Mother 3 fan translation

The Mother 3 fan translation is a complete English-language localization of the 2006 Japanese video game Mother 3 by members of the EarthBound fan community led by Clyde "Tomato" Mandelin. The original game was released in Japan after a decade of development hell. When fan interest in an English localization went unanswered, the EarthBound fansite Starmen.net announced their own fan translation in November 2006.

The dozen fans who worked on the project had been vetted by Mandelin and had prior localization experience. Thousands of hours were put into the project between hacking the game data and translating the 1,000 pages of scripted dialogue. They built their own tools for the work. The final version was released in October 2008 and issued as a patch. The patch was downloaded over 100,000 times in its first week. A fan-made, full-color, 200-page, professional-quality player's guide was released alongside the translation. The Verge cited the effort as proof of the fan base's dedication.

After a decade of "delays, downgrades, and cancellations", Mother 3—the Game Boy Advance sequel to 1995 Super NES video game EarthBound (titled Mother 2 in Japan)—was released in April 2006 for Japanese audiences. The American EarthBound fan community, in support of the series, had rallied support via events and petitions for the release. One such petition used custom petition software and hand-checked name verification, and the 819 pages of 31,000 signatures were sent to Nintendo's Japanese and American offices with fan art. Despite receiving the backing of the wider gaming community, Nintendo did not respond. In turn, the new release became a "rallying point" for the community.1UP.com wrote that "no other game in the history of time garnered such a rabid demand for translation".

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