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Before reading this pressing round-table discussion

To be honest, the reality of what's happening still hasn't hit me yet, but I will express a little bit of what I'm feeling here.

Last night I quickly sped my way through the parts of the game that were done so I could get screenshots to put up on the site. Mr. Miura from the Mother team's art department took up the controller, and 3 hours passed as we played through battles in the game and discussed various things. I watched him play the entire time. The staff at "Hobonichi" watched the entire time too. There was laughter, shouting, some people who almost broke into tears... it was almost like they were playing an actual game on the market.

However, this was a "memory of the future" that would likely never happen. This game was developed in secrecy; until then I had never once heard a user's laughter in a situation such as the one above. But once I saw people innocently playing through and shouting things like, "Whoa!" I finally began to feel sadness.

Even after it was decided that development on Mother 3 was to be cancelled, people still kept asking when Mother 3 will be coming out. With the unanswerable answer stuck in my throat, I feel that after all the time that has passed working on it, I myself was never able to fully believe that this game would never come out.

However, the reality is that despite being 6 years in development, Mother 3 has been cancelled.

In regard to the parts that have been completed, I can say with complete confidence that it's a very fun and interesting game. I'm also still very proud of the story with its constant plot twists. But in realistic terms, it is now a phantom game that only the development staff knows.

Trying to explain Mother 3's cancellation simply in writing might wind up causing all sorts of misunderstandings. I also felt that doing so might be far too inadequate when considering the amount of time everybody on the staff spent on it, so I decided to talk about it in detail here on "Hobonichi Itoi Shinbun" so that I can explain the situation to everyone who has been waiting. I am sure it was a very difficult time for us, but we each tried our best to calmly talk about how we felt coming from each our own standpoints.

Because I've posted up the lengthy conversation exactly how it took place, there's a great deal of text to go through, but the feeling of having you here with us and listening in makes me feel truly happy.

It is indeed sad, but accept the truth as truth.

August 22, 2000
Shigesato Itoi

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