Mother 3 Hopes Dashed by Former Nintendo President
Former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime has painted a grim picture for those who are still hoping to see the JRPG Mother 3 eventually come to the west. For a prolonged period of time, many western Nintendo fans have been pleading with the video game publisher to release a proper port of Mother 3 for those outside of Japan. And while some have continued to hold out hope that this release will one day come to fruition, Fils-Aime doesn't sound as hopeful.
Speaking on the Kinda Funny Gamescast recently, Fils-Aime opened up a bit more about the Mother series and spoke about how Nintendo views it internally. In a general sense, Fils-Aime said that Nintendo has struggled to find a way to bring the Mother series forward in a way that makes sense. In addition, Fils-Aime acknowledged that the fans who are incredibly passionate about Mother (or Earthbound, as it is known in the west) are pretty small in number.
"And so, the company knows that there's a lot of passion for that franchise, but thinking about how to make it current, thinking about how to make it bigger than just the, you know, let me call it the relatively small group of fans that desperately want to see Mother 3 or something next in the Earthbound series," Fils-Aime said in the conversation. "That's what the company I'm sure has been thinking about and they just haven't figured out yet the solution to that, or at least they haven't been prepared to talk about it."
Even though Fils-Aime has implied that Mother fans shouldn't expect a new game in the franchise to come about soon, Nintendo has at least shown some willingness to work with the property recently. Earlier this year, both Earthbound and Earthbound Beginnings both were released on Nintendo Switch Online, which opened up the series to an even wider audience. And while this was definitely a positive thing to see, it still sounds like we shouldn't expect to see Mother 3 land in western regions at any point in the near future.
[H/T VGC]