BLTN Podcast: I Have Complicated Thoughts About Mother 3

About This Podcast

Follow me on a three-year journey to unpack why I didn't really vibe with a lot of Mother 3. Is the game cynical? Am I viewing it from the wrong perspective? Have I run out of time to enjoy RPGs? Or did I just wake up on the wrong side of the bed?

Why A Podcast?

One thing I think could be interesting to do would be to write long-form content for bltn.net, but provide it for Patreon donos as a podcast you can listen to. I don't know how frequent this will be, because generally, I want most of my output to be video. This door is open for things that cannot be video. Sort of like that Fortnite podcast I did a couple years ago, right?

That Fortnite podcast was the way it was because it took me 150-200+ hours to work my way through that story mode. Not only am I not going to capture 200 hours of video, but I couldn't even redo those missions without creating a new Fortnite account and re-purchasing the game a second time.

That's the extreme end of things. On the less extreme end of things is this, a 30 hour JRPG that I do not want to make 60 hours by replaying the entire game in an emulator just so I can capture video from it. Which may also end up where a lot of these articles come from: games I play casually, that I then develop Thoughts™ about, but do not want to replay in order to make a proper video.

I mention in that Fortnite podcast that I'd keep it free for an accessibility thing but I think I'll rescind that. Since these may or may not be a regular thing, I'm putting it behind the cheapest, most basic tier on the Patreon. I don't think it's too much to charge a buck for this kind of thing.

If you'd rather read this instead of listen to it, here's the link to the text version of the article.

Anyway.

Music Credits

• Earthbound - Buzz Buzz's Prophecy (Custom Mix)

• Setoness - Earthbound: Twoson

• Bound Together - The Ness Shot

• HaruMKT - Mother 3: Murasaki Forest (MKT Arrange)

• Bound Together - Zombie Lounge

• Earthbound - Pokey's House

• nelward - Otherworldly Foe (Earthbound) Remix

• Earthbound - Kraken of the Sea

• Bound Together - Scars

• Mother 3 Remastered - Let's Begin!

• Mother 3 Remastered - Pulling of the Needles

• Mother 3 Remastered - I Am Porky

• Mother 3 Remastered - Aria of Unease

• Mother 3 Remastered - Memory of Life

• Mother 3 Remastered - 16 Melodies (Beginning)

Music Download/Listening Sources

• OCRemix: Bound Together (Archive.org Download Link)

• Soundcloud Profile: Setoness

• Soundcloud Profile: HaruMKT

• Soundcloud Profile: Nelward

• Mother 3 Remastered Announcement Video (Download Links in Description)

Bonus Content

I am attaching two MP3s to this post that hopefully do not mess with how Patreon presents podcasts. One is a song I use in the podcast, and one is a song I planned to use in the podcast but did not.

The first song is a version of Buzz Buzz's Prophecy from Earthbound that I slowed down and played with, because I wanted something that sounded a little haunting, but not scary. The end result ends up something almost like whale song (or the weird sound the alien ship in Star Trek IV makes).

The second song is a "sweetened" version of The Power from Earthbound, which basically just means adding lots of reverb and re-EQing the song.

I'd wanted to do more custom music for this, including new MP3s of Mother 3 music made from MIDIs, but that might have made this take even longer to get out and then I discovered the Mother 3 Remastered project anyway.