Starmen.Net

What This Game Is:
A visual remastering of the game in nearly all corners. A deeper dive into the motives and characterizations of main characters. The telling of a side of the story that we never had the pleasure of seeing. The opportunity to meet some familiar faces in a different light, and the chance to allow other overlooked characters to shine more brightly. An exploration into the dragons, the white ship, and what becomes of the balance between destruction and creation. The prospect to relive Mother 3, in a new light.

What This Game Is Not:
A replacement for experiencing the story and world of Mother 3. An attempt to make a “superior” Mother 3. A “true” ending. An “ideal” ending. An attempt to change canon, replace canon, or devalue canon.

It Will Feature:

• A storyline running largely parallel to Mother 3 canon.
• Additional Chapters.
• New dialogue and cutscenes.
• A few more familiar faces to lead the party as.
• A few new areas to explore.
• Team attacks.
• PSI team attacks.
• The addition of a few new special abilities.
• A new, but familiar, permanent party member….
• More responsive combo-ing. (Hopefully.)
• Just as much Boogie Woogie rhythm.
• A world that needs to be saved.

It Will Not Feature:

• New major characters.
• New music. (Probably.)
• More than one or two new enemies.
• Salsa’s chapter. Sorry, Salsa.

List of Chapter Titles (Tentative)
(Warning: “Vague” Spoilers for every part of the fangame.)

“Is Anything Needed?”
This game is being built in GameMaker version 1.4. I’m mostly laying down the framework of the code right now, but if you have experience in GameMaker feel free to PM me. I’ve made games in the engine before but this is definitely the most ambitious pet project I’ve ever had. I do intend to stick with it, even if it is slowgoing, though.

If this gets a surprising amount of interest, maybe it could end up a team effort. (So if you are willing, feel free to comment.) But for now, this is just a solo gig and something I’m doing for my own learning, passion, and entertainment.

Thank you very much for reading!

I agree with you, it’s a difficult idea. But again this project started as a personal thing for myself, to improve my coding skills. I’m not a beginner in GameMaker but I’ve never made a RPG, and so far I’ve notived the hardest part will be staying true to the Mother 3 battle system. I’ve got the scrolling HP so far and the navigation menu, but before I go any further I want to set up the barebone stuff around the inventory and special attack menus.

The overworld stuff I’m not very worried about, because that’s the kind of thing I actually have most of my experience doing.

I want to release an oroginal RPG of my own eventually, so learning about coding RPGs through my favorite in existance isn’t too bad of a gig. I’m not going to pretend that this game is going to release anytime soon, though. It’s relatively slow work, especially right now since all I’m doing is building up the groundwork.

This is really cool-looking, Loptr! I’m really excited to see the graphics and story updates.
I’m not too sure about that dialogue font choice, though.

(I wrote this post before loptr posted the one above, Sorry for the redundancy.)

The project looks great so far! I always thought a reimagining type fangame would be cool to have, and the graphics and story updates seem to shake things up in an interesting way.

I share my sentiment with Noodles on the topic of the font though, I think having an anti-aliased font detracts a bit from the great graphics.

Here is a quick edit I did of one of the screenshots with the original mother 3 font to illustrate my point.

Now, I have a few things to say about this. First of all, I think that this idea is extremely, extremely ambitious. You’re effectively remaking Mother 3 in its entirety—retooling all of its assets, sans music most likely, and adding more content on top of that. That seems like an absolute crapton of work for just one guy. If you have plans to continue with this, I suggest cobbling together a team of at least one artist, one coder, and one person who knows the engine very well. Of course, recruit more if you can. The more the merrier.

Secondly, I have mixed feelings about the new graphics. The screenshot with Hinawa and the Dragos looks fantastic. It’s just oozing with charm. However, the other screenshots highlight a problem with the character sprites in general. They don’t really mesh well with the original environments of M3. They look like they were just plastered onto the backgrounds without much prior thought. Now I know that those screenshots are just mockups, but this runs the risk of being an issue in the actual game as well. I feel like the best way to get around this is to edit the sprites to better match the size and shading of the original game. But, if you want to go the extra mile, you could instead redo all of the backgrounds to match the sprites. This would add even more work to your plate, so don’t do that if you don’t think you can commit to it.

Finally, the last screenshot you provided bugs me. Not because of the battle UI, but because of the presence of the Masked Man. I don’t know the context of this shot, of course, but I feel like any reason you can come up with for having the MM join the party is doomed to be contrived and very unbelievable. You would need to rewrite a ton of the game’s original script for it to even come close to working. You seem to messing with the script as is, adding and removing chapters and whatnot, but be careful with that. You might end up tarnishing the tightness of the game’s narrative. In fact, it’s very likely. I don’t say that because I think you’re a bad writer, but because I feel Itoi’s vision for the game was close to perfect in its current form. Tread lightly in that area.

Well, that’s all I had to say. I’m interested to see where this goes. Keep working!

Damn this is really cool! I can’t wait to see how this turns out!

I understand if the mods strike me for necro bumping, but what happened to this? It looks so promising, but has yet to deliver. I mean, if your struggling, I’d happily volunteer! Call it an unpopular opinion; but I thought mother 3 had some un-tapped potential, with the ending being nothing but a black screen that seemed lack-luster. For you information I do writing as a major skill and I minor in pixel art.

So will it contain 12 chapters just like it was planned originally in MOTHER 3 N64/N64DD prototype? So will Masked Man boss fight be more scary with more nightmare fuels? Will this fangame have darker storyline like it was initially intended? Will there be some sanctuary guardians(unused mother 3 stuff) challenges?Anyway I think this fangame might be helpful with revivng my EarthBound 64 fangame project.

Will players be able to call playable character NPCs’ just like in Harry Potter 3 ps2 version because gba version was rpg. Speaking of gameplay mechanics of course.