Since I was a kid, I was a huge fan of a poorly-selling Japanese video game titled 'Earthbound.'

The game was quirky, exciting, and completely unlike any other roleplaying game that had already flooded the market. Instead of magic and dragons, it had mental powers and wacked-out hippies. Instead of swords and staves, it had baseball bats, yo-yos and frying pans. The game's presentation was simple, but it was also simple, endearing and heart-rending.

Nearly 5 years after the release of Earthbound in North America, its creator, Shiesto Itoi, announced to the media that he'd started work on a sequel. Earthbound 64 (or, Mother 3 as it was known in Japan) was slated to appear on – surprise surprise – the Nintendo 64.

Earthbound developed a thriving – but niche – community on the Internet, right as the Internet itself was emerging from the chrystalis of adolescence. This community focused primarily on geeking out about Earthbound, but were also deeply involved with following the progress of Mother 3's development (but mostly, lack of development. It was cancelled constantly)

The sequel was indeed made, but not for the Nintendo 64. It ended up being released in 2006 for Nintendo's Gameboy Advance, in a coup-de-grace that surprised even seasoned members of the Earthbound fan collective.

Earthbound's proponents literally flooded Nintendo's offices with questions about when the heck this hotly anticipated sequel of 13 years was going to drop in the States. Ultimately, after herculian efforts, there was no offical answer.

In an effort the fans described as 'Do It Yourself Devotion,' one dedicated translator took it upon himself to personally translate the game from Japanese to English. The process took nearly two years! During that time, Tomato (the translator) kept his sanity in line by maintaining a blog about the hack's progress.

Here's where I come in. A lot of people were feeling pretty grateful to Tomato for taking on such a daunting task (especially considering that Tomato knew nothing about how to hack!), and saught to help him out wherever they could. Some left kind messages, some offered to buy him beer... but my way was to draw him a picture for as many posts as I had time for.

You can check out the blog here.