Not satisfied with simply taking inspiration from Mother (known as EarthBound outside Japan), a new group of developers is trying their hands at creating an unofficial numbered entry in Nintendo’s cult classic role-playing franchise.
Mother 4 is “a fan-made sequel to the acclaimed Mother series, following a group of teenagers and their road trip across a rose-tinted America.” It features ubiquitous franchise mechanics like rolling HP counters and the rhythm-based combos introduced in 2006’s Mother 3. And for something that so heavily draws from an official work, it already looks really damn good, iterating on the franchise’s distinctive style without straight up copying what’s come before.
Of course, this isn’t the first time a group has tried to make its own Mother sequel. A previous Mother 4 project was first announced in 2010, garnering a ton of positive attention before dropping the unofficial connection to the Mother series in 2017 to avoid a potential lawsuit from Nintendo and officially changing its name to Oddity three years later. As far as we know, Oddity is still in development despite radio silence from its creators since last Christmas.
So why go with Mother 4 rather than making their own thing à la other EarthBound-inspired games like Oddity, Undertale, Knuckle Sandwich, and the Lisa series?
“The dev team are all Mother fans at heart, the games really mean a lot to us, so we thought it’d be fun to make a ‘what if’ fourth entry,” the Mother 4 website’s FAQ reads. “Think of it as an elaborate piece of fan art.”
The devs won’t commit to a release date, but Mother 4 is planned to be available on PC (Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems) when it’s ready, provided the game avoids the ever-watchful eye of Nintendo long enough.