About Motherlike Games & Inspired Projects
by: Kody on 6/8/2021
“I’m very happy and grateful that so many people still love the game MOTHER. I believe that countless sequels are being created by the people who played the game with their own hands.“
– Shigesato Itoi on Twitter, 12/8/2010
“‘The very lives you’re living now are MOTHER 4.’ I really feel that way. ‘Today we had lots of ridiculous thoughts, today we felt sadness, today we laughed a lot’. That’s what I had set out to do within the world of those games.”
– Shigesato Itoi to Satoru Iwata and Yasuhiro Nagata, 2/7/2011
There may not ever be a successor to MOTHER 3 in the traditional sense, but the MOTHER series lives on in so many other projects that continue the series’ legacy! These projects that we experience and live through now are, in a way, their own MOTHER 4s.
The following games and other projects have been cited as inspired by MOTHER in interviews we’ve conducted with most of their developers. Just because these projects might have similar inspirations doesn’t mean they’re all the same, though! Each one is unique, and comes from a different place in its own right. MOTHER is just one small part of that.
These projects have been sorted into a “MOTHER 4 Timeline” to showcase how MOTHER continued in projects outside of the main series leading up to 2020, when our Mother Direct presentations began to showcase even more inspired projects!
MOTHER 4 Timeline through 2020
1996 – Pokémon Series
The first of the now world famous Pokémon series has evidence of inspirations by the first two MOTHER games. Shortly after Game Freak released their first game Quinty, Pokémon designer Satoshi Tajiri reviewed MOTHER in one of his columns from Famicom Winning Book 10/1989, where he wrote that he was interested in the setting and cinematic sense the game had.
Pokémon producer Tsunekazu Ishihara also was the producer on MOTHER 2 and CEO of MOTHER 2 developer APE Inc. Though no comments have been found from Ishihara connecting both projects directly, APE was restructured shortly after MOTHER 2 to become Pokémon developer Creatures Inc. and retained its staff from EarthBound, including MOTHER 2 composer Hirokazu “Chip” Tanaka, the president of Creatures until 2023.
Tajiri’s interest in the first MOTHER, Ishihara’s connection to both projects, Chip Tanaka overseeing the establishment of Creatures Inc., and the similarities between the games’ settings seem to connect Pokémon to MOTHER more than any other game series.
1999, 2008 – Starmen.net (Originally EarthBound.net), Fangamer
As described on the website: “Starmen.Net has been around since 1998, when it started out as EarthBound.Net. Since then, the site has grown in leaps and bounds, pulling off stunts and achieving goals that most people would never expect a group of kids to be able to do, especially a bunch of kids whose only connection is the internet and a weird video game.” To say this website is the reason many fans learned about EarthBound and especially MOTHER 3 would be putting it lightly. Without this website, it’s possible much of MOTHER’s history would have been lost to time, and many games you know today probably wouldn’t exist either. Do not underestimate them!
After creating Starmen, friends from the site came together to found the video game merchandise company Fangamer.
2009 – EarthBound Central
Clyde “Tomato” Mandelin started EarthBound Central in January 2009 “to be a kind of companion site for Starmen.Net. [His] goal [was] to make it a daily-updated site that focuses more on the EarthBound/MOTHER games in a blog-like manner.”
The site went offline around April 2023, but it’s still accessible through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
2009 – MOTHER: Cognitive Dissonance
Created and directed by MOTHER fan “Handish2000” or “Otherhand” in the year 2009, Mother: Cognitive Dissonance is a fangame that is a side-story and sequel to MOTHER 1 and a prequel to MOTHER 2, explaining what happened between the two games, hence the subtitle, “Between Two Times”. Starring a rag-tag group of aliens, the game chronicles their mission of keeping the Apple of Enlightenment out of Giegue’s hands.
Developed using RPG Maker 2000, the game is known and celebrated for being one of the first fully-completed MOTHER fangames. This game features an all-new cast of characters (some even becoming fan-favorites in of themselves), a completely original soundtrack featuring works from Bill Eager, Maximus_32, Quincy Pringle and more, and a compelling fan story that connects the events of MOTHER 1 and 2.
Read or listen to our interview with creator Otherhand to learn more about the game!
2014 – LISA: The Painful RPG
“LISA: The Painful is the miserable, hilarious RPG of your wildest nightmares. Undertake a relentless journey through the post-apocalyptic wasteland of Olathe. Beneath its charming exterior is a world full of disgust and moral desolation, where you will learn what kind of person you are by being FORCED to make choices that permanently affect the gameplay. Make sacrifices to keep your party members alive, whether it’s taking a beating for them, losing limbs, or some other inhuman torture. In this world, you will learn that being selfish and heartless is the only way to survive…”
2015, 2019 – Citizens of Earth, Citizens of Space
In 2015’s Citizens of Earth: “As the newly elected Vice President of the World, it’s your job to save the Earth by recruiting friends, family, and the local townsfolk! …A true politician would never get his own hands dirty, after all!” In 2019’s Citizens of Space: “The Earth is missing and it’s up to you to find the pieces and solve the mystery behind its disappearance! Recruit citizens, navigate the cosmos, and battle charismatic foes in Citizens of Space!” Both were rereleased as Citizens Unite!: Earth x Space in 2021.
2015, 2018 – UNDERTALE, DELTARUNE
UNDERTALE, released in 2015, is “the RPG game where you don’t have to destroy anyone.” DELTARUNE, which had its first chapter release in 2018, is “UNDERTALE’s parallel story. Meet new and old characters in a tale that steps closer to its end, chapter by chapter. Dodge bullets in nonviolent RPG battles as you listen to funky, funky music.”
Listen to our interview with creator Toby Fox to learn more about how he was influenced by MOTHER!
2018 – Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass
Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass “takes place in the dream of an eight-year-old boy. When an alien entity appears and threatens his family and the stability of the dream world itself, Jimmy sets out on an adventure to save his family and eradicate the threat of the Pulsating Mass. Along the way, Jimmy will have to work with his family, confront his own shortcomings, and brave the creeping nightmares of his subconscious.”
2019 – YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG
“In this surreal Japanese-style RPG, when a mystery woman vanishes from an elevator in front of his eyes, fresh graduate Alex assembles a squad of internet misfits to investigate her disappearance. Tackle turn-based battles with a novel blend of twitchy minigames, weird weapons and weirder enemies.”
2020 – Mother Forever
