Nintendo supervisors foresaw MOTHER 64’s development being a failure. It was an inescapable fate that Shigesato Itoi and his team tried with all their might to escape. Despite the game having a successful showing at Spaceworld ‘99, progress was steadily declining behind the curtains.

At every corner, both Shigeru Miyamoto and Satoru Iwata were told by their superiors: “Why don’t you just quit? I know it’s important, but realistically, you don’t have what’s required to turn this into the finished product you all had in mind when you started.”

Their superiors kept encouraging them to let their dreams go, but Itoi was adamant to only cease production once it was deemed impossible. After all, it was only a year prior in 1998 when the staff decided to cut their vision in half. Alas, that wasn’t enough to save the project.

In the spring of 2000, the MOTHER 64 team were facing the hard truth – one way or another, they had to wrap things up. To finish the game would require a lot of sacrifice, but continuing development as it was going would have had “far too much of an impact on other projects like Project Dolphin” according to Iwata.

Itoi proposed the concept of re-imagining three of the chapters “with still text and pictures to act as transitions,” where otherwise physically impossible. The upcoming Dolphin hardware would have alleviated issues with rendering and processing speeds, but Miyamoto commented, “the (game’s) design and framework weren’t quite up to speed yet. We’d have been better off just fixing those.”

A lot had been sacrificed over the last six years on the game; artistically, and personally with Iwata being hospitalized over the stress of it. The original twelve chapter structure Itoi had in mind had been cut down to nine, and so many ideas were lost during the transition from disk drive to cartridge. 

Thus, in May of 2000, Satoru Iwata terminated production on MOTHER 64. 

He spoke of his feelings in saying: “…In the end, I’m the one who made the decision to call it quits […] I feel genuinely ashamed.”

For the time being, the cancellation remained an internal secret. Even after the decision was made, those close to the development staff continued to ask when it would come out. Miyamoto shared that his son “…contemplated buying Mario Tennis (instead), but I couldn’t say the game wasn’t coming out yet, so I just said, “MOTHER 3 will probably be out.” 

As Spaceworld 2000 came around the corner, Miyamoto and co. considered having what was finished of MOTHER 64 playable, but their superiors vetoed the idea. Nothing else was left to do but announce the cancellation to the world – and so on August 22nd, 2000, the Hobonichi published a section dedicated to MOTHER 64. Included was a letter from Itoi, a roundtable discussion with its producers, and a collection of many screenshots and music samples.

Almost immediately after the announcement, Weekly Famitsu Editor, Yasuhiro Nagata started an online survey asking fans to email their thoughts and feelings to them. He subsequently wrote on August 29th:

“When I first heard that MOTHER 3 had been cancelled, I thought others wouldn’t share in my confusion. I didn’t feel like it would affect everybody. However, as you can see from the emails that were posted, I received a lot of personal turmoil in my mailbox. There was confusion rooting in both anger and sadness.”

Over fifteen pages of emails were posted between August 24th and 29th. Evidently, fans over in Japan expressed a wide range of emotions over the news:

• “I feel as if I was suddenly hit with the news about the death of a friend I hadn’t kept in touch with for years. You’d think, “I thought he was doing well, but now I’ll never see him again.” That’s how I feel. It’s a pity.”

• “Man, it’s a real shame. My girlfriend (now wife) who hates video-games played through MOTHER 2 even more than I did. I was even thinking about casually playing MOTHER 3 with her when I was reminiscing about our MOTHER 2 days…I believe one day, we will be able to experience a new “MOTHER.”

• “I can’t believe this…that’s my initial feeling. I first played the MOTHER series back in elementary school when I was a kid, and I still hold those games dear to my heart. So I had some high expectations going into the new 3rd game. I kept wondering when it was going to come out, and honestly I’m not really sure what I feel about this announcement yet. I just want to say that I don’t care if the game is half finished! Itoi-san and his team worked very hard on it, so I want to play MOTHER 3 as far as I can! I don’t know whether it’s possible or not, but I don’t want this game to become vaporware! That’s all I can say…”

Overseas, fans at Starmen.net (formerly EarthBound.net) had been writing a petition to Nintendo in hopes of expressing their support to avoid a possible delay or cancellation. They had several goals in mind, including:

• Spread word across the internet (and the US) of the petition
• Accept signatures until the flow slows down (we expect to accept signatures for 1-2 months).
• Reach ~10,000 unique signatures
• Send copies of the printed petition to Nintendo of America and Nintendo of Japan
• Get EarthBound 64 released in the states!

Although IGN, Nintendojo, and several other media sites supported the petition, they obtained 10,013 signatures right around when the cancellation was announced! That wasn’t enough to crush their will, as the site’s staff still shipped a copy to Nintendo of America and Japan on September 13th, 2000.

The petition even included a comment from EarthBound localization director, Marcus Lindblom: “A fun title that deserves to be released in North America. It has a place in the RPG world outside of Fantasy/Sci-fi settings.”

With MOTHER 64 out of sight, eventually focus shifted over to its Game Boy Advance successor after its announcement in 2003. Surprisingly, the original N64 iteration still holds an interesting legacy! To this day, many MOTHER fans are still inspired by the over-ambition expressed by Itoi and his team. There is something about that surreal 3D world that some found wasn’t quite captured in the final product. 

Today, you’ll find many fans creating animations and recreations that seek to emulate that nostalgic atmosphere found in many images. Despite never being released, the power in its imagination is a legacy only a work from the mind of Shigesato Itoi could leave behind.