This was 1986, of course, and back then, videogames couldn't display Japanese kanji characters. The games were written entirely in hiragana and katakana, the Japanese syllabic alphabets. [...] What this means is that many of the people who first played Dragon Quest ended up reading the game aloud, or else mumbling the text as it scrolled by. Itoi turned the game's text-scroll speed down so that he could keep up with the scroll during battles. When he fought battles, he'd deliver lines like "Billy deals seven damage to the Slime! The Slime is defeated!! Billy received two experience points and two gold!! What's this? The Slime left a treasure chest?" in a sports announcer kind of voice. When the king talked to the hero, he sounded noble. The princess sounded like a princess. Itoi claims his enjoyment of the game was increased exponentially by his relentless desire to read all its dialogue out loud.
By the time Mother 2 was released, Super Famicom games had been able to display kanji for nearly three years. Yet Itoi still chose to leave his game entirely in hiragana and katakana. He wanted players to, as he did with Dragon Quest, be encouraged to read his game aloud as they played.
This is to say, in the end, that Itoi is a brilliant game designer because he understands how people play games. Mother 2 is a glorious experience to read aloud, especially in its native Japanese. It's full of so many odd little wordplays and alliterative intricacies that it just screams to be read aloud. Nearly every line, even those that accentuate battle maneuvers, rolls off the tongue. That the lines so often include names that the player chose on his own only increases the player's enjoyment.
Anyway I was hoping for this myself.