Nintendo will publish a western localization of Mother 3, sequel to the game released in North America as Earthbound, on the Wii U virtual console later this year. According to Eurogamer, the digital re-release will celebrate with the 10-year anniversary of game’s Japanese launch. Mother 3 hit store shelves in Japan on April 20, 2006.
The report comes following news of the impending port finding its to social media through Nintendo tipster Emily Rogers.”Don’t be surprised if Nintendo celebrates a game’s 10th anniversary this year,” Rogers tweeted, followed by a tweet with a picture of Mother 3 character Kumatora. (Her Twitter account has since been deleted.) Other sources followed suit, confirming they had heard the same information.
The game North American RPG fans know as Earthbound was originally released in Japan as Mother 2, the second chapter in the Earthbound series. Though the series accrued a loyal following among western RPG fans, Nintendo has only recently turned its attention back to localizing the rest of the Earthbound franchise. The critical and public reception to the 2013 re-release of Earthbound on the Wii U virtual console, prompted Nintendo to localize Mother, the first game in the series, as Earthbound Beginnings, 26 years after its initial release on the Japanese Famicom. International awareness of the Mother games, if not interest, has also grown thanks to series heroes Ness and Lucas appearances in Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. series.
Nintendo may also be motivated by the public response to a new Mother 3 release, based on the positive reception to the Wii U re-release of Earthbound in 2013. As Nintendo transitions away from developing games for the Wii U towards mobile gaming and the NX console, rumored to be launching this year, Mother 3 may lend a brief, but welcome show of support for the flagging publisher.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.
Imagine tapping a Zelda icon on your iPhone and jumping straight into Hyrule. A new open-source project called nxnative makes that possible by repackaging Switch games you’ve bought into apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with no emulator in the middle.
Why does this run so well on Apple devices?
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.