What Nintendo Won't Do, Fans Will

Just a word of warning and some free advice to Nintendo of America: now that Mother 3 (the sequel to Earthbound, the best Super NES RPG ever) is set for Japanese release in April, you'd better get the gang at the Treehouse to start localizing it for the North American market.  You see, Earthbound fans have been waiting over a decade for a new adventure, and the non-Japanese fans are going to get it even if it's not released internationally.  Rabid fans have a history for taking non-English releases of highly desired games and translating them into English unofficially so that others can download the translation patch and the game's ROM file to enjoy.  Remember Final Fantasy V?  Or Rockman and Forte?  Gamers around the world were playing them in emulators long before the official English versions were offered for sale.

There's a whole bunch of potential revenue to be had from an actual official Mother 3 release outside of Japan.  One way or another, English-speaking Earthbound fans will get their fix.  Wouldn't it be nice if you, Nintendo, earned a healthy profit from that?  This could also be a great time to finally translate and release that Mother 1+2 compilation game pak, too.  This is not a threat, just a guarantee.  The fans are going to get the game from someone somehow, and it'd be better for us all if that someone was you.