While 2020 has been an unpredictable year for Nintendo fans as it is, it’s safe to assume that nobody expected the publisher to announce that the very first Fire Emblem game, Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, will finally be receiving a localization over 30 years after its original release on the Famicom (NES.) The port of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light brings the game to Nintendo Switch as a standalone title on December 4th and marks the first time in years Nintendo has returned to localizing an older title since 2015’s Earthbound Beginnings on the Wii U.
Now, Earthbound fans are understandably excited once again as Nintendo’s interest in returning to the original Fire Emblem title 30 years after its release has renewed hope that Mother 3 could finally see the localization fans have been begging for since the game’s release in 2006.
Mother 3 is the third game in the Mother series (known as Earthbound outside of Japan) and was released in Japan on April 20th 2006 for the Gameboy Advance. Much like Earthbound, the game has a very vocal cult following amongst Nintendo’s audience, who have been begging Nintendo to release an English localized version of the game in the west since its release. Over the years, Nintendo has come very close to bringing the game west, but every time the localization was green-lit it has been subsequently canceled. The reason for the localizations’ delays have been cited as due to the game’s mature themes such as instances as drug abuse and animal cruelty, which would result in controversy.
This hasn’t stopped Nintendo of America from acknowledging Mother 3‘s existence on numerous occasions, with the company’s ex-president Reggie Fils-Amié joking about being unable to escape fans’ requests to release the game in English even after his retirement. The company even openly joked about the fan campaigns to convince Nintendo to localize the game during its 2014 E3 Digital Event.
While the release of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light on Nintendo Switch does not guarantee a western localization of Mother 3, it at least allows fans to speculate on its possibility after years of lost hope. It’s also worth noting that the Nintendo of today is far more lenient on the content of the titles it publishes than in the company’s past, with Nintendo going as far as to publish mature titles like Bayonetta 2 and Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water within the past 5 years. While this announcement does not make Mother 3 any more likely than it was back in 2015 when Earthbound Beginnings made its way to Wii U, it at least keeps fans’ hope alive that the title will come to western shores one day.
Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light releases on Nintendo Switch on December 4th 2020.
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