The torch within the hearts of all EarthBound fans has been given a few flickering sparks of life, as a new book has been announced for Japan that contains the scripts of all three Mother games, with other announcements to come.
Mother is the name of a trilogy of games spanning the NES, Super Nintendo, and Game Boy Advance. The three Mother games are kooky RPGs that use contemporary (for their time) settings. The original Mother game was localized as EarthBound Beginnings on the Nintendo Wii U Virtual Console, the second Mother game became EarthBound on the Super Nintendo, and Mother 3 has yet to receive an official localization. Series creator Shigesato Itoi has said that he is finished with Mother, but characters like Ness and Lucas still make their way into the Super Smash Bros. franchise.
There is more EarthBound/Mother content on the way in Japan... sort of. There is a publishing company called Hobonichi, which is owned by Mother creator Shigesato Itoi. A new post on the Hobonichi Twitter page (translated by Kyle McLain) has announced an upcoming book that will contain all of the dialogue from the Mother series which will be♎ released in Japan later this year.
The more exciting part of the post is the reveal that more announcements are on their way which will please the Mother fans. This could be linked to Hobonichi putting out the call for manga artists who are interested in the Mother franchise back in February. It could also just be some more Mother merchandise.
The fact that there are more Mother announcements on the way has sparked hope in the fans that some kind of Mother collection could be on the way to Nintendo Switch, especially as neither Mother or Mother 2 is available on the Nintendo Switch Online app, nor are EarthBound Beginnings or EarthBound. If a Mother trilogy collection is on the way, then there is a strong chance that Nintendo could localize it, bringing Mother 3 to the west for the first time. Square Enix did it with Trials of Mana, so the same could happen again with Mother 3. This is all speculation at the moment, but we'll have more in🦂formation by the end of the year.
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