What is the Mother 3 Handbook?

When the Mother 3 fan translation arrived in October 2008, the game still had no English guide, so the fans at Fangamer made one. The Mother 3 Handbook, completed and released in March 2009 at $20, is an unofficial full-color companion of some 200 pages in its first form, covering the whole game for the English-speaking audience the translation had just created. Fangamer's current edition runs 272 pages as a full-color hardcover.

Its signature is craft loyalty. Artist Camille Young sculpted, painted and photographed 55 clay characters and items for the book between June 2008 and March 2009, deliberately echoing the clay figure photography of the official Mother 2 and EarthBound guides. The Handbook does not imitate the originals' layout so much as continue their method.

A second edition followed in November 2011, and the book has remained in print through Fangamer, a two-decade afterlife no one planned for a fan project. Note the date trap: some summaries date the Handbook to October 2008, which was the fan translation's launch and the book's preorder window; Fangamer's own history puts completion in March 2009.

On the Mother 3 shelf it holds a unique position: the game has no verified official Japanese guidebook of its own, so the definitive Mother 3 guide in any language is this fan-made American one.