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None foundJanuary 21st, 2013 | Itoi
Last month Shigesato Itoi started to occasionally post messages on Twitter about some sort of MOTHER revival or MOTHER republication, and in one of his first messages he said:
the “MOTHER republication” thing I mentioned briefly before
The thing is, no one knew what the heck he was talking about. For pretty much everyone, including me, this was completely new news! I finally tracked down what he was talking about, so here’s what the series of events so far seems to be:
- Lindsay (aka Chewy) met with Itoi on business and talked to him about fans outside of Japan. He seemed very interested and surprised at the following outside of Japan. (link)
- Shortly after, Iwata mentioned in an interview that he and Itoi had been recently discussing the series’ fan base outside of Japan. (link)
- Itoi organizes a MOTHER-series music concert with two well-known Japanese game music players. (link)
- Itoi posts on Twitter (link):
I’m guessing Prof. Sakamoto and Hyadain played MOTHER 2 around the time they were in grade school. Man, so many interesting things have happened as a result of making those games.
- To this, a Japanese fan on Twitter said, “Mr. Itoi! Please make a MOTHER series remake or let it get released for download! I wanna play them but I can’t buy them anywhere!!!!”
- To this, Itoi responded with:
I’ll firmly tell Mr. Iwata tomorrow (laugh)
- He mentioned the next day that he was heading to Kyoto (which is where Nintendo’s headquarters is), so Japanese fans wondered if there might be something MOTHER-y going on. Of course, he often goes to Kyoto anyway, so it was just fans being hopeful.
- In a Twitter message, Itoi thanks MOTHER fans and specifically mentions Starmen.Net. (link)
- The next day, Itoi posted lots of MOTHER stuff on his daily post of his site. (link)
- A few weeks later, Itoi tweeted the big MOTHER-related news that caught everyone’s attention. (link)
- Then, a few weeks after that (which is just a few days ago), he posted some more stuff about MOTHER developments. (link)
Note: For convenience, I’ll update this area with any new developments after I initially made this post.
- A few days later, Itoi posted his thoughts about his meeting with Chewy. It’s clear he knows a lot more about overseas fans now. (link)
So that’s the general flow of events. Whether or not Chewy’s meeting had anything to do with it is naturally a big question mark, but I honestly think so from what she’s mentioned in the podcast and in person.
As always, I’ll post new info/translations as soon as I can, so stay tuned! If you don’t want to visit the site every day you can always follow EB Central on Facebook or follow EB Central on Twitter!
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27 Comments to Timeline of Itoi’s Twitter Announcements
It would be pretty awesome if something is planned for sometime in 2014, since it’s the 25th anniversary of MOTHER.
I was thinking they might do an anniversary celebration for Mother sometime, but I didn’t know that the 25th anniversary was so soon!
If it turns out to be some B.S. “Anniversary Collection” thing like they did with Kirby and Mario All-Stars for the Wii, I’m not even going to bother. Nintendo can’t be completely oblivious to the fact that people hate crap like that.
You forgot when Iwata was being interviewed about NSMB2, and the guy mentioned Mother 3, and Iwata mentioned that he had been talking with Itoi about the Mother fanbase outside of Japan.
Any sort of collection is fine with me if it has the potential to be released here.
What’s wrong with an anniversary collection? If it’s anything like the Kirby and Mario All-Stars for the Wii, that would mean it would be a compilation disc of all three Mother games. Any sort of collection like this would be great news.
If this “republication” ends up not being released in the states, I’ll be a bit upset 🙁
![]() | OKeijiDragon said on Jan. 21, 2013 |
@PepsiMax said on Jan. 21, 2013
Honestly, I would appreciate and take advantage of any opportunity to purchase the EarthBound games that come out on any platform, especially if they come to North America.
This anti-collection pride you’re showing is silly.
Since Itoi’s aware of the fanbase outside of Japan, I’m partly under the impression that this “republication” might make it to the U.S to. I hope it’s more than a download, but if it’s just a eshop/Virtual Console thing I’d be fine with that. Hopefully what ever comes from this will happen this year or atleast will be announced, I don’t think I can wait a whole year 🙂
@Mato That friend of yours that associated with Nintendo, the one that told you the unfortunate reasons behind EarthBound not making it to Virtual Console. Has he said anything about Itoi’s tweets?
![]() | Mato said on Jan. 21, 2013 |
He’s not my friend, he’s Reid’s friend. So I can’t really answer your question, but I haven’t heard anything at least.
I hope this for the DS, 3DS, or WII, because, frankly, I am not buying a WiiU just to play one-three games I own (even if two of ’em are in Japanese/Katakana/Hirgana/Kanji), regardless of how fun they are. Oh and @PepsiMax, you just have to know what games are on the disk, after all if its like Tetris 3D, Pac-man (for the Atari 2600), and Superman 64 don’t buy it, but if it’s like Super Mario Bros. 3, Harvest Moon (SNES), and Paper Mario the Thousand-Year Door, then it can’t be that bad. But, hey I respect your decision and opinion. I also hope this comes out before next years summer (Mother’s 25th anniversary in Japan), hey a guy a can dream.
How do you show pride in something like that? The only thing that I’d enjoy from a collection is if I could finally play an official translation of Mother 3. Otherwise, it’s not worth importing. Anniversary collections are never special; most games that have those, Mother included, already have games from its series re-released on multiple occasions. If you didn’t have a Super Mario 3 cartridge, didn’t get Mario All Stars when it came out, or used at a store, didn’t get it on the GBA, and still didn’t get it on the VC, then maybe the Wii version of All Stars makes sense. I’m not usually one to point a figure and make this comment, but collections really are a way to make a quick buck. They usually throw in some sort of crap CD too to make people talk themselves into buying a game that they probably already have two copies of. Again, if it comes to the states, fine, it’s “new” here, but otherwise, it’d just be a let down. I should say, if it’s a collection of straight ports, it’ll be let down. A remake compilation would breathe some much needed fresh air on the series. Mostly the first. Mother aged horribly and had a lot of annoying flaws from the get-go.
@PepsiMax I don’t mean to give pride or justify them, I’m just saying if they have good games that you don’t own/want remastered it could be good for some reasons, but ultimately, I agree, all in all they’re just quick corporate bucks. Plus I don’t think Mother 1 was that bad, compared to Dragon Warrior in was better in so many aspects (for example, it had more than one extremely repetitive battle theme). However, I couldn’t agree more with you on the complication thing, for most looks on it at least.
What’s this about a mention of western fans during a NSMB2 interview?
Seeing that there’s never been any sort of official release of MOTHERs 1 or 3, and given the fact that MOTHER 2 (EarthBound) has basically gone out of print, I’d be ecstatic if Nintendo released some kind of “anniversary compilation” of the games. Hate to say it, but beggars can’t be choosers. Not to demonize Nintendo, but they haven’t paid a lot of attention to EarthBound fans for most of my life. I’m in my twenties now, and I’ve been playing these games since I was nine or ten. In those fifteen years or so, there’s been no American release of MOTHERs 1 or 3–no matter how hard the Starmen.net community fought for it.
So I’m not really concerned about a “remake,” frankly. And part of me thinks that American audiences deserve to be able to play all three games as they were originally intended. They’ve never had that opportunity before, except through emulators.
Would it be possible to stick this information right after the first bullet point? I believe it happened shortly after Chewy met with Itoi.
http://mynintendonews.com/2012/08/18/mother-3-finally-coming-to-west/
![]() | Mato said on Jan. 22, 2013 |
Thanks, I updated it with a link to the post I made on the subject back then.
I also realized that you linked to the wrong article for the Mother posts he made a few days ago! The one you mistakingly linked to though, did you put that info on the timeline?
By that, I mean like how he namedropped Starmen.net in a twitter post about Mother, and made a post on his site looking back at Mother the next day.
![]() | Mato said on Jan. 22, 2013 |
Thanks, I updated with that info. I’ve been busy and forgetful so I hadn’t thought to include that stuff.
Oh, you didn’t update the link for the stuff he posted a few days ago–that link on the timeline leads to the post about him tweeting about Mother and namedropping Starmen.net from a few months ago!
I hope they release it for the 3DS. I don’t plan on getting a Wii U nor will I be able to get a Wii U if the game is released. I kind of know, that if they do decide to release the other 2 games to the US it’ll be on the Wii U to boost sales. Which would be disappointing for some people.
Hope he doesn’t keep in suspense for too long!