MOTHER: Invasion of the Unknown Translation by Nyaasu

Nyaasu Strikes Back! If you’re not already familiar, earlier this year Nyaasu Nekoban, an artist and translator published the first complete English translation of Saori Kumi‘s MOTHER novels. You can read those here, but that’s not all! On October 14th, 2022, she updated her site with the next project – a translation of the interactive “adventure game book”, MOTHER: Invasion of the Unknown by Akio Higuchi!

The back cover reads as follows:

“Strange things are happening in the neighborhood lately. There are rumors of roaming corpses and bizarre murders. The town has been placed under martial law, and the townspeople spend uneasy days confined to their homes. Podunk, the most beautiful location in the state of Maine, is starting to look more like a ghost town. Douglas, a boy living in Podunk, finds a strange diary in his attic. Guided by this diary, Douglas heads out on a journey. His destination – Mount Itoi. The dark clouds looming over the mountain’s peak may hold the key to all these strange mysteries. Together with Anna and Lloyd, two friends he meets along the way, Douglas makes his way toward the cursed mountain. But a fearsome enemy awaits them there…”

Like most MOTHER adaptations of the time, Higuchi took creative liberties when renaming the main character to Douglas! In fact, since this is an interactive “choose-your-own-adventure” book, you’ll likely come across even bigger surprises in your journey! So go on and grab a couple friends, and start your own journey to collect the five melodies right here on Nyaasu‘s site.

The Origin of Shimmy Zmizz

The amount of musical references in the MOTHER series are endless – so much so that they are continuously discovered to this day! Biozilla, an encyclopedic researcher and content creator in the community has been on a roll recently regarding the subject. You might have seen his Twitter account cataloguing his research, Sound Stone of Origin. This is exactly where one of his most interesting discoveries comes into play!

It has previously been noted by site webmaster Kody NOKOLO that the D.C.M.C. members’ names had something musical in origin — like Baccio Trump(man), or Magic Zildjian (a musical instrument manufacturer.) While looking into the subject, Biozilla came across another interesting connection with the band’s keyboard player, Shimmy Zmizz. It looks very likely that his name is inspired by American jazz musician, Jimmy Smith!

There are a couple attributing factors besides their similar sounding names too. Jimmy Smith popularized the hammond organ – the very same instrument Shimmy Zmizz played (and Shogo Sakai sampled) in the N64 version of MOTHER 3! If this doesn’t validate the inspiration enough, in volume 1 of the MOTHER 3 Times, Shimmy’s name is printed as “Jimmy Zmizz.” This might signify that the MOTHER 3 team might’ve wanted to pay closer homage to Smith originally; although it also could very well be a mistake on the publisher’s end, as the next issue had him properly named Shimmy.

For more MOTHER musical connections, please check out Sound Stone of Origin!

A Short, but Sweet MOTHER 64 Report

A user named Clisco on the EarthBound 64 Discord server uncovered a short, but sweet report from an old Geocities site called “MOAT.” It reads as follows:

“A 45 to 1 hour wait to wear headphones (and 10 minutes of playtime.)

You start with a female villager explaining that this is a special demo version for Spaceworld. I don’t know what the story’s about, but it starts with Flint, the father. You then ride on a box in the desert that flies like a magic carpet, fight wild boars, and so on. Then there’s a minigame where you play as children in a minecart.

Hmmm…

It feels just like a 3D version of a 2D game map. So in that sense, the distance you have to travel feels really long. I wish there was more 3D detail in the desert and towns too. Also, what’s up with the backgrounds in the battle scenes? CG effects suddenly appear, but it kinda feels like it was made by some amateur??

(sorry, to all the fans…)”

Out of all the various reports documented over the years, this one might stick out as the most negative! Notably, Tomohiro Koide shared these same criticisms of the game not doing anything unique to make the 3D presentation really stand out. However, he wasn’t quite as critical about it, in favour of the gameplay which really stood out to him. It’s certainly interesting now that we can compare and contrast opinions of the demo from those who played it! If you’d like to read more reports on the Spaceworld ’99 MOTHER 64 demo, you can head on over to this page!