The Mother games are a highly celebrated RPG series, containing the likes of both Mother and EarthBound. There’s also Mother 3, a really good RPG from what I’ve heard, that still hasn’t made it to the west.
Ever since it came out in 2006 for the Game Boy Advance, fans have been begging Mother series creator Shigesato Itoi for an official English release. We’ve recently learned that Mother 3 will be coming to Nintendo Switch Online, but still only in Japan. Western fans naturally clamored for a Western release, which got him to make a tweet asking fans to ask Nintendo, not him.
By looking at the Tweet above alone, it’s hard to infer whether he’s just politely saying that there’s nothing he can do about it, or if he really wants us to beg louder for Nintendo to get Mother 3 to spread all over the world.
Either way, Twitter user Lone translated a letter by Itoi that seems to vent his innermost thoughts and feelings about the game, and it sure does look like the man would be really happy if we got to play Mother 3.
Freeing Mother 3 from its GBA-shaped prison and putting it on the Switch is great. This rocks not just for the instant gratification of Japanese fans, but also for gaming preservation purposes — even if it’s only coming out digitally. Still, it’s a total bummer that there’s no news of a possible English port.
In any case, fans have infamously, notoriously found ways to still play lauded games that never came over to the West. And maybe, right now, that’s still the best solution for someone just dying to play them. Or, if you just don’t want to wait on a western release of Mother 3, then perhaps it’s time to finally learn Japanese.