Nintendo’s 2.9.2022 Nintendo Direct featured the announcement of not just one, but two MOTHER games releasing on the Nintendo Switch! Now MOTHER, EarthBound Beginnings, MOTHER 2, and EarthBound are all playable through Nintendo Switch Online. And, before the Direct, Hard4Games released a new 1995 interview with Shigesato Itoi!

Not only that, Hobonichi released an already-translated video message from Shigesato Itoi to MOTHER fans about the releases! Absolutely watch it!! Itoi also posted a picture of the start to his own playthrough saying, “I did it, I just started!”

With such recent rereleases being available now, I decided to finish two pages we were planning on making: Our “Where Can I Play MOTHER?” pages! You can click here to learn about the releases of MOTHER/EarthBound Beginnings or click here for the releases of MOTHER 2/EarthBound. You can learn more about things like how many releases of MOTHER there are and what version each one was. Did you know that the version of MOTHER on the Switch is actually a modified version from the Wii U?

Along with all this other news, for these new rereleases, the My Nintendo website for Japan also added a couple new MOTHER rewards for 400 Platinum Points each: a Phase Distorter Luggage Tag and an Eight Melodies Note Book.

Nintendo of America also joined in on promoting the games by releasing their own video about them, “Welcome to EarthBound!”

Another game announced in the Direct was a remake of a previously Japan-only game: Live A Live. Since its 1994 release, this game was left in Japan untranslated, just like MOTHER 3. The remake is being published by Nintendo, so it seems Nintendo had some kind of interest in making this game more widely playable with not just a translation, but a complete remake too. Incidentally, the scenario of Live A Live was written by Nobuyuki Inoue, director of MOTHER 3. If you really liked MOTHER 3 out of the whole series, you might be interested in Live A Live because of Inoue’s work!

1995 Itoi Interview Scanned & Translated! – MOTHER 2 to 3, Virtual Boy, and Picross

Completely unrelated to all of this, before the Direct, Hard4Games posted a new scan of an interview with Shigesato Itoi that they commissioned me to translate! You can find the scans and translation right here:
https://mega.nz/folder/Lvxl1azZ#Jc-D8tfW8-98oPSOgqjPxw

MOTHER 2 had a schedule full of release delays, and Itoi says he really doesn’t want to do the same for MOTHER 3… Well, at least it finally came out in the end.

And apparently, contrary to what Itoi said in a 2007 myth-busting Hobonichi interview, he says here that he did in fact name the Virtual Boy, and even goes into detail about why that name was chosen. Maybe his memory was cloudy later on?

He ends by talking about a new project called Picross, which most likely is APE Inc.’s Mario Picross that released on the Super Famicom! Though it was never released outside of Japan for a while, this actually ties into the Direct as another game that released on Nintendo Switch Online, even for the first time outside of Japan on the Super NES Online.

Again, check out the link to the translation for more details!