MOTHER 3 began its life on the Nintendo 64, where concept art was shared by its artists at that time before its untimely cancellation. After that, there was one iteration afterward that Brownies showcased concept art for in 2012. During and after 2020, other MOTHER 3 artists and designers began posting more concept art for the final version of the game.

Benimaru Itoh

Toshinao Aoki

The Kraken at Great Scale Village.

A lower quality, full version of the Great Scale Village.

The Kraken with a villager in its mouth.

A flying rat that has been biting Tazmily villagers’ heads.

Shinichi Kameoka

According to MOTHER 3 Producer Shinichi Kameoka, Brownie Brown began creating the prototype for MOTHER 3 on the Game Boy Advance in 2002 using designs he created for the characters and world that were intended to subvert player expectations. When the prototype was finished in 2003, Itoi played it and seemed to want it to go in a different direction. Learn more here.

On the 18th anniversary of MOTHER 3, Shinichi Kameoka posted a clear image of one of the 2003 scenery concepts.

Yasuyuki Honne

On July 10, 2019 on Twitter, Xenoblade series and Monolith Soft artist Yasuyuki Honne shared images from a 2003 pitch for a MOTHER game. Monolith Soft, owned by Namco at the time, met with Shigesato Itoi and Satoru Iwata about this idea for a new MOTHER game on the GameCube.

Honne wrote: “I’m looking forward to the forthcoming book about Iwata-san. I met both Iwata-san and Itoi-san at the same time – it was back in 2003 when there were talks between Namco and Nintendo about a GameCube version of Mother. I was happy to come up with a visual concept, and when I went to Aoyama Iwata-san was also present. Itoi-san didn’t seem very interested; he felt it was a little strange, and yet we continued talks. Itoi-san said, ‘I wonder if Iwata-kun has any ideas?’ He seemed flabbergasted, he had an aura of something akin to ‘Aw jeez.’ In the end nothing came of it, but Itoi-san enjoyed the felt-like recreations of 1980’s America that I had come up with. Here are some images that I didn’t think I’d show off more than once. Ah, memories of the summer of 2003.” (Translation credit to Nico Thaxton of Nintendo Everything)

Although never directly confirmed, it’s likely these talks were related to development for another game after MOTHER 3 since Brownie Brown was already developing 3 for the Game Boy Advance during 2003. This is most likely the reason why Itoi rejected this idea, as he may have already decided that 3 would be his final game.

On June 10, 2024, Honne shared an image on Twitter celebrating the 14th anniversary of Xenoblade, which includes part of the house model used in his MOTHER pitch.

Nobuhiro Imagawa

When MOTHER 3 was released, the Nintendo Dream website’s fan submission page featured what may be early versions of the sparrow and driving frog sprites by Art Director Nobuhiro Imagawa. The sprite images below are comparisons with the early sprites on the right and the final sprites on the left.

Imagawa began sharing concept art online in July 2020 to celebrate the Hobonichi MOTHER Project.

Akiyuki Suzuki

In January 2020 on Twitter, MOTHER 3 Event and Battle Designer Akiyuki Suzuki began sharing concept sketches of various Osohe Castle events and drawings of a few miscellaneous characters. They even included comments about development with some posts!

The mosquito-like Chimera and candle enemy were posted in 2022 and translate to “Blood Sucking Machine” and “Fuuzen-no-tomoshibi-kun” respectively. The candle enemy’s name has less of a simple translation since it just seems to be a literal interpretation of the phrase “fuuzen no tomoshibi,” which means a dangerous situation metaphorically, but literally means “wind blown candle.” If I were to use a simple pun to best represent this play on words, I might call it “Candlefright.”

The “Flutter Snake” enemy design was posted in June 2022 with the note that it was rejected as a chimera design and its tail was supposed to use the leftover tails from another enemy, the Cattlesnake.

The last two enemy designs posted in August 2022 and December 2022 were concepts for the Zombieshroom and Frosted Bun enemies.

On the last design with the strange looking rooms posted in February 2023, Suzuki said it was “one of the fake 100th floors in the Porky Building [he] wanted to do, but never could: a Gravity-Defying Dungeon. [He] wanted to seamlessly walk between the floors and ceilings in 2D. Someone upright can rotate to the ceiling and dangle downward.”