On September 22, 2005, DS-X2 reported that Marvelous Interactive posted a mysterious flash animation that featured a character that strongly resembled Dr. Andonuts from EarthBound/MOTHER 2 along with a countdown set to end in approximately one week. On September 26, the animation was brought to starmen.net's attention and more speculation was added to the earlier possible Mother 3 news discovered that week. The flash file was soon decoded to see if anything useful could be found in the source code. This led to the discovery that the character was called "doctor." It was somewhat odd that he should be called doctor when he could have been given a more common name, like professor. This led more into the speculation that the character was indeed Dr. Andonuts.
The character spent a majority of his time tapping away endlessly, with his back to the viewer, in front of a chalkboard. Besides the regular pattern being tapped on the chalk board, the doctor would on occassion tap another pattern which was called "rock" in the source code of the file. The repetitive nature of the taps led some to believe that it was morse code. This began a wild goose chase to decode the secret message that the taps may have held. Nothing solid was found, but others speculated that it may not be morse code at all, but instead a hint that tapping played a role in the gameplay of the secret title.
Those following the story were anxiously awaiting the end of the countdown, which was set to reach zero at 11:00 A.M. Eastern Standard Time. Some users found a way to play with the timer clock in the animation by changing the time on their computer, but were greeted by an error page when they made the timer reach zero. The truth soon made itself known. The day before the countdown was to finish poik007 uploaded a scan in the forums that revealed the true identity of the mystery game from Marvelous Interactive.
The game ended up having nothing to do with Mother 3, but all was not lost. There was still the news from Shigesato Itoi himself and Brownie Brown that started the latest boom of Mother 3 speculation. Perhaps they held the key to the game's future.
The character spent a majority of his time tapping away endlessly, with his back to the viewer, in front of a chalkboard. Besides the regular pattern being tapped on the chalk board, the doctor would on occassion tap another pattern which was called "rock" in the source code of the file. The repetitive nature of the taps led some to believe that it was morse code. This began a wild goose chase to decode the secret message that the taps may have held. Nothing solid was found, but others speculated that it may not be morse code at all, but instead a hint that tapping played a role in the gameplay of the secret title.
Those following the story were anxiously awaiting the end of the countdown, which was set to reach zero at 11:00 A.M. Eastern Standard Time. Some users found a way to play with the timer clock in the animation by changing the time on their computer, but were greeted by an error page when they made the timer reach zero. The truth soon made itself known. The day before the countdown was to finish poik007 uploaded a scan in the forums that revealed the true identity of the mystery game from Marvelous Interactive.
The game ended up having nothing to do with Mother 3, but all was not lost. There was still the news from Shigesato Itoi himself and Brownie Brown that started the latest boom of Mother 3 speculation. Perhaps they held the key to the game's future.
