EarthBound / MOTHER 2 Translation Comparison: Winters 2

Dr. Andonuts Speaks to Ness

In EarthBound, when you fly back to the lab in Winters, Dr. Andonuts greets you with, “Oh! You surprised me! You’re Ness, aren’t you?”

In MOTHER 2, he simply says, “Oh! Ness!”

Technically, he says “Ness-kun”, which, when added with the context, goes to show he has some familiarity with Ness. What’s interesting about this is that while Dr. Andonuts recognizes Ness (somehow), he didn’t even recognize his own son Jeff earlier in the game.

Big Foot the Assistant

In MOTHER 2, the Cave Boy enemies were called “Big Foot”. They were renamed for some reason, but the whole joke was that you had sea monsters, Stonehenge, Big Foot, and UFOs (the Sky Runner) all in this one place. So Cave Boy doesn’t really fit.

Anyway, I bring this up again because the localizers didn’t change “Big Foot” everywhere. When this Cave Boy starts selling stuff inside Dr. Andonut’s lab, Dr. A refers to him as “Big Foot”, even though he was supposed to share the name that the enemies outside have. This is a lot like how the Bubble Monkey’s MOTHER 2 name was “Balloon Monkey”, but the localizers forgot to change “Balloon Monkey” everywhere in the game.

Also, in EarthBound, Dr. Andonuts says that Big Foot is his co-worker, but in MOTHER 2, he makes no claim. Here’s what he says.

As we can see in the original script, they’re not co-workers. What’s more, Big Foot literally sells Dr. Andonuts beef jerky. While it’s true that “share” could technically mean “sell” here, most people will assume the default meaning: that he gets the beef jerky for free.