CATEGORY: The Blisscast Journal

TAGS: Thought Pieces

The Journal, Page 100:
How I stopped worrying and learned to appreciate Mother 3 for what it truly was

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PUBLISHED ON: May 19th 2024

Written By:

Blisscast

Edited By:

EmeraldDM8

Introduction:

Hello, my dear readers; I am Blisscast, the Co-Owner and Primary Writer on this site, and I welcome you to the moment that I, and hopefully many of you, have been waiting a very long time for: the almighty and dazzling Journal Page 100!

As I’ve found myself saying repeatedly over these last two years, it really does feel like Page 1 was released not so long ago; I released it back on the 19th of May 2022, and if I told you that I had even the faintest clue as to whether we’d ever actually reach Page 100, then I’d be lying. For some people, it might not seem like such an outstanding achievement, but for me, I am so extremely proud of having finally reached it! I’ve really enjoyed these last two years, and that includes both the good and the bad things that have happened, and whilst I admit that, at times, it was immensely stressful to keep a consistent posting schedule with minimal breaks, that rewarding feeling that accompanied each the release of Page made it truly worth the effort (although, admittedly, I do feel as though the constant releases did put a bit of unfair pressure on EmeraldDM8, who constantly had to delay his own work, including both site updates and his own blogs, in order to make sure that the Pages were in a suitable state for release).

Even beyond the Journal itself, this site has given me the opportunity to not only further develop my own English and Writing Skills, but it has also allowed me to work on and release more complex articles, such as the recently introduced GUI Wonderland series, and other blogs that explore some of my more niche and complex interests, such as the blogs on Polybius, the legendary Wii Startup Disc, and the Mindset Computer; it might be a bit extreme to say, but I truly feel that thanks to this site, I’ve managed grown as a person too.

Before we start talking about today’s topic in earnest, I’d also like to take the time to thank two people who have also accompanied me on this journey, and helped me make every Page of my travel Journal truly meaningful; they are EmeraldDM8, the Co-Owner and Editor in Chief of the Site (A grand sounding title, I know, but whilst he initially said it as a joke, when we took the time to look up what someone in that role actually does, we realized that it’s literally the exact role that he fulfills for this site), and Mikyu777, the newest addition to our team, as well as our resident Anime and Manga Expert!

First of all, I’d like to thank EmeraldDM8, as without him, we wouldn’t even have this site; you see, whilst I did create it myself sometime before Page 1 was released, what I had before was literally just a “default WordPress site”, and I didn’t really understand anything I was supposed to do, so I ended up just leaving it and doing other stuff. Some stuff happened in between which would take too long to explain, but eventually, I decided to start using the site in earnest, and EmeraldDM8 offered to rebuild it and turn it into something amazing; I am really thankful for all the time and effort he put into turning it into crafting the amazing site that it is today! Not only that, but he has also always offered me exceptional emotional support over these years, he has been able to guide me and keep me motivated whenever things aren’t working out as well as I’d hoped, he’s been the steadying hand that this site has needed at many vital intervals (~~even if his occasional veto of topics is annoying. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to talk about a horror film in the middle of February?~~), and his suggestions have also massively helped the site grow! Secondly, I’d like to thank Mikyu777, who despite having just joined us, has also significantly helped us with all Anime and Manga-related blogs, and is currently in the process of preparing some new articles that will be coming out soon!

Finally, I’d also like to thank all of you, my dear readers from around the world, who have been supporting me for all this time; I hope you’ll be looking forward to what’s to come! (Yes, despite this intro being very emotional and all, the Journal itself will not be ending, although there will be some important changes coming!)

Now, with all of that finally out of my system after bubbling up for what felt like months, let’s finally jump ahead to our topic of the day, a game that I’m really fond of, known as…

Mother 3

This is a JRPG written by Shigesato Itoi and developed by Brownie Brown and HAL Laboratory, which was released back in 2006 exclusively for Japanese audiences; despite the multiple attempts to localize it, it was never officially localized in English, something which, if you’ve spent even a moment within this community, is very obviously something of a sticking point. Luckily, there is a wonderful fan translation available, which was released by the Starmen.net internet community in 2008; it translates the game into many languages, such as English and Italian, and as a result, the game is completely playable and enjoyable even in spite of the lack of an official worldwide release. In case you speak Japanese, however, you can also play the game on the Wii U Virtual Console (released in 2014), or thanks to the Nintendo Switch Online expanded subscription (released in 2024).

I initially came across this game many years ago, probably around 2015, as I was playing through Super Smash Bros. for Wii U; I had bought the DLC that added Lucas to the game, and thanks to all the information available in the game, I found out about the EarthBound/Mother series. I was particularly intrigued by the third title of the series, Mother 3, as that was the game that had the aforementioned “Lucas” as its protagonist, so I decided that I wanted to try and get a hold of it; although, as you probably imagined based upon what I explained in the previous paragraph, there were a few difficulties to be had in that regard. After a few moments of understandable sadness, it finally hit me that there were many games that had not been translated into English, and would only be available to whoever spoke Japanese; unfortunately, though, I couldn’t speak Japanese, and so, it seemed as though Mother 3 was destined to be forever out of reach, always so very close, yet never something I could ever truly be able to experience for myself.

Thankfully, however, after researching it a further bit on my own, I eventually stumbled across something known as a “fan translation”, which, as the name may have suggested, was a patch made by fans that turned the Japanese text in a game into English text, and it was this magical little discovery which would allow me to play finally Mother 3; as a complete beginner, it was admittedly a little tricky to get the game actually working, but thankfully it didn’t take too long for to properly figure it out, and so, the game was finally for me to try! … Of course, given that this section of the story was stated to have been set in 2015, and I’ve only just gotten around to talking about it now, I’m sure that you expected there to be yet more hurdles to be overcome; in truth, just like with so many other things in life, my attempts to play the game would often be interrupted by other, more important factors, and whilst I did attempt to play it many different times over the years, including even restarting from scratch a handful of times, I would either find myself with other things that I needed to do, or I would get stuck somewhere in the game, and ultimately just put it on hold. Even now, I genuinely have no idea why I couldn’t complete it, as I was enjoying it, but… well, maybe, just like with Yu-Gi-Oh!, it simply wasn’t its time yet.

As time went on, my mindset towards the game slowly started to shift toward a stance of “It’s the game I’ll never be able to finish”, and, maybe, it was that very thought that was feeding into why I could never get myself to actually complete it. Yet, even in spite of those feelings, I’d still find myself researching it from time to time, and I ended up reading a lot of trivia about it (I even encountered a few spoilers, which gave me the false feeling of knowing everything about the game); something that I extremely enjoyed looking at was the game’s page on TCRF, which covered the long development hell that the game had been stuck in, alongside its many interesting debug features. My favorite of those was the Debug Room; to keep this explanation simple, a Debug Room is a room that contains elements of the game that, when interacted with in some manner, will trigger various features. As the name suggested, it’s primarily used for debugging, in order to ensure the game is working without having to constantly play through the game over and over to test it. It’s a concept that I, for whatever reason, am really fond of, which is a fact that EmeraldDM8 admittedly finds a little strange, likely because he has actually been trained in Games Development and thus, to him, a Debug Room is not some magical room of incredible lost and forgotten secrets, but rather something more akin to a garage where you go to get your car fixed, and yet, for me, the sheer wonder and intrigue of what may be hidden inside these rooms means that the mere existence of one in a game can’t help but be a tantalizing treasure just waiting for me to find it!

In fact, did you know that we here on the site actually have two “Debug Rooms”? We have my magical “Blisscast’s Evil Science Lab, Where We Will Grow A Beautiful Pink TARDIS“, which is my own personal “Debug Room” where I experiment to see what interesting stuff I can do with the tools we have here on the site, and also try to come up with concepts for my own series, such as the information boxes in the GUI Wonderland Series… and then we also have the “Testing Lab“, which is EmeraldDM8‘s “Debug Room”, where he not only designs and creates pretty much everything for this site, but he also… uses it to fix everything in my “Debug Room”… since he actually knows how to make these things work… And I can never quite get my stuff to work as well as I’d hoped… Gah! I wish I could make things in my Debug Room like he can! Even when I do try to design something, he’s able to take one glance at it, and then not only does he end up making it work better, but also look so much better than what I originally imagined! Seriously; look at a comparison to my original concept of my GUI Information Box compared to the one EmeraldDM8 put together!

The first one is ~~a fixed version of~~ my original concept, which is used in GUI #1, whereas the second is EmeraldDM8‘s updated design, found in GUI #2.

EmeraldDM8: To be fair, the primary reasons as to why the stuff I create tends to be better is due to the fact that, not only have I been experimenting with just how far I can push each of the site’s features for long enough that I have a pretty good idea of the limit of what I can actually do, but I make use of the Additional CSS feature when designing something, which is a feature you never use because of how easily one wrong move in there would break parts of the site.

Blisscast: That’s true… I have a similar issue with technology; I really like the idea of breaking down and experimenting with them to see how they work, yet, when I have the opportunity, I find myself too scared to do it, in case I break them… EmeraldDM8, on the other hand, seems more than willing to just jump straight in and experiment, which had, evidently, offered him a lot more knowledge as to how the site works.
~~Also, didn’t you already fix the CSS spaghetti code? I could have sworn you spent about two weeks moving things around and cleaning it all up?~~ 👀

EmeraldDM8: Uh… Kind of. The actual important stuff is all neat and tidy, but I’ve got a whole bunch from around the halfway point onward which I’m testing for potential/future site updates, and the way it works is that, whenever a bit is finished and works, I move it into the neat section, but due to just how many things I’m working on, the lower portions have ended up as a bit of a minefield. 👀
We’re maybe revealing a little too much of the sites background workings now. Let’s put a cap on it there, and you can get on back to the actual topic of today’s blog.

Alright, where were we? Ah, that’s right, I’d just finished explaining how, no matter how many times I tried, I just couldn’t finish the game; this was, sadly, a fact that held true for quite some time, until finally, something changed once I reached Page 70 of this Journal. I decided that I’d finally tackle the Mother series, by covering each of the games for the 10 Page checkpoints leading up to Page 100, starting with the original “Mother” for Page 80, which… could have ended better than it did. In truth, I didn’t enjoy the game, and that was very clear from my writing; I actually enjoyed it so little that there was actually a genuine concern that we’d have to scrap the post when EmeraldDM8 was reading over it, as it just wasn’t a pleasant experience to dredge through, but thankfully, as he’s done many times in the past, EmeraldDM8 was able to find one shining moment in it, polish it to the shine, then spread that magic through the rest of the post, transforming it into something… readable. ~~So yeah, that’s why that post focuses so much love on the book; that was his idea to inject some passion into the blog.~~

So, after the… let’s be honest here, the disaster that was the “Mother” blog, I, somewhat surprisingly, did at least have somewhat of an intention to still go forward with my plan, although, as you can quite easily see if you look through the catalog of Journal Pages, my adventures in the fabled “EarthBound” that was intended for Page 90 never actually happened, and I instead covered Persona 5 Strikers, which was a game that I had been playing, and really enjoying, at that time. So, with the pattern broken, that should have surely meant the end for the dream of Mother 3 for Page 100, and yet… here we are, at said Page 100, and we’re actually talking about Mother 3; true, it may not be in the way that anyone probably expected, but Mother 3 is one of those games that have had such a long-lasting influence on my life that I think merely reviewing it would feel insufficient, and so, we’ve instead ended up with what we have here today. But, given the way I’ve been writing so far, I suppose I haven’t actually made it clear whether or not I managed to successfully complete the game, have I? So then, I suppose some of you may now be wondering if, despite the many issues, did this adventure finally end well? Did I finally manage to fulfill one of my dreams and complete this game?

Yes. A part of me genuinely still can’t quite believe it, but yes! I finally made it! I decided not to mention it before in my usual Journal Page openings, primarily because I was afraid that I would never finish it, but this time, for whatever reason, things just seemed to be different, and the points that had once been roadblocks simply flew past with no issues. After all this time, those stupid feelings that had kept me from properly experiencing this game vanished, and I could finally enjoy the game for what it was (~~a game, you know? A fun game~~)! I was truly having fun, the fun I had always wanted to have, and before I knew it, I was already at the end, the whole experience having flown past far faster than I could have ever possibly imagined. So, how was the game? Mother 3 was simply wonderful. It was somehow everything I ever wanted it to be and more, it taught me so many things, and I cried so much in the ending… It is a title deserving of something much longer and better than just a mere Journal Page, and that’s why in this one I’ve only talked about my personal experience with it; rest assured, the game itself will have its time in the limelight. So, I hope you’ll be looking forward to it!

But why didn’t I just simply review it today? Why did I decide to make this Page more about my personal relationship with this game rather than about the game itself? The answer to that is surprisingly simple; this is an important Page. This is Page 100, the Page I never thought I would reach, the Page that I, when I first started, once told EmeraldDM8 would be the final Page. Yet, now that I’m here, I really don’t want it to end; the Journal has become such an important part of my life that I can’t just… end it, especially not based on a decision I made two years ago. Still, even if this isn’t the end, it’s still a vitally important Page, and I couldn’t think of anything more fitting than exploring my relationship with a game that has been such an important part of my life for so long…

However, whilst the Journal isn’t ending, some things need to change. I, as well as both EmeraldDM8 and Mikyu777, have a vast array of ideas regarding what we want to do with this site, ideas for new articles, for new series, for a multitude of ways to explore our passions and interests, but the weekly format of Journal Page releases is hampering this creativity. If any of you have read my newest series, GUI Wonderland, you can see a vast improvement in quality compared to the Journal Pages, and the reason for that is thanks to not having to pump it out on a weekly basis, meaning that we have more time to actually develop and perfect them.

Thus, I hereby proclaim that, today, we are bringing an end to the first batch of Journal Pages, an ending that hopefully not only brings with it a victory for myself, but also a lesson for all of you; never force yourself to do things you don’t have to. Sometimes things need the time and opportunity to simply breathe, and if you’re truly passionate about something, then their time will come, whether it’s in a few days, or even a few years from now.

You see, in the end, we play games in order to have fun, or to experience what can sometimes be a life-changing tale, or to challenge ourselves, or for a whole raft of other potential reasons, and as such, we should be able to enjoy them for what they are. Video Games shouldn’t have the right to bring needless stresses with them, they shouldn’t make you feel bad or guilty for not playing them, and you shouldn’t feel ashamed of playing, or not playing, a game based entirely on your enjoyment of it. It’s admittedly taken me a long time to finally learn this, especially since it feels like a lesson that shouldn’t need to be learned, but I shouldn’t ever force myself to finish a game, and I don’t need to feel any guilt about leaving something aside. If you are a long time follower of the Journal, then I imagine it must be pretty obvious that this isn’t the first game that I’ve developed a somewhat difficult and tumultuous relationship with, but I think this might have been the most intimidating one, the one that I never truly thought I would ever be able to overcome… and yet here we are. The game is over. The journey is done and the tale has been told, and honestly? I feel so much better for it. The relief I feel from finally having conquered that titan has cemented this experience as probably one of the most defining of my entire life.

So, with all of that said, I really hope that you’ve enjoyed this particularly personal Journal Page, and I hope that, if you’re a long-term reader, you’ve found it both funny and heartwarming to watch me ~~painlessly~~ draw my psychological profile throughout the many pages of this Journal across these last two years. But, of course, most of all, I truly hope that you’ve been able to enjoy what I’ve written, because writing and sharing all of this has truly meant the world to me… As always, I really hope you enjoyed… and thank you all so much for reading!

EmeraldDM8: I’ll take over for a moment here; the actual Journal Page will technically end here, although we still have some more that we’d like to share with you, especially if you are a long time reader. Just below, we’re going to go over the future of what we have planned for the Journal, and Blisscast has also chosen to include a few interesting pieces of trivia regarding the site as a whole, so if you’re interested, please check it out. Otherwise, I’d also like to take the opportunity to thank you all for sticking with us for so long, and I really hope you’ll stick around for what we have planned in the future.

The Future of the Journal:

Okay, now let’s talk about the future of the Journal. As we said before in the intro, we’re planning to make quite a few changes to the site, and there is one thing in particular regarding the Journal that is going to be changing; to be precise, the Journal is no longer going to be released weekly. As I briefly mentioned before, it has been tricky to keep it going on a weekly schedule for 100 Pages, and, if you actually follow the site, you likely noticed that we’ve actually had to skip a few weeks, either because I just didn’t have the time to finish the Page, or because I had trouble finding a topic in time; I used as many past “subjects” as I could in order to fill weeks where I hadn’t come across a new topic, but eventually, even that option began to dry up, and toward the end, I was running really quite low on topics, especially because a lot of the remaining topics were the sort that I’d want to use for bigger, more well-developed blogs. Plus, it was at this point that several of my more complex projects began to draw close to being completed, yet there was never the time to actually finish them, primarily because I had the weekly Journal Page to prepare as well. It wasn’t even just me who was struggling with this; EmeraldDM8 has a whole array of blogs that are sitting almost finished, but those have been delayed until he finishes several important site updates… site updates that were likewise constantly being delayed due to the weekly Journal Pages.

Yet, even so, you can rest assured that I’m not saying I dislike the Journal! On the contrary, when I was actually writing them, I adored doing it, but I was nearly always wishing that I could simply free myself from the shackles of having to work on it all the time, in order to increase its quality and focus on the other projects of the site (such as my beloved GUI Wonderland); thus, if it all goes well, rather than releasing a Journal Page every week, we’re going to release, at minimum, 1 per month instead.

This not only greatly reduces the stress of having to get it out, since we’ll have a lot longer to work on it, but it will also offer us more time to ensure that every Journal Page is of incredible quality. Don’t worry though, as we have plenty of other series in the works, and we’re still intending to release content regularly, they just won’t all be Journal Pages. Additionally, we are also considering changing the release day from Thursday night to Friday night, although this isn’t fully decided upon yet.

We’re intending to release a Newsletter toward the end of the month, which will have more information about all of this, as well as many other changes around the site, so please keep an eye out for that!

Hopefully this news isn’t too disappointing for you, but we promise that the extra time will really help us make each page truly special. So, with all of that said, I suppose that now it really is the end of the—

Huh? Mr. Batty? Oh! Of course! You guys haven’t read the Trivia Section yet! Well, given that Mr. Batty has blocked your way, I suppose you have no choice but to continue onward. 😈

Trivia about the Journal:

As you can probably imagine, after writing a series for over 2 years, you can end up with quite a few interesting and funny stories related to it. Today, in order to celebrate the 100th Page, I’ve decided to also share some of these stories, mostly for your entertainment, although admittedly some of them are just things I want to get off the chest. 😅

I really hope you enjoy them, and thank you so much for sticking with us for so long!

Trivia #1: This site didn’t start as the Blisscast Journal, but as “The Diary of a Gamer”; I took the Journaling concept from a failed experience of mine on Instagram. ~~Also, there are currently talks going on about changing the site’s name, though it shouldn’t happen anytime soon, as I lack the needed ideas~~. Jokes aside, this is because, as I hinted before, we’d like this site to be more than just my personal Journal.

Trivia #2: I didn’t actually fully write Page 42 about Pokémon Black & White, due to some… personal reasons, and I wish I could give it justice at some point. In truth, most of that blog was written by EmeraldDM8, who did a wonderful job taking the incredibly bare skeleton I’d left him and expanding that into something admittedly pretty good, but because of that, the blog stands as somewhat of a failure for me, given how much I care about those games, and I’m quite keen to redo that blog and give it the care it deserves.

Trivia #3: Page 15 about Cooking Idol has always been lovingly referred to as “the bar for failure”, since it did absolutely abysmally when it first came out, and almost completely obliterated any and all momentum that the blog had built up to that point (and annoyingly, that’s exactly what EmeraldDM8 predicted would happen, but I didn’t let him veto it at the time. This is one of several reasons why he now has an overriding veto on any blog that we’re thinking of releasing). However, it should also be noted that, as of recently, it has suddenly begun gaining views, and, whilst it’s not exactly popular, it’s doing decently better then a few other blogs, and thus can no longer be the barer of it’s old nickname.
As to why this happened, your guess is as good as mine.

Trivia #4: One of my first blog ideas was actually The Wii Startup Disc, but I left it by the wayside for a very long time as it seemed like it would be way too difficult to write about, and that not enough people would care about it; now, in a rather ironic twist, that blog is the most popular one on the entire site, so I guess that ultimately goes to show that I should have more faith in my ideas and my blogging skills.

Trivia #5: For a long time, my favorite Page had been Page 7 about the Eternal Castle Remastered, but right now, if I had to say which is my favorite, I’d probably go for either Page 43 about Log Horizon 1, Page 28 about .hack//G.U., or Page 89 about the original Yu-Gi-Oh! manga. Plus, I’ve always had a soft spot for both my Polybius and Mindset articles.

Trivia #6: My beloved GUI Wonderland series actually started as “Windows Development”, then I found out about the Apple Lisa, then about the Xerox Alto, and suddenly I was stuck in a years-long project; a rewarding one, yes, but I bet it won’t be over anytime soon!

Trivia #7: Even in spite of seeming like we’d be running out of ideas after 100 Pages, we actually have a small handful of scrapped articles that, as of right now, seem as though they may not see the light of day. Final Fantasy 10, for example, was intended to be a very important Journal Page, however, due to my PS4… not playing nice (~~it even happened right when Polybius’ blog came out… and I used to make fun of it because it didn’t exist… and as revenge, it took away my screenshots…~~), I lost all of my pictures from the game, and thus I wasn’t able to write it.

And there we have it, 100 Pages done and dusted. I’ve thanked you all way too many times already, so I won’t burden you with that again, so instead, I’d just like to say that I hope we’ll be seeing you in the next Page, or anywhere around the site, and Happy Birthday to Journal!

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