Shortly before yesterday’s Nintendo Direct, Mother creator Shigesato Itoi tweeted, causing speculation to go wild.
Itoi retweeted the Nintendo Direct tweet, adding the extra info that it might be snowing at 7 in the morning. The tweet went on to receive nearly two thousand retweets and almost thirteen thousand likes.
What could this have meant? Was Mother coming to the Nintendo Switch? What about its sequel? And Mother 3? Fans took to Twitter, and some game sites even wrote articles about The Tweet.
Itoi followed up his original tweet with another, writing, “Getting lots of reaction in foreign languages from this tweet. Are people that interested in snow?”
It’s not snow they’re interested in! Well played sir.
Of course, we ended up hearing that EarthBound: Beginnings and Earthbound (Mother 1 and Mother 2) are heading to Nintendo Switch Online, making both games playable on the console for the very first time.
It’s amazing how much interest and hype surrounds Mother after all these years. Cherish these beloved games, because going on what Itoi has previously said, that’s all we’re getting.
In a 2015 interview, Itoi told Game Impress Watch that making a new Mother game was “totally impossible.” Which sounds like a very firm “no” to the question if Mother 4 was going to ever happen.
“Among big-time pop stars, if they, you know, put out ten albums, around the fourth album, they can’t make very good songs,” he explained at the time. “The albums sell, but everyone at the concerts wants to hear songs from those first three albums. Everyone.”
“I’m glad that video games are not my profession,” added Itoi, who is a copywriter by trade. “If it was my job, I would’ve already made 4 and 5.”
We’ll have to settle with the first two games coming to Nintendo Switch Online. But never settle on Nintendo’s refusal to localize Mother 3!