man-made

man as in human made man-made, man as in human, made, I don't know, art. Yeah, an individual with perspective and taste, which is essential to any work of art. I feel like, to use Mother 3 as a metaphor for what is happening, I feel like AI is the happy box. Yes, absolutely. Because it is designed to, I mean, often literally designed to be kind to you.

Yes. But additionally to that, to make you feel like you have some agency over something that you did not actually craft and ownership of that thing. So it's hitting so many different dopamine areas that, like, and also I will be the first fucking person to purchase a Sony robot that can talk to me.

I will be there on launch day, I will hold its hand as we walk out of the store, and I will kiss it on the forehead when it's time to go to bed. I, just to go back to Mother 3 and the end game, I think it is the thing of, and I'll just say it because we talked about their Naughty Dog games.

There's a lot of times the AAA approach towards game design is like you have these extraordinarily, you know, well rendered cut scenes that are in between, approach towards game design is like you have these extraordinarily well-rendered cutscenes that are in between levels of gameplay. You reach the objective, you defeat the boss so that you can watch the next movie. It's like that's your reward for gameplay. I'm always more interested in games where the interactivity is more core to the artistry of it. That's what it feels like with this game is like the – what's happening in that

final battle, what's happening when you're interacting with all the characters post-game. Just throughout, just like your agency as a player, even though this is a fairly limited or fairly linear experience, it is making the interactivity a strength of the medium and it is making its themes resonate more because of that element. Well, it's interesting too because there's nothing else in the game like that fight. So like, you kind of have to figure out kind of quickly that that's how the game wants you to behave, right? Because like every other fight,

you're gonna go in swinging. You're just like, all right, I'm gonna go with my strongest home run or whatever I have. I like to give bony bombs to throw, because he's like fast out, get a couple bombs out there first. Yeah, it makes sense to give him a bunch of items. Give a dog a bomb, sure.

Yeah, why not? But like with this, and then like just knowing that it's starting to it's going slower than normal, your health is diminishing slower, and you have more time to or there's more advantageous times to fully heal yourself. Like when your HP is lower so that then you can kind of start the cycle over again and stuff like that.

I was just like, this is just, the game doesn't necessarily tell you that you're going to have to play like this at all. But like, because you've been playing the game, you've been seeing how the various systems of combat work, you can kind of work it out that, oh, this is gonna be the best way to, I was gonna say attack this, but I guess not attack this. Yeah, yeah. Should we rate this bad boy? I give this eight joysticks out of 10.

That'd be so funny to be like, it's all right. That's so funny. Also, Joyce here. Sounded like an AI prompt. Make a video game podcast. No, I... It's probably worth it. I'll echo Matt's comments to you, either. This was, you know all we all had this bet

We all had a game. We were going to pick And that we were going to have everyone play you pick this game. I It's it's the moments like this. I'm grateful for the podcast and and grateful for the both of you that we that I had this incentive to finally experience this And that I had a you know it did this some friends to talk about it with so it's a really really really cool experience guys I kind of think the four of us in this room are all pretty one-to-one comps for the party Heather's gonna be Kumitora. I'll be Lucas. I'm the little boy. Nick, you're Duster, sorry about it.

I'm the guy who smells bad? And Ranch is the dog. Because Ranch likes dogs. And Ranch is the one I would trust with my bombs. I agree with you there. All right. It's time for the you play of our we play you play. It's your view crew. The real crew. Welcome back to all of you who skipped spoiler country.

We're going to be spoiler free unless there's any if there maybe, there might be some light spoilers in some of these comments. One of the comments is just like, I can't believe Ronald Reagan was in this after we just spent an hour talking about it. He didn't look like the other characters, he looked like a human man. Hell, I'm stuck in the game. My wife was the blue job I know where I'm going with my time machine They would make it like disguise of like a contemporary guy on a Bob Hope disguise? They would make a disguise of a contemporary guy?

I think of a historical period. That's true, yeah. I would have the resources to take it with me. I have a time machine. I could look like whoever I want. I probably have the Mission Impossible technology. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. I could quantum leap probably as Bob Hope.

I'm going to do this. Anyway, this first one is from Murder Donut. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. I could quantum leap probably as Bob Hope Anyway this first one is from murder donut. I murdered also Donut did we say these are all from discord.gg slash get played. Yeah. Yeah God throw it out there against a good group of folks. Yeah our larger party Huh? Wow, they're in the reserve. They're in the they're in Yeah. They're the Suikoden version of the party. Yeah, that's right. Like 108 different... This first one's from Murder Donut. And Murder Donut writes,

Loved it, but I'm sure I'll be confused character-wise when you guys start talking about the story since I renamed my characters Jiznut, Dildo, Askitty, and Banana, to name a few. Jesus Christ. I'm a grown man in my 40s, and I did this last month. Do better, murder donut. I actually, I've been maybe talking about this before, but Final Fantasy IV when I played that in Super Nintendo,

localized as two in the US. There was one other kid at school who had, it was playing, this was not an era where RPGs were at all of a mainstream genre. This was one other kid at at school was also playing this game, and we talked to about it But he'd renamed all the characters, so it was just like we're always trying to figure out what the fuck we were talking about That's so funny like Imagine then it's just like normal names right well wait like who's Charlie like what are you talking? Yeah, it was it, it was literally that.

Like, I'd be talking about, like, Kane the Dragoon. He'd be like, oh, you mean Craig? Craig. Craig. Craig. Craig. This next one's from Zach. Hi, Zach.

What's up, Zach? Zach writes, and it's indicating here that Zach's new to the Discord. Oh, hi, Zach. Welcome to the show. It has one of the best save points in all of gaming. Beep beep frog emoji. The frog in the car is like is top tier. Yeah. Of all the ones of all the different okay so also well we out of spoiler country. Oh do you need to re-enter spoiler country?

Nah it's okay. It was the thing that you wanted to remember to say. Say it, we'll bleep it. Okay, ranch bleeped it. When they're in the d***, when all the d***, d***. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the f***, d***, and you can s***. Yeah. Anyway, okay. that's enough.

I cursed a lot. I swore, said a lot of the worst words. I was going crazy in here. This next one's from... Oh my God. I spilled again. A second spill has hit the show? So fast!

Man, that was so fast! I just knew one day I'd have to My god How did I do that? How did you do that? You're used! How do you do any of them? We have it on tape In one of the ones, in the clip one that we did

Where you spilled You were just kinda like fucking with the cup a little too long You were like, I'm gonna get to you someday Give me a little pet And then you knock it over just pick it up That was not this this I this I just like I kind of like I feel like a blunt forced it I just sort of knocked it. I'm gonna get you one of those baby tables. I'd love one of those Yeah, kind of me too sounds great all your stuff there Bibbitt a bonnet to make a mess who cares

I think we just need to make the cup so wide that he can't, so here's my pitch. No, that's too much liquid. No, no, no, no, no, here's my pitch. This guy bowl. You take the can and you put it into a cozy that has a plate this big. So the cup is in the dead center of the plate,

because then it can't yeah But then he's gonna chop one end on accident. It's gonna send the drinks fly Sorry where were we when I spelled? Do read the comment yet no And it's a full table you need the table from the game You just need a camel back. You're done with cups mmm man. I get the water bottle this has a cap on it You spilled that Yeah

You need a camel back you should just try it for two weeks I don't think I could be a camel back guy Just drink all your drinks in there Yeah, it's a different sort of guy. You get two you get can put fun drink in one, like, I don't know, what, bottle of wine or something? And water in the other one. It could be a camelback alcoholic. Or maybe that's what you need, maybe you just need one of those hats

with the cup holders, and then you just get a little straw. Because he's at some point gonna turn his head all the way down, upside down, to look at the bottom of his shoe or something. That is true, yeah. And he's dumping it all over the floor. That's what he's gonna do, gonna turn his head all the way down upside down to look at the bottom Of his shoe or something bending halfway over

Read the comment, please What is piling on The singing chemist writes earthbound slash mother 2 So mother one is Earthbound beginnings, but it's called mother. Yeah, it's mother mother 2 is earthbound. Okay, and mother 3 is mother 3 Maybe they just didn't know what to call the second the third one. Well, can you have a different name for it? Can you go go earthbound to imagine like like? They could go EarthBound 2. Imagine like, like, humans in America

buying a game called Mother. Yeah. Then nobody would have done it. No. Not when Call of Duty exists. Yeah! But it was just called Mother 2 in Japan, right? Yeah, it's Mother, Mother 2, and Mother 3. The singing chemist writes,

EarthBound slash Mother 2 is my uncontested favorite game of all time. Wow. Mother 3 is a better game by pretty much every metric. Wow. That's huge. Yeah. So if Mother 2 is your favorite... Wow. But why is Mother 3 not your favorite then?

I think, isn't that what they're saying? No, I think they're maybe saying that I have a personal fondness for this one. We all kind of have that level of fandom sometimes. It's just like, I know objectively that this is better, but I just happen to like this one more. Yes, good context. I think that's what's happening. Yeah, absolutely.

I'm gonna have to check out Mother Earthbound in 10 years, probably. See what's going on there. You can borrow my $10,000 car trade, Joe, whatever the fuck it costs, no? This did make me wanna really dig in on Earthbound. I was like, ah, because there is some Earthbound lore that ends up being a part of, not in Spoiler Country,

but in Mother 3, ends up being revealed. It's like, ah, fuck, I kinda wish I was more up to date on this. Oh no. We didn't fucking talk about Mr. Saturn. No. Do we talk about him? We talked about him a little bit.

I guess I mentioned that I'd seen him before. Yeah. Well, let me just talk about him for a second. OK. He's like a head. He's just like a head guy. Yeah, he's a head guy. We got like a big round nose. And he talks funny.

Yeah, he's head. He's good. He's in Super Smash Brothers as like an item. And he's like basically useless. He just sort of like doesn't do anything and So I'm like okay, so let's find out what mr.. Saturn is all about and the thing is like yeah Yeah, you just kind of like The best they'll do is like one he shall he polishes that thing for you to

Kind of just stacks up. Yeah, it gets five more of them. Yeah. And they're all Mr. Saturn. Yeah. I love it. Tay, oh, Tayballcom, Tayballcom writes, Tayballcom? Tayballcom writes, I played through Mother 3 last year in the midst of a year-long JRPG kick I was on.

Simply one of the most memorable video games I have ever played. Balled at the end, never in a million years would I have been able to beat it without a guide. Now that's interesting to bring up. I bought this after finishing the game. Yeah. I bought it in the middle of playing it.

And then it arrived after. And then it arrived after I had finished it. Mitch is, Matt is holding up a hardcover book. I'm calling him. What the fuck? I'm gonna call him after this. Holy cow. I think we gotta put him down. We'll cut that. We gotta put him down. It's hope Matt is holding up a hardcover book. I'm calling him what the fuck after this Put him down. We'll cut that

We gotta put him down I'm not saying all this again what oh, so we're not cutting it. I don't know Matt is holding up a hardcover book I'm holding up a hardcover book who? It's normal to make a mistake with people you talk about and speak to constantly. It's a hardcover Mother 3 handbook made by a fan gamer and I believe the localizers, Star Net, I believe assisted on this as well. And it's just like a lovingly done guide of the entire game, talks about the enemies and stuff. We didn't even talk about the clay man. No, I love the clay man Yeah

And just like all the items and different characters and just like the maps of the game the item guy Yeah, everything. Yeah, the item guy and there's like really nicely done Like clay renderings of the characters like Like the old Nintendo power, like sculptures before you could do CG renderings. It's like you'd sculpt the little guy out of clay and it's in this guidebook. Yeah, so I have this now, for if and when I ever wanna play through it again.

I also bought the Lucas Amiibo because I was like, I have to have a little representation of my guy on my shelf. I love him. I put it on my shelf and my wife goes, who is that little boy? It's funny that you can go to like Best Buy and buy a Lucas Amiibo,

but you can't play the fucking game. It's crazy. It's absolutely insane. Wow. He's so cute. I love him. He is very cute. This next one is from is from Tycho Kepler. Tycho Kepler writes, I played Mother 3 reading a translation guide just line for line,

which was just an absolutely insane way to do it, but it was still an intensely emotional experience. That's wild. Holy shit. which was just an absolutely insane way to do it, but it was still an intensely emotional experience. That's wild. Whoa, holy shit. Crazy. That's intense. That's off to you, Tycho. That's incredible. Yeah. I wonder if that predated the fan translation or if that was just a, you know.

A personal goal. Yeah, exactly, I wonder. Very, very cool. That's amazing. Domenius writes, honestly just wanna say thank you because this inspired me to finally play it after being on the backlog for 10 plus years. Great music from a GBA and in a really interesting approach to breaking down the story. I wasn't expecting to control the folks you do early on in the chapters.

Yeah. Yeah. Really, really great. Green Tea Duck writes, I assume Matt will get a tattoo of Frogcar. Now look, it's a pretty good idea and I wasn't thinking about it until you mentioned it. We'll see. Geo-San312 writes, I'm about halfway through this epic of a game. It's an emotional roller coaster. The even the neon gen the neon Genesis Evangelion of

Game Boy Advance games. I absolutely love it. Crazy to think that Nintendo hasn't released this outside of Japan. Can't wait to finish it. I hope you do get to finish it because it's it's just an all it's an absolute all-timer. Yeah. And finally, fierce deity, fierce deity Bort writes, all caps, thank you Heather for winning the prediction pool. Putting off, I put off playing this game for way too long. Nintendo had this on Nintendo 64 as planned. I wonder if PlayStation would have been the under-specuted RPG machine of that generation as we see it now. Particularly when you could compare this to Final Fantasy 7. Because it would have come out probably around the same time if it was on Nintendo 64.

If they'd managed to put this entire game on Nintendo 64, I don't, like I can't even imagine what that would be like. Because it's so, so much of the charm of it is also the sprite work. Right. It certainly wouldn't have aged as well visually. I mean, you could see a lot of footage of the Nintendo 64 version of it

is seemingly pretty deep in development. But yeah, I don't know. I wonder if it would have tilted the balance of power at all in that generation. It probably would have been too niche to have much of an effect outside of it in Japan. The hierarchy of power in the RPG universe was about to change. And that's it for the Ryu crew. Gosh, we've been talking for so long that the words are starting to not fall out of my mouth appropriately. I'm sorry to hear it. But you know what?

Your friends are all here. That's right. Everybody's here. And thank you, Matt, for all you've done. Don't make me cry, bro. That's a. Everybody's here. That's true. We're all here. And thank you, Matt, for all you've done. Don't make me cry, bro. That's a sweet get-play. Our producers are Rochelle Chen, Ranchyard, underscore, underscore, starred. Our music is by Ben Prunty, benpruntymusic.com.

Our art is by Duck Brigade Design, duckbrigade.com. And hey, our merch is available at kinshipgoods.com. You can find the link in the show description. Also check out Get Animated, our sister show over on Patreon. Matt, what are we watching this week? We're back on Gurren Lagann, baby. Animaheim is over. It's done and dusted. We watched some pretty crazy shows. Lazarus, Birdie Wing, Horimiya, and Akiba made war, which was insane. Absolutely insane. If you have not seen any anime ever, put it on immediately. put it on immediately. It's nuts.

But we're back in Gurren Lagann, and we're gonna, we're gonna, Terry forward and just, and finish it. Yeah, we're gonna pierce the heavens of the show. That's right. Check that out over on Patreon.com slash get played. And hey, you out there, you got played. That's right Stephen. That was a HeadGum Podcast. Hi I'm Jessi Klein and I'm Liz Feld, and we're the hosts of a new HeadGum Podcast called Here to Make Friends.

Liz and I met in the writer's room on a little hit TV show called Dead to Me, which is a show about murder. But more importantly, it's also about two women becoming very good friends in their 40s. Which can really happen, and it has happened to us! It's true! Because life has imitated ours! And then it imitated life. Time is a flat circle. And now.

We're making a podcast that's about making friends. And we're inviting an incredible guest like Vanessa Bear. Wow, I have so much to say. Lisa Kudrow. Feelings, they're a nuisance. Nick Kroll. I just wanted to say hi. Matt Rogers.

I'm like on the verge of tears. So good. So good to join us and hopefully become our friends in real life. Take it out of hopefully become our friends in real life. Yeah, take it out of the podcast studio and into real life. Along the way, we are also going to talk about dating. Yep. Spousing. True. Parenting. Uh huh. Careering. Yeah. And why we love film and Louise and it's the greatest movie of all time. Shouldn't need to be said. No, we said it. It's just a true thing. So please subscribe to Here to Make

Friends on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocketcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And watch video episodes on YouTube. New episodes every Friday. Hey, Gorge. It's me, Gottmik. And me, Violet Tchotchke. And we want you to listen to our podcast, No Gorge, now on Headgum. Each episode, we will be bringing you vlogs, answering burning questions, discussing what's going on right now, and diving into all things fashion, hookups, gossip, and more.

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