The Psychiatric Ward

Mother 3 is a role-playing video game developed by Brownie Brown, HAL Laboratory, and Nintendo SPD Production Group No. 3. It was published by Nintendo for the Game Boy Advance handheld game console. It has only been released in Japan, alongside a limited supply bundle. It is the third video game in the EarthBound series, following EarthBound for the Super NES 12 years earlier. It was written by Shigesato Itoi, the creator of the series, and directed by Nobuyuki Inoue. The music was composed by Shogo Sakai, whom Itoi chose to succeed long-time series composers for the series Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka; neither were available to work on the project.

Mother 3 is a loose sequel to EarthBound. It takes place on the "Nowhere Islands", a series of islands on Earth, and stars several characters, including Lucas, a young boy; Flint, a farmer and father of Lucas & his older twin brother,Claus; Duster, a thief; Kumatora, a princess; Salsa, a monkey; and Boney, Flint's dog. The primary antagonist is the mysterious Pigmask Army, an army of people who wear pig-like uniforms, which suddenly invades the islands, subjugating its population. They create a variety of technologies, including Chimeras, creatures that consist of either multiple animals or machine-animal hybrids. The game switches perspectives between the main characters during several chapters.

Mother 3 was originally developed for the Super Famicom in 1994, but was moved to the Nintendo 64DD and titled Mother 3: Fall of the Pig King, with the English title of EarthBound 64. Owing in part to the failure of this platform, it was cancelled and moved to the Nintendo 64, though the developers continued creating an expansion of it called Mother 3.5 for the 64DD. They experienced trouble with developing its 3D engine, and as a result, it was delayed several times and ultimately cancelled. It resurfaced in a 2003 television advertisement for Mother 1 + 2, a compilation of its predecessors; a message announced the revival of Mother 3 for the Game Boy Advance. Famitsu subsequently listed the title on its "most wanted games" feature where it stayed for weeks.

Although Nintendo of America have not announced plans to localize Mother 3 into another language, a fan translation group has released a patch to translate the game into English. Electronic Gaming Monthly's rumor section mentioned a compilation of Mother, Mother 2, and Mother 3 titled Mother Compilation would be made for the Nintendo DS, possibly with an international release. However, nothing has come of this. More recently, Brownie Brown, its developer, stated that if asked by Nintendo, they would work on a DS remake. According to Itoi, there are no plans to create a fourth Mother game, but he has not completely dismissed the idea.

A returning feature from the original Mother is the ability to dash; by holding and releasing a button the player can move more quickly, ram into breakable objects, and stun or kill weak enemies. A player may enter a battle multiple ways. Their character may enter it normally, identified by the screen turning blue, by facing the enemy's back, when the screen turns green, or by the enemy attacking the player from behind, identified by the screen turning red. Mother 3 allows the player to save using creatures called "Save Frogs", which are abundant and appear at various areas in the game. Currency is not available early in the game, as Nowhere Islands features a communal gift-giving system. Currency is introduced later in the game as "Dragon Power" (DP), which is earned from battle,with different enemies giving different amounts based on difficulty, and stored away, requiring the player access it from the Save Frogs.

The game retains the battle system found in Mother and EarthBound, characterized by non-animated enemy sprites and an animated background. The player may have up to four playable characters in their group at a given time, as well as additional Non-playable character(s), or NPC, that help in battle or play a role in the game. There are several kinds of statistics, which include Heart Points, the amount of health a character has; PSI Points, the psychic power a character has left; Offense, which determines a character's attack power; Defense, which determines a character's defensive ability; IQ, which determines a character's PSI power and status effect defense; and Speed, which determines which character performs first. The player may also equip various items, which range from weapons, body equipment, headgear, and other kinds of equipment. The game uses a rolling health and PSI points system. Instead of a character's health or PSI being immediately drained, the health of the character will roll down over time, allowing the character to perform actions until it hits zero, including recovering from the damage. Also, if a battle ends while a characters' health is counting down, it will stop decreasing.

There are four main options a character can use - Attack, which varies depending on the primary weapon the fighter uses; Goods, which is used to access the items held by that character; Guard, which lowers the damage taken and slows the speed of the character's HP drop; and Run Away, which gives the player a chance to escape from battle. Another option, called PSI, is an ability only two characters possess. There are three different kinds of PSI powers - Offensive PSI, which contains attack PSI abilities; Defensive PSI, which contains protective PSI abilities; and Assist PSI, which contains abilities such as shields. Each character has a unique ability exclusive to one or two characters. Mother 3 introduces a musical combo system not found in previous titles. To use this system, the player must hit the beat of the background music during battle, with most enemies having their own beat and/or tempo. The player can hear this tempo by putting an enemy to sleep, allowing the player to hear its beat in the form of its "heartbeat". Certain attacks strike only one enemy, while others strike multiple ones. Randomly, the player may inflict a critical hit on an enemy.

Mother 3 is set in the Nowhere Islands, in an unknown time period. Chaos ensues after an invasion by the Pigmask Army, named after the uniforms, which resemble pigs, and its leader "King Porky" who came from a different timeline. They slowly construct a police state, while experimenting on the land's flora and fauna, and introducing new technology and infrastructure to the islands. The various chapters culminate in Lucas's quest to rid the Nowhere Islands of the Pigmask Army.

Itoi describes the world of Mother 3 as being "macho", saying that "the good guys are strong and fight, and so do the bad guys, set up to mean might equals right." Itoi had a difficult time creating another location called the Tanehineri Islands, which included a twisted, nightmarish world caused by the characters' consumption of psilocybin mushrooms. It features a similar vibe to Moonside, a location from EarthBound, and is like a mirror of the player's mind, reflecting the player's worst nightmares. The temporary dialogue Itoi used for Tanehineri Island was so unpleasant that he could not stand to look at it, and tried to tone it down by rewriting it, though commenting that he still found it unpleasant. Itoi stated his worst nightmare would be his friends and family being evil, which is a common aspect of the island while Lucas and company's nightmares are being shown. He stated that Tanehineri Island features a similar flavor to shows such as Twin Peaks and Lost. While previous titles in the series required the player to call the protagonist's father to save their game, the player must save through "Save Frogs" scattered throughout the world. He anticipated that people would complain about the change and ask why it was done, explaining that "they are tiny, they seem like they could be anywhere, and they won't get in your way, yet they do stand out. A dog wouldn't really seem like a save point."

The first location observed is Tazmily Village, known as Tatsumairi Village in Japan. It is a rural village with a communal gift-giving system. Its English name was first shown in previews of EarthBound 64, and was later used in the PAL version of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, though the North American version referred to it as "Tatsumari Village". A later location, the kingdom of Osohe, is an uninhabited castle, whose Princess is the girl Kumatora. It is the location of a mystical item called the Hummingbird Egg. Osohe Castle, a locale in the game, was created by Itoi as a time table of sorts. He commented that no matter how correctly you portray a time period, it's easy for it to appear to be shallow, but when you dig up a fossil, you realize that it inhabited this world at one time, using the Nazca Lines as an example. New Pork City is the final location in the game, and was featured in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

There are eight main characters in Mother 3, which often switches perspectives between them. The characters include Lucas, a young boy; Flint, a livestock farmer and father of Lucas and his brother Claus; Kumatora, a Princess; Duster, a thief; Boney, Flint's dog; and Salsa, a performing monkey. These characters have abilities unique to them. Flint has "full power attacks", including attack and defense buffs and an attack that strikes multiple enemies; Duster is capable of using several thief tools, including Wall Staples which subdue an enemy; Salsa's technique is Dance, where he does a dance to affect the enemy's disposition; Lucas and Kumatora's special technique is PSI; and Boney's is Sniff, which is used to detect the details of an enemy. Mother 3 features few returning characters, including Dr. Andonuts and Porky Minch, as well as the Mr. Saturns, a race of small creatures who speak in a strange dialect.

The game starts with Hinawa leaving her home in Tazmily Village to visit her father Alec, along with her two children Lucas and Claus. After a few days, Hinawa and her children start their walk back home just as a mysterious group of uniformed men wearing pig masks takeover the forest nearby. On the trip home, Hinawa is killed by a reptilian creature called a Drago that the Pigmasks have used as a guinea pig for cyborg tests. When Hinawa's husband, Flint, finds out, he goes berserk and begins attacking other villagers. He is knocked unconscious and arrested. Claus goes to Flint in jail, giving him a tool to escape and announcing his plans to kill the Drago. Flint goes to do this himself, but refrains when he sees that the Drago has a family. Claus goes missing.

Soon after, thief-in-training Duster goes with his father, Wess, to retrieve the Hummingbird's Egg from Osohe Castle. They meet Kumatora, the princess of Osohe Castle, and find the egg. However, it is booby trapped, and the trio are sent into the castles sewer system. Kumatora and Wess wash up on a sandbank, but Duster goes missing, losing his memory and becoming the bass player for a popular band that performs at the nearby Club Titiboo. He hides the egg in the process, not knowing what it is. Meanwhile, a banana-loving man named Yokuba starts to sell "Happy Boxes" to the villagers.

Three years later, Tazmily has been transformed into a totalitarian consumerist society, with a monetary system in place for the first time. There is a Happy Box in nearly every house. Wess asks Lucas to find Duster, and he goes with his dog Boney to Club Titiboo. Kumatora is working there, disguised as a waitress, and the three of them convince Duster to help them find the egg. They do so, and demolish a lightning generator tower that has been destroying the homes of villagers not willing to conform to the monetary system or buy Happy Boxes. They are chased to the top of the tower by Yokuba, who slips on one of his own banana peels and falls off. They try to escape by hanging from the ladder of a Pigmask ship, but are thrown off.

Lucas and Boney awaken in a field of sunflowers, where they see Hinawa's ghost. Lucas runs after her, accidentally running off the side of a cliff and onto a haystack. They meet Ionia, a member of the ancient Magypsies, who tells Lucas about the Seven Needles which seal off the gigantic "Dark Dragon" hidden under the island. Whether the world would be destroyed or created anew upon the Dragon's release depends on whether the one who pulls them is good or evil. They set off to pull as many of the needles as they can before a mysterious Masked Man transfers his evil heart onto the dragon. On the way they reunite with Kumatora and Duster, and encounter Yokuba, who has been fitted with mechanical parts after his fall.

After Lucas and the Masked Man manage to pull three needles each, Lucas, Kumatora, Duster and Boney are invited to the neon superhaven New Pork City by Master Porky, leader of the Pigmasks. The city turns out to be mostly made out of crude, childish theme park attractions and fake cardboard buildings. They find an imprisoned Leder the village's bell-ringer who speaks for the first time. He tells Lucas that there once existed a world much different from Nowhere Islands. The world wound up being destroyed by the humans who inhabited it. Before the end of the world, a white ship came to the Nowhere Islands in order to create a utopia under the Dragon's protection. They replaced the memories of the old world with the new one of Nowhere Islands to prevent them from destroying the islands as well. The Hummingbird Egg was created to store the old memories. Leder watched over the village as the only one who retained his memories, ringing a bell to keep their memories from reverting. He reveals that Porky discovered the islands by traveling through space and time, filling his city with people taken from other eras. He learned of the white ship and the Dragon from Locria, who betrayed the Magypsies. Since Porky could not pull the Needles, he took control of someone who could. Leder urges Lucas and co. to pull the seventh needle before the Masked Man does so that the world can have another chance. On the way, Yokuba later battles them, and is defeated for the last time. They later discover that Yokuba is the final Magypsy, Locria.

They meet Master Porky on the top floor of the "Empire Porky Building", who turns out to be an old man with the physique of a child. Lucas, Kumatora, Duster, Boney, and Flint go down to the Needle and battle Porky, even though his armour has made him invincible. The attack is making Porky weak, though, and he decides to encases himself in a completely impenetrable capsule. However, the capsule cannot be reopened, trapping Porky inside for eternity. As Lucas goes to fight the Masked Man, he discovers that the Masked Man is actually Claus. Lucas fights Claus one-on-one, but cannot bring himself to hurt his brother. Hinawa's ghost tries to end the fight, eventually leading Claus to regain his memories and kill himself in order to free his soul.

After Lucas says farewell to his brother, he pulls the final Needle. The islands and Pigmask Army are destroyed and the Dragon reawakens. If the player watches the credits and presses buttons at the games "END?" screen, they learn that the world remained safe and that the inhabitants of the islands survived; at which point the real "END" screen shows.

When Shigesato Itoi decided to convert Mother and EarthBound to the Game Boy Advance, he realized there would be pressure to revive Mother 3, which he was initially opposed to. Due to encouragement from fans however, he decided to begin the development of it on the Game Boy Advance. At the end of several television advertisements for Mother 1 + 2, a compilation cartridge containing the predecessors of Mother 3, a creature called Mr. Saturn announces that "We're making Mother 3 for the GBA too! Dakota!" It was later announced on a Nintendo Corporate Ltd. release list. The GBA version was developed by HAL Laboratory, Inc. and Brownie Brown, the latter a wholly owned subsidiary of Nintendo, formed by ex Square Soft members, while Itoi wrote the scenario and supervised. It was initially proposed to Itoi to adapt the cancelled Mother 3 to a book or film, but Itoi found them both implausible, saying that the scale did not feel right. Development of the GBA version began when someone came to Itoi, asking whether it can be made into a Game Boy Advance game. Itoi had not thought about it, so he merely told him "I don't know." Itoi thought it over, and realized that he was trapped in a mindset that everything he made had to be epic and grandiose. He commented that at the time, his attitude when approaching his work is "I want to shock the world!" and "I'm going to squeeze everything I can imagine, all of my creativity into this one project." as if he were working on his magnum opus. He came to the realization that there's a different niche he can fill, which was one of the contributing factors to choosing the Game Boy Advance. Itoi chose to use pixelated visuals over CG, saying that "flashy CG is just not an option for me", commenting that CG looks too ordinary.

Mother 3 was created with a different feel from its predecessors. When the character of Bronson is about to reveal Hinawa's death to Flint, he states "I have good news and I have bad news." Itoi stated that this uneasy line was necessary, as if the characters continued with this mood, he would not be able to introduce things such as the Oxygen Tanks, a light-hearted device. One of the themes incorporated into Mother 3 is representing the physiology of the human body, such as the Asthma Spray utilized to treat asthma attacks in Mother. He compares the learning of PSI to menstruation, and says that when Lucas or Kumatora, the two characters who can learn PSI, get feverish, they learn a new PSI power, which Itoi says is similar to real life, explaining that whenever he feels sluggish or exhausted, he is certain that good things will follow. A scene where Lucas learns how to use PSI from the Magypsy Ionia while in a hot springs features the character telling Lucas to "just deal with it", commenting that he approached it with an older man's perspective as opposed to a "child's heart". He also comments that children are good at picking up the general idea behind things, and that if he lives to be 90, he hopes one of those kids as a grownup comes to him and says "A long time ago, in third grade, I played MOTHER 3. I was really nervous and confused about what was going on in the hot spring in that tunnel... And that's what led me to the place I am today."

Before the release of Mother 3, Shigesato Itoi launched a section on his web site that would reveal content week-by-week, such as wallpaper, ringtones, and images of enemies featured in the game. Mother 3 was eventually released on April 20, 2006. A limited edition version of Mother 3 was sold in Japan in addition to the basic title. The "Deluxe Box" included a special edition Game Boy Micro and a Franklin Badge.