Before the MOTHER 3 we have today and after MOTHER 64, there was one iteration in-between 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.

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 4/20/2024, the 18th anniversary of the game, Shinichi Kameoka posted a clear image of one of the 2003 scenery concepts.

Nobuhiro Imagawa

Art Director Nobuhiro Imagawa began sharing MOTHER 3 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.”