Shogo Sakai mentions his retirement, new MOTHER 3 concept art was posted by a developer on Twitter, and see what I got at the Hobonichi Tobichi store in this Almost Monthly News for August 2022! Watch it in video form or read it below!

First, we closed our Mother Forever Survey at the beginning of this month! Here’s one graph that shares some results with more to come over September and October. Out of almost 800 responses, it seems like most people started playing the series with EarthBound on an emulator and the most common “official” way that people started playing the series was actually EarthBound on the Wii U Virtual Console. More responses to come soon enough!

Next, MOTHER 3 composer Shogo Sakai actually performed in a concert recently that celebrated Kirby’s 30th Anniversary! I went to the concert while I was in Japan earlier this month and I managed to get a pamphlet that featured an interview with him and many other Kirby composers. Sakai mentions in the interview that he’s taking steps to get younger HAL composers ready to continue without his help because he plans to retire soon. At almost 63 years old, it makes sense!

And on the first of this month, a new game was announced at a Camp Fangamer reunion called Mayonnaise Hole and it’s in early access!! Wait what does that have to do with MOTHER?

Anyways, we also saw some new concept art posted this month! Event and Battle Designer Akiyuki Suzuki posted concept art of an earlier design for the Zombieshroom on Twitter.

Recently, I was able to stop by Hobonichi’s Tobichi store in Tokyo and found a few interesting MOTHER things there! Watch the video version of this news update to see my unboxing of them.

As for other news on Hobonichi, all their new THE KING OF GAMES shirts have sold out, but the Eight Cubes are still available. Hobonichi has been hosting MOTHER stores at two PARCO buildings outside of Tokyo this month, but there hasn’t been anything new shown there. Just a few days ago, it was the anniversary of MOTHER 2 in Japan! To celebrate, Hobonichi announced a new MOTHER 2 themed pouch featuring 3 designs of the cast and runaway five releasing on October 3rd at 10PM ET! And you can also find 2023 MOTHER calendars on their store page even though they haven’t been announced yet. Those are releasing on August 31st at 10PM ET.

When it comes to what we’ve been working on, expect our last two interviews with Motherlike indie game developers of the summer during September. After that, in October, you’ll be able to hear interviews with a few developers whose projects you saw in this year’s Mother Direct. Hope you’ll look forward to it!