Mother 3 impressions

[08.27.99] » Complete impressions on Nintendo's secretive RPG, straight from Space World.

   RPG-starved Nintendo 64 fans will be happy to know that Mother 3: Fall of the Pig King (aka Earthbound 64) has climbed out of the vaporware abyss. The title made an impressive debut at Nintendo's Space World show in Japan, and it's clear that the game should give N64 owners something to look forward to.

   The Space World demo opens in a village. From here, the player can take different paths out of the village and into the various segments of the demo. Two of the aeras were just non-playable cut scenes: one showed two young kids -- one with blonde hair and one with red -- riding a mine cart through several tunnels, while the other showed a dog racing through a storm to its owner, whom it guided to the two kids and a man in black clothing. (Both of these scenes appear in the movie posted earlier today.)

   The other areas were all playable: in one, the blonde kid (apparently the main character) teams up with the man in the black hat to battle boars and birds. A second area takes place in the sewers, where the player hops around on mushrooms and battles snakes. Finally, a third playable area sees the party in a desert, battling a giant pig cannon. The team hops in a futuristic hover car and speeds about the landscape while the cannon shoots cannonballs at them.

   Getting hit by the cannonballs will knock your party down, a dangerous situation: if an enemy party leaps on you while you're prostrate, they get a free round of attacks in the ensuing battle. (Other enemies can you knock you down as well.) On the other hand, if you charge an enemy and knock them down, you get to attack first. Fans of Mother 2 (Earthbound) will remember a similar system, but in Mother 3, it's far more interactive.

   The battle system is also an upgrade of Mother 2's. As previously mentioned, you view combat from the same first-person perspective used in past Mother games. Combat features a number of new twists, this time around: you can evade enemy attacks by quickly hitting the proper button (as in Super Mario RPG). Also, landing a critical hit knocks the recipient flat on the ground and puts him or her out of action for a round. Your party size seems to have been downgraded, however -- no more than three characters ever join your party during the demo, and there doesn't appear to be room for a fourth character in your status window (the first two Mother games both allowed four characters in your party at a time).

   The demo also contained a brief movie clip, in which the kids hop on a train and escape with a monster chasing them. The sequence is stunning, and the graphics look almost FMV quality -- in fact, it's possible that the scene is FMV, as Angel Studios' port of Resident Evil 2 has proved that the Nintendo 64 is more than capable of FMV.

   FMV or no, Mother 3 should go a long way to plugging the RPG gap on the Nintendo 64. The once-dead title is clearly alive again, with a Japanese release scheduled for May 2000 (no U.S. release has been announced, but we'll keep you posted).

   Thanks to the GIA's Japanese correspondent for the scoop.