That is all..... oooh! Orange colored font! You gotta click! Like now! :D

I'm sorry. I'll be back in the summer time.

IT'S DONE!!!!!!! HOOORAY!!!! MOTHER3 IS DONE!!!!!!!!!!! GO DOWNLOAD IT!

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From the blog:

The patch will be out at the end of this week.

Testing's pretty much over now. Some bugs did turn up over the last few days, but they were all minor and quickly remedied. Some really hard-to-spot typos were also found and fixed.

The program patchers are now nearly finished. There'll be one for Macs, Windows, and Linux. We designed them to be extremely easy to use, since people had lots of trouble with the old menu patch. The Linux version was compiled under Ubuntu, I don't know if it'll work with other flavors or not, but if it doesn't, you can probably compile byuu's tsukuyomi UPS patcher to do things manually.

I'm waiting on a few last lines from demi, but lots of tedious, final stuff is being done in the meantime, like the readme, the troubleshooting/faq page, prepping the server, some other things you'll see later. This will be the last update before the patch is out.

Before the patch is released, you might want to get everything ready ahead of time. You'll of course need the Japanese ROM, which we can't provide. You might want to hunt that down now, if you have the time.

You might also want to find yourself a GBA emulator ahead of time and get it set up. I don't know a whole lot about what emulators exist on each OS, but I do recommend VBA-M for those who can run it. It's a recent project and superior to the old VBA, which hasn't been updated in years. The VBA-M project site is here, and you'll want to get the most recent compiled version here. Of course, regular old VBA works too, but VBA-M is great.

Mac users, you may have trouble saving your game. The troubleshooting guide and the readme will list several ways to fix this. Your best bet might be to try VBA 1.7.2 rather than VBA 1.7.4. Fiddle around with the preferences too, see if changing the flash save size works. I'm telling you this now, because this will probably be the #1 problem report we get once the patch is released. So, if you have the time, try out the Japanese ROM and see if you can get your emulator to save.

For people wanting to play the game on actual hardware, see this thread. I was counting on some gbatemp people to help provide a detailed guide about flash carts/cards, but it looks like it's not going to happen. So someone on the forum compiled this quick and handy list. I don't know the first thing about this stuff, so I can't answer your questions. Also, just like with ROMs, I don't want to point people to specific places to acquire this hardware. Some simple searching should get you what you want, though.

(EDIT: The following list isn't complete, there are probably many other things that will work. The list below is just a list of what was confirmed to work in the above forum thread.)

FLASH CARTS THAT WILL PLAY MOTHER3:

Slot 2 (GBA) carts:

* EZ-Flash IV (note: the "Compact" version will not work)
* EZ-Flash 3-in-1 (requires a slot-1 cart)
* eLink 1Gbit
* G6 Lite
* M3 SD
* EFA Linker
* Flash2Advance Ultra

Slot 1 (DS) carts:
(These all require a GBA expansion, such as the EZ-Flash 3-in-1, to play GBA games.)

* M3 DS Real
* CycloDS
* EZ-Flash V
* R4 DS

If you have questions about flash cart stuff, please see the forum thread I linked to above. That's where you'll find people in the know.

I gotta say though, the game looks absolutely great on actual hardware. It's nice on emulators, but the real deal is... wow. Here are some pics, though they're not great examples: GBA Micro 1, GBA Micro 2. Certain things in the game - particularly the musical battle combo system - will lag with emulators, just because of how emulators work. But actual hardware doesn't have that problem. You can probably get accustomed to your emulator's lag with time, though.

Anyway, all that aside, I saw that someone started a playthrough of EarthBound to kind of commemorate the patch coming out. That sounds like a really cool idea. I highly recommend it :)

From the the blog:
"After some enlightenment, I managed to fix and finish the sprite hacking routine earlier today. It now runs at a fast speed, has no weird graphical lag or distortion, and is rock-solid and 100% professional-looking. So that means we can cross the final hack off the to-do list.

Right after I fixed the sprite text, we noticed that the game would freeze during the ending. It was a pesky bug, but we finally fixed it, it was something that crept in late last night. While I was at it, I also betterfied the fix for this old bug, which is nice.

There've been so many pics and videos that there's not too much more to show now, but I recorded one thing real quick showing a bunch of different systems that had to be hacked over the past year. You can see them all working in harmony together and looking nice and professional. Nothing spoilery, don't worry.

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Now that the hacking's pretty much done (some miniscule things remain which may not be worth bothering with), that just leaves the testing phase. It'll probably start sometime this weekend, and before people start asking, we don't need help testing. The testing will be done internally for several weeks.

It's also important to clarify that testing doesn't mean "play through and have fun", it means playing stuff over and over, trying to break things, analyzing every little detail, stuff like that. It's NOT fun. But this way the game will be less likely to freeze/crash/act stupid when the patch is released to the public. Some last-minute polish will be going on during the testing phase too.

I don't know how updates will be during the testing, it may just be a weekly thing saying we're alive and well, but if we find stuff and fix it, I'll mention that quickly.

More info and details and blah blah at a later time. For now, just know that the translation's entered its final stage. Very very close now!"

Oooooooh! I can't wait!! =D

Praise the awesomeness of me and Twilighty!

http://starmen.net/ebsiege/pkcalln/
Support the EarthBound Siege!

Also.. the Charcter Battle had come to an halt. Sorry CB fan.. (or it none. :P)

[CURRENT PROJECTS:]
[PICO'S SCHOOL IN A NUTSHELL] 0%
[MAPLESTORY MUSICALS] ==(Special)== 0% =will move to the cancel later=
[EarthBound: The New Chosen 4 Episode 0] (read below)

==(Upcoming Projects)==
MapleStory Brawl
Naruto: (title working)
Newgrounds Hare Hare Yukai (still)

{Canceled Projects}
Charater Bash
Charater Battle Epilogue
CHARATER BATTLE XII (sorta..)
RESIDENT MAPLE: Code Veronica X (Co-Author: Killit)
RESIDENT MAPLE3: Final Escape (both continue later on)
===(End to projects)===

About the EB:TNC4.. it's EB series. More info in the next news post. I'm too lazy to post it here.
Awesomeness is below. (I made by the way.)
(YES PICO IS ADDED TO THE SERIES! PICO IS RELATED TO LUCAS! "not" )

The EarthBound marathon will start at 4PM CST! Do not be late for the marathon!! We will not stop until EB goes to the U.S.!
NOTE: It wasn't started by me. Look here.

NOA GIVE ME A PRESENT!!!

GIVE ME A CAEK OR CLAUS WILL EAT YOU UP!