by Tim Williams – A&SB Contributor

If you want to experience the sequel (“sequel” is too crass a word; Mother 3 makes everything that came before it look like a basement experiment) to the beloved SNES game Earthbound, you’ll have to work a little, although you won’t have to leave your computer. (See the bottom of this column for instructions). This is a shame, because once you start playing Mother 3, it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Do you remember the first time you played a video game, in your own living room? Although, if you’re of the Playstation generation, maybe this seems as ordinary as your cell phone being your alarm clock.

Let’s start over. This is not about video games. This is not about nostalgia. But I want you to remember the first piece of art (lowercase) that seized you by the throat, and said: “This! This is what it means to be alive.”

If you squint a little, you might find that again in Mother 3, a George Bernard Shaw tragicomedy masquerading as an RPG.

It’s unfortunate that untidy number has to follow such a refreshingly simple Japanese video game title. Right now, for the XBOX 360 Video Game Console, you can buy a Role-Playing Game called “Infinite Undiscovery.” It features Hours of Real-Time Strategic Gameplay and an Orchestrated Soundtrack by a guy who listened to a jam band he thought was a prog rock band once and decided that was all he needed to know about music.

Not incidentally, the music of Mother 3 is the worst thing about it, besides that there are numbers in its name and in its battles. (Note to self: Make an RPG without numbers.) That it’s still really good, and on a Game Boy Advance cartridge no less, tells you something. Once, far too long ago, there was a game called Mother 2. Non-moon-speaking audiences may know it as Earthbound. It had a good-sized budget, but, gloriously, it was all spent on the design, not the graphics. And the music. Oh gods, the music. Polyrhythmic, switching genres at every turn, at once parodic and heartfelt, it was something only someone who loves music, not video game music, could have done. Sadly, Keiichi Suzuki quickly moved on to better things, and we got stuck with Nintendo’s best video game composer.

But even I can’t like a game only for its music (although Samurai Champloo: Sidetracked comes close). Earthbound is almost a masterpiece because it was written and directed by Shigesato Itoi.

Itoi (before he wrote a short story collection with Japan’s most beloved contemporary novelist, Haruki Murakami) was a really, really, ridiculously good copy editor. These days, copy editors don’t get a whole lot to do besides argue semantic versus grammatical punctuation. But in the days when newspapers were king, meaning was all about artful arrangement of the disparate, arbitrating what headlines and snippets the lazy reader’s eye were most likely to fall on, and in which order.

What 99 percent of video games lack is an editor. I don’t want to play another 20 hours of a game if it’s going to involve hunting the 101 Dalmatians. That Earthbound was a masterpiece of editing (if not coherent plotting) is something every astute player feels intuitively, although many probably don’t even notice the perfect pacing. I must admit I only realized Itoi’s sheer genius after I read this review. In some circles, Tim Rogers is considered a pretentious asshole. That may be true, but that’s exactly what video game criticism needs right now: an antidote to the consumer reports that pass as game journalism.

Itoi is to video game writing what Rogers is to video game criticism. (Except, of course, that Rogers is in desperate need of an editor.) Here comes the tragedy of Mother 3: You can’t play it in its original language. For a while, it looked like you wouldn’t be able to play it at all if you don’t know Japanese. Nintendo has not shed, not one iota, its business model from the days, over 100 years ago (really), when it was a playing cards vendor. Mother 3 was only made because Itoi was friends with Satoru Iwata, the current Nintendo president.

The current Nintendo of America president is a former Pizza Hut executive. This is what he has said, when asked about the Mother series: “It’s something I’m trying get smart on.” Tim Rogers claims the developers of Mother 3 paid for translations of the game into English and the required other European languages to speed its U.S. approval. Giving producers something they can read is always a bad idea. The game was called “too dark” to have cartoon graphics. But I bet if it had been the exact same game with a useless touch screen map for the DS, it would have been greenlit and sold 200,000 copies.

Why I have not started reviewing the actual game yet? Because, 1) I believe in the importance of history, and 2) The unofficial translation came out today, and I’m not going to review it until I finish it.

I can tell you I will walk, drive, fly or swim to your home and poke one of your eyes out if you don’t smile twice before the end of the first chapter. The editor of the translation, because he didn’t believe in history, dropped out, and it shows in parts. But a diamond in the rough is a diamond nonetheless.

Also, I’m on an airplane, and I forgot my headphones. Shogo Sakai may be no Keiichi Suzuki, but the battles are rhythm-based, with no onscreen indicators. If you want to do more damage, you have no choice but to listen to the carefully arranged soundtrack. Now that is genius.

*If you want to play Mother 3 (and you do), you’ll need an emulator (available at http://vba.ngemu.com/) and a ROM of the import. Sadly, it’s out of print, so your only options are: 1) Ebay, 2) Find a friend in Japan and get him or her to buy it in a pawn shop, or 3) Use the illegal powers of Google. You’ll also need the translation, (see http://mother3.fobby.net). If you have any trouble, just email me at trwilliams2 at google mail. I swear it’s all worth it.