Twenty years ago when MOTHER 64 was playable at Spaceworld, IGN had a chance to play the demo and report on it. A review was written by IGN’s Entertainment Chief Content Officer, Peer Schneider, and for many years has served as one of the most enlightening pieces on how the game played. Today, two whole decades later, MOTHER community member PolyGarrett was given the honour of conducting an interview with Peer, reflecting on his thoughts and experience playing MOTHER 64.

Q: How did you feel the game played when compared to Zelda? Did it have a steady framerate? Were the controls good?

A: I remember the game looking quite rough around the edges, which I chalked up to it being early in development. Some of the areas moved pretty briskly, like the flying/Pork Bean desert scenes. They ran better than Ocarina of Time, but also had very limited visibility. I remember it being VERY foggy/limited draw distance. My first impression, honestly, was, wow HAL is struggling with 3D engines. It looked a bit clunky, in parts, like Itoi’s #1 Bass Fishing (the exploration scenes in that game are pretty chunky/sluggish, which is what the on-foot scenes in Mother 3 reminded me of). The cut-scenes looked cool, though. So I was hopeful they’d be able to firm up their in-game framerate and graphics overall. Remember, I saw the demo a year after playing games like Banjo-Kazooie, which raised hopes that we’d see more games with vibrant (pre-)lighting and texture blending. 

Q: What was the layout of Tazmily like? It was said the hub world of Tazmily lead out to different areas like the desert. How did you enter these other areas? Was it by exiting the edge of the map, or perhaps entering a building? Were you able to explore a lot of the village?

A: I don’t remember Tazmily at all. I think I may have only had a short time with that part of the demo. It was all just NPC interaction/conversations from what I recall.

Q: What sort of enemies do you remember being in the demo?

A: I don’t remember the enemies — I’ve watched the video since, so I’m assuming it was limited to zombies and snakes, otherwise I would’ve written up more details on that. Oh, and then the boars, vultures in the desert, for sure. 

Q: What was the dialogue in the demo like?

A: I don’t remember the contents of the convos. Limited time demo + being on the loud showfloor, it was all about trying to see the different areas and gauge the gameplay.

Q: It was said you could attack enemies on the overworld. How do you remember this combat playing out? Do you recall how that would transition into the turned based battle screen?

A: I’ve played the GBA import, so some of my memories may be tinged by it, but I believe the combat was similar to Paper Mario in that you could initiate the battle on the world map (and you could see all the enemies) and either get the advantage on them or get attacked by them, and it’d then transition directly to a first-person perspective for the turn-based battle. I’m thinking you don’t see your characters when that happens, but it’s so long, I can’t be sure.

Q: Did enemies have unique animations when they attacked you? Did each enemy act differently, or did they all just charge the player?

A: Not sure about the enemies. I’d guess they all acted differently, but honestly no recollection of those fine details. 

Q: Do you remember what Boney was howling at in the rain cutscene? Did we see Duster scale the cliff when he arrived at the scene?

A: The Boney cutscene never reveals what he howls at. It was just shown on video (and not part of the playable demo), I believe.

Q: There was something called jump attack and spin attack. What were they?

A: It was literally just your character spinning into an enemy while navigating the overworld, while you could just jump on a smaller enemy. That was the part that was like Paper Mario (you can see the connection).

Q: Do you remember what happened when you use the spin attack on enemies?

A: I believe it just transitioned into battle with you getting a hit on the enemy.

Q: You put “Welcome to MOTHER 3” in you coverage of the bullet train scene. Was this a piece of text that showed following the scene, or was it just some flavour text for your article?

A: Welcome text: just me pointing out how surreal of a game it is.

Q: Were you able to understand the rhythm combo system? Did musical notes show up on screen when you attacked?

A: I can’t remember

Q: Was there any interactivity with the title screen? With the logo MOTHER 3.

A: I don’t think I got to see that. 🙂

Q: Was the Spaceworld 1999 trailer longer? And is there a higher quality version of it?

A: I believe we did have a betacam sp tape with footage that we brought home that had the various trailers, which we captured and uploaded, but it’s lost in time. (I looked for it. I’d love that). 🙂 But even betacam direct capture looks pretty crappy. The version I uploaded recently is the best quality we have in our archives. That’s the whole thing they showed. We would’ve captured more if there was more.

Q: Do you guys have higher quality promo art? Or possibly some pictures or promo art that is unreleased?

A: I wish. 🙂

Special thanks to: Algo for referring us Peer’s contact information, PolyGarrett for conducting the interview, Park for organizing all the information, and Peer Schneider for sharing his time in speaking with us!