The Earthbound/Mother series is (at least among a certain hardcore contingent) one of Nintendo’s most beloved franchises, but new releases in the series have been few and far between. Thankfully, we may be seeing more of the series soon, as Earthbound’s creator and popular Japanese author Shigesato Itoi dropped a few hints on his Twitter today, saying that the series may soon make some sort of comeback.
According to Siliconera, Itoi gave long suffering Earthbound fans some hope by tweeting, “Since I’m allowed to drop it on you all now, I’ll just go ahead and say it. The “Mother re-release” I’d mentioned a bit before, we’re making progress on that.” Later on he added, “It’s not 4! We’re trying to get Mother working again right now. I still can’t mention any details, but I have to make clear that this isn’t ‘4’!”
While Earthbound hero Ness is a regular in Nintendo’s mega popular Smash Bros. series, there hasn’t been a real Earthbound/Mother game since 2006’s Mother 3, which itself never received an official English localization, much to chagrin of Earthbound’s dedicated cult of fans (The game later got an excellent fan translation patch.) While I’m sad that Itoi just basically confirmed that we won’t be getting Mother 4 any time soon, his tweets also seem to confirm that the oft-rumored re-release of either Mother 2 or 3 on the 3DS and Wii Virtual Console will finally happen soon. I’d personally be pretty happy with even a re-release of the old games at this point, just as long as they manage to find their way over to the American e-shop as well.
