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The Hobonichi MOTHER Project has smaaashed the headlines with some exciting news going into the holidays! Teaming up with PARCO, Hobonichi will be hosting a “MOTHER Museum” throughout the year end until new year. At this event, the previously limited time replica screens will be available for purchase, along with many pieces of merchandise both new and old!
Breaking news, MOTHER fanatics! For the first time in what feels like a good while, a goldmine of new MOTHER 64 media has been uncovered.
Graciously provided by a source who would like to remain anonymous, this collection of concept art from Benimaru “Ashura” Itoh comes from an October 1997 issue of 64 Dream. The hardcore legion of fans overseas had been searching for this particular issue for over a year, as an old Japanese MOTHER 3 fansite (a great resource of info that’s helped us track down magazines previously) documented descriptions of the art seen in this issue.
Nyaasu Strikes Back! If you’re not already familiar, earlier this year Nyaasu Nekoban, an artist and translator published the first complete English translation of Saori Kumi‘s MOTHER novels. You can read those here, but that’s not all! On October 14th, 2022, she updated her site with the next project – a translation of the interactive “adventure game book”, MOTHER: Invasion of the Unknown by Akio Higuchi!
Last weekend MOTHER series creator Shigesato Itoi was invited as a guest on Nakamura Shichinosuke‘s radio talk show. If you aren’t familiar with him, Shichinosuke-san is an international star from Tokyo. He had humble beginnings playing both male and female roles in Kabuki theatre back in 1986. Overseas, you may recall seeing him in the 2003 period drama The Last Samurai as Emperor Meiji, or perhaps heard his voice in the 2013 Studio Ghibli film The Tale of the Princess Kaguya! However, within Japan Shinchinosuke is most well known for his radio show where he talks openly about his private life and hobbies. Often, they invite guests, and this time Itoi-san himself happened to be the one invited!
In case you haven’t read it yet, we’ve updated our Hobonichi Interviews section to include a full translation of the site’s coverage of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. These were originally published in the months leading up to the game’s release, and were translated by GlitterBerri. You can learn a lot of interesting development tidbits, like how Link could originally breathe underwater for longer?! Man, that would’ve saved us a lot of childhood stress in navigating the Water Temple, huh?
Read more about it here!
On March 8th at 11 AM (JST), the Hobonichi launched its newest line of merchandise, MOTHER 2 screen replicas! These are large, professional printed replicas of classic MOTHER 2 areas, framed in wood ready to be hung in your home! They are made in collaboration with Toppan Graphics Communications Co, who previously helped with a line of MOTHER 1 screen replicas. Since these are made of the highest quality materials, they are custom made by request – so once the ordering period closes on March 31st at 11 AM JST, they’re gone forever!
The MOTHER 3 development discoveries never stop, don’t they? It was only a few years ago now that Lorenzooone, the user behind the Italian Fan Translation unearthed the extended debug rooms. If you happened to think that would be the end – prepare to be amazed!
On March 2nd, 2022, hacking community PPG restored additional debug menus for the overworld and battle system, pulling the curtains back on a handful of new development info on the game!
Over the last two decades, the MOTHER community has been at the forefront of the ROM hacking community and the creative ideas it can bring out of people. From the earliest efforts of the PK Hack community, to even the present day with Coilsnake, MOTHER fans are pushing the limits of what can be done with utilizing EarthBound’s engine. We’ve seen many creative hacks like HyperBound, which turned the beloved turn based RPG into an engaging, psychological adventure game. And of course, most notably Toby Fox’s ventures which have directly led into the modern classic, UNDERTALE. EarthBound hacking has always been an integral part of the MOTHER community, and is partially responsible for the indie scene we have today.
It’s not every day you wake up and new MOTHER 64 footage is found! Today, the video-game community was blessed by previously lost footage of the canceled N64 iteration of MOTHER 3 that was featured at Spaceworld 1997. As detailed on our site, the game was intended to be playable at the exhibition, but was pulled last minute and instead displayed in a sizzle reel of upcoming games.
Prior to the finding of this footage, only a few brief seconds of it existed from a similar sizzle reel that was shown at E3 1998 (unearthed by Echoes of MOTHER FOREVER in 2011). Ten years later, we can finally see that same footage and far more in higher quality! But, how did this manage to resurface over two decades later, and now? Let’s take a look!
On the evening of June 26th, 2021, we lost one of the greatest talents in the video-game preservation and emulation community, Near, formerly known as Byuu.
Most may know Near for their incredible work developing what’s unquestionably the most accurate SNES emulator, Higan (Formerly BSNES). They spent several years from 2004 onward developing the software, aiming to render the original coding of the system and games as accurately as possible. Near also clean dumped the entire North American and Japan libraries for the SNES and SFC respectively – so if you’ve ever played a ROM for these systems, it’s likely you might’ve been using a copy they dumped themselves.
