Ask any MOTHER fan what they thought back when the Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening remake was announced, and it’s likely you’ll hear the same thing – “My gosh! It looks just like a MOTHER game!” Surprisingly, that sentiment was not only limited to MOTHER fans, as many content creators and media outlets also drew comparisons from it’s art direction. Predictably, it inspired many to ponder if perhaps a MOTHER remake on the Nintendo Switch would be tackled in a similar visual style. At last, today a fellow fan has given us a glimpse of what that could look like!

Over the last couple of years, the video-game preservation community has grown exponentially, with a particular focus on prototype and canceled video-games. Among the most revered is the original N64 version of MOTHER 3, which has a small, yet incredibly passionate sub-community behind it. These particular fans aim to put their talents together to bring the ill-fated game back to life in one way or another. Consequently, we are proud to share a special project from one of these fans with you today!

A detailed description and report posted in 2015 by artist JINKO about the MOTHER 64 Demo at Spaceworld 1999 was discovered on their Pixiv page! They wrote and illustrated this report shortly after playing the demo. Their report goes into detail about Tazmily’s layout, demo cutscenes, and more!

Fans of the MOTHER series all rejoiced in celebration of a major milestone the other day – that being MOTHER 3’s 15th anniversary, of course! A plethora of amazing art was published by fans of the game worldwide, with even the game’s art director Nobuhiro Imagawa joining with some lovely new sprite art for the occasion! But what was the biggest surprise that day, you ask? Well, for most fans it would be the surprise release of version 1.3 of the MOTHER 3 Fan Translation! It had been in development for some time, and everyone was delighted to see it finally released with a great deal of improvements along with it.

Over the years, the desire for a MOTHER 3 localization has had an incredible influence on social media. We’ve seen the game trend time and time again on Twitter,  from hashtag movements or even a corporate shoutout. The freedom that social media gives us allows anyone and everyone to express their love for the game. And when we say everyone…we mean everyone. This is where American actor Terry Crews comes in! 

Us MOTHER fans strive to see the N64 version of MOTHER 3 come to life in any capacity, don’t we? With each new piece of information we find, our curiosity grows ever stronger. After all, MOTHER FOREVER itself was founded on that same foundation of passion! That’s why today, we’d like to share something very special from the MOTHER 64 sub-community. Yes, just fresh off the recently translated report!

They’ve done it again. Today, Hobonichi announced a full set of new and restocked merchandise for the now-legendary Hobonichi Mother Project – And my wallet can’t take it. Please, I can’t keep up…

Most may know Near for their incredible work developing what’s unquestionably the most accurate SNES emulator, Higan (Formerly BSNES). They spent several years from 2004 onward developing the software, aiming to render the original coding of the system and games as accurately as possible. Near also clean dumped the entire North American and Japan libraries for the SNES and SFC respectively – so if you’ve ever played a ROM for these systems, it’s likely you might’ve been using a copy they dumped themselves.

Magnet Mascots feature a wide variety of creatures from MOTHER 2! Each one includes a cardboard backing that features a little dialogue relating to that character in the game. I went through and translated them all so fans outside of Japan might understand what each one is referencing. Enjoy!

Interviews about MOTHER 3 with Shigesato Itoi and Satoru Iwata from February, March, and July 1997 have been discovered from issues of the Dengeki Nintendo 64 magazine! All these interviews discuss the game in its initial stages, and July’s interview also includes some discussion about the Nintendo 64 Disk Drive.

It’s not every day you wake up and new MOTHER 64 footage is found! Today, the video-game community was blessed by previously lost footage of the canceled N64 iteration of MOTHER 3 that was featured at Spaceworld 1997. As detailed on our site, the game was intended to be playable at the exhibition, but was pulled last minute and instead displayed in a sizzle reel of upcoming games. Prior to the finding of this footage, only a few brief seconds of it existed from a similar sizzle reel that was shown at E3 1998 (unearthed by Echoes of MOTHER FOREVER in 2011). Ten years later, we can finally see that same footage and far more in higher quality! But, how did this manage to resurface over two decades later, and now? Let’s take a look!

Over the last two decades, the MOTHER community has been at the forefront of the ROM hacking community and the creative ideas it can bring out of people. From the earliest efforts of the PK Hack community, to even the present day with Coilsnake, MOTHER fans are pushing the limits of what can be done with utilizing EarthBound’s engine. We’ve seen many creative hacks like HyperBound, which turned the beloved turn based RPG into an engaging, psychological adventure game. And of course, most notably Toby Fox’s ventures which have directly led into the modern classic, UNDERTALE. EarthBound hacking has always been an integral part of the MOTHER community, and is partially responsible for the indie scene we have today.

This is a translation of Toby Fox’s comic featured on page 122 of the first Pollyanna. This is meant to be a companion to the book, so get yours out (or get one from the Hobonichi website, they ship worldwide) and follow along!

Fangamer, a company full of many original MOTHER community members from the legendary Starmen.net, took a trip to Japan in 2016, where they met Hobonichi at their office! There’s even some video of it out there, courtesy of StephenVlog. Fangamer’s reactions to that trip are pretty well-documented in that video and beyond, but there hasn’t been anything (as far as we know, at least) posted online about it from Hobonichi’s perspective. Luckily, one of those Starmen.net veterans, Mrtenda, found Hobonichi’s reaction in a 2017 Hobonichi Guidebook from the good ol’ days and sent the book over to be scanned and translated!