Big Itoi Interview about MOTHER 2!

I’ve been told for years that the Ness/SNES anagram was a mere coincidence, but that article claims it was on purpose. Was that actually in the article or is that something Chewy added?

Actually, it says it’s a pun on the NES in America, not the SNES.

“The production staff named the main character Ness, a pun on the SNES in America.”

Someone should get that changed, then.

Gah! Freakin scan blur. I fixed it, thank you thank you for pointing that out. 🙂 (Lemme know if you see anything else wrong.)

Thanks for the link, Mato. I’ve got that MOTHER 2 articles site section bookmarked and I’ll try to start working through them little by little; I’ll let you know when I update.

Chewy: If you’re interested, try the 9-2-1994 issue, it has a similary awesome 2-page cool info-filled interview with Itoi, where he talks about how he wanted the game to take place on multiple planets, the HP meter was originally supposed to be a pachinko ball thing, “no panties”, and his sister, among other things 😉

His experiences with gold digging have a pretty profound influence it seems! I like that idea that it’s not about actually getting the gold but instead the drama that hangs around it.

In EarthBound, that drama is helping the Runaway Five, keeping your party alive, finding and destroying all the moles and helping out the the digger with an ulcer, of course. It feels like this idea is all through out EarthBound. The sense of purpose isn’t tied into an over abundance of plot points like in many RPGs, but a few that guide you along the way. It’s more like reality.

Thanks Chewy!

!!!
i don’t want to forever be a worthless protoplasm! must read!

Amazing.

Wait… no panties?! MATO WAHT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! O_O

this. is. a homeboy.

“Itoi: It’s another fatherless household (laughs). I never make kids who come from a stable home. They’re perfectly happy, anyway.”

no kidding Itoi. No kidding.

In Mother 2’s final script, is it still ambiguous as to whether the Mother 2 kids are the same as those from Mother 1?

I don’t really understand the question, but there’s nothing in the script (Japanese or English) to indicate that there’s any connection between the characters in the games, aside from Giygas.

Yes, you got my drift. I ask because I remember in Earthbound that Paula’s psychic messages said something to the gist of Ness/Jeff being friends whom she had yet to meet, but I don’t know if that was thrown in there so that Americans wouldn’t be confused, and whether the Japanese version is merely quiet on whether or not the kids had known each other before. It’d probably be more problematic than not for the plot for them all to be the kids from Mother 1, though.

Yeah, the “friends I’ve never met before” thing is in Mother 2, too. You can bet I woulda been all over that for my Mother 2 vs. EB stuff if there’d been a difference there 😛

Interesting that Itoi intentionally left it up in the air, though, whether the characters are the same as the ones in the original Mother or not.

Really, doubt it is a coincidence, “Ness”? “Ninten”? Cmon…

Nevertheless, the relationship within Mother characters would be somehow like the one in Chrono Trigger/Crusade, they are alike, related misteriously, but not directly… Or we’ll never know, that’s the beauty of it.

The page is down… Help?

http://www.lindsaynelson.com/2009/04/famitsu-06191992/
working link.

Thank you Satoru Iwata!!!!

Zinco:
“The player names the main character of MOTHER 2, so it’s entirely up to the player to decide if he’s the same person as MOTHER 1′s main character. If you want them to be the same, then they’re the same. If you don’t want them to be the same, they don’t have to. His suggestion seems to be to think of them as the same, though.”