Welcome to the Mother 3 News Section. This is a collection of news that has happenedin the past few years concerning Mother 3. To navigate through the news section, use the links below.

Recent (Late 2000-Today) (YOU ARE HERE)
Non-spaceworld updates of Jan 2000 to Fall 2000
Fall '99 to Early 2000 (spaceworld)
Spring '99 to Fall '99

Please note that some of this news is outdated, and many links may be dead.

Read more information here.

Our resident Japanese reading awesome dude, Tomato, has read through this webpage and according to him it says this:

[The Article] Says that apparently at some conference (they don't know either) he said that he's using a different plotline than what was planned for the N64 version, and that he's currently 60% done with it. I'm assuming he's 60% done with the plot/writing, not the development, but I could be off. He also supposedly said that "It could possibly go on sale next year." Oh, and the game's development supposedly has a "system/structure" that's different than all the previous ones. Kind of vague, but whatever. It's mostly hearsay but nice to know if true.

This is promising news! :D

If you were as confused as I was by the NOJ link that Tomato posted, then you'll probably welcome this English page that has the news in a more familiar language. Props to Moblin Killer for pointing it out. Share the joy!

It's not that big of a mention, but Mother 3 is scheduled to come out in Japan sometime. This is according to Nintendo of Japan's latest financial reports. The game is listed under "Games to come out April 2004 or later", and the game is specifically given a date of "Not Yet Determined". Also, the title of "Mother 3" is still not set in stone. It's still anyone's guess if the game makes it over here... but if it does, you guys better raid Nintendo and force them to let me translate it! Petition time???

Reports are coming in that some commercials for a "Mother 1 + 2" GBA game are being aired on Japanese TV now. It's pretty short and really simple, but if it isn't a hoax then the EarthBound community's about to explode.

Pictures and Videos:

• Mother 1 + 2 for GBA, Japanese commercial (2.7 MB)
  
  
• Translated Commercial! (680 KB, MPEG4 format)
  (If the video doesn't play for you then you'll need to get the correct video codec from somewhere. Ask on the forums. BTW I updated the movie slightly.)
  
  
• Translated Screenshot from Commercial #1
  
  
• Screenshots from the Commercial

It basically says that it's scheduled for release on June 20th for the GameBoy Advance. BUT at the end it also mentions that Mother 3 is in the works for GBA as well. By all accounts this seems to be the real deal, but I really urge people to wait for official announcements. Otherwise if it does indeed turn out to be a hoax then there's going to be looooots of angry people with torches.

Official Links:

Nintendo of Japan just put up a whole section for it! Click now! The Mr. Saturn walking around is just saying Mother 1 + 2 is coming out and that they're working on Mother 3 too.

Shigesato Itoi, EarthBound's creator, had some stuff to say about Mother 3 in a really recent interview on his own site. Click here if you know Japanese. I'll try to get it translated by sometime Wednesday but I'm far too exhausted after spending all day doing tons of work, trying to keep up with everything, and then trying to get the staff and site ready for what's to come.

To summarize his interview though, Itoi thought about doing it for the GBA after it was cancelled but wasn't sure about it, but after looking at several options like putting the story into book or movie form, the GBA seemed the best choice. Also with Mother 1 and 2 coming out everyone would naturally start asking when 3 was coming out again. He says he likes to think of it as being a game where you don't have to pull all nighters to play the game; you can pick it up and play it a little bit each day and still enjoy it. He's going to talk more about Mother in the next interview which should be posted on his site in the next few days.

Related Links

• NewTechnix.com
• Quiter
• Quiter
• gamesarefun.com
• gamers.com
• Planet GameCube
• gamefront.de
• GamePro
• More as they're discovered

Also, a thousand thanks to sikkei for alerting us all so quickly!

Go discuss!

If you got any other info e-mail me ASAP here. I'm constantly updating the stuff here so keep checking back.

Well, kids, wake up and pay attention. This is some news you don't want to miss. Trust me.

After the awesome news of Mother 3 at E3 came to us a few days ago, I decided to e-mail the source. I sent an e-mail to Soul4ger over at GamesAreFun.com to see what kind of information I could get. Well, my friends, he really came through, and replied with a lot of truely awesome information. This, my friends, is his reply:

Hey, Skulryk!

There's no need for an introduction, I'm well aware of who you are. I often visit Starmen.net, so I know what's up.

I'd be happy to answer your questions for you.

First, the source is a person who works for Nintendo. I can't offer you names; I apologize for that. They've trusted me enough to give me this information, and I've trusted them by putting an article up on the site. I don't want to break that faith simply because some people don't believe what we're posting. In the little under a year that GAF has been around, we've posted a lot of rumors that we've felt have been viable. Sometimes, they were wrong, but you'll find that, a lot of the time, they ended up becoming true in some way or another. We've never, ever just reported on things because we felt they'd get us a lot of hits. In fact, we're doing so well now that something like that isn't even a consideration. It comes down whether you're willing to believe or not. GAF was one of the first two talk about Microsoft buying RARE. GAF was the first to bring people the news of Metal Gear Solid on the GameCube. You would not BELIEVE the number of people who called us liars on that one, but we put our honor on the line and stuck it out. It paid off. You'll notice that a lot more sites are sourcing us for this Mother 3 news at E3, but you probably didn't see a lot doing the same regarding MGS on GameCube. It's because we've proven that we're capable of being reliable.

I know of the message board stuff floating around the 'net. I was recently on your forums, and I saw that someone linked to a thread on the Gaming-Age forums. I happen to frequent that site sometimes, and I know who some of the posters are. I'm not sure if you or anyone on your site is aware of it, but someone that posted, john tv, is actually John Ricciardi from Electronic Gaming Monthly. In his message, he said that there are three Mother games in development, and he essentially admitted to their existence. In case you missed it, I've copied it below for you:

"I don't work for Nintendo, so no, I'm not confirming anything. :)

I may be thinking of the GBA ports of 1 and 2, BTW. In any case, one of those two companies above is working on one of the three Mother games currently in the works. How's that for vague? :)"

If you don't believe me, perhaps you'll believe him.

This actually brings us, quite neatly, to your next question. I heard only that Mother 3 would be shown at E3. I heard nothing of the Mother 1 + 2 game, but I'll also remind you that that was something I heard off of Japanese site QUITER. QUITER is, essentially, Japan's Gaming Intelligence Agency, so they're good guys. However, the article they posted made it unclear whether the game was a compilation of Mother 1 and Mother 2, or whether they were coming out as separate games. We assumed the former, but it could very well be that they'll be released individually. It's also not clear as to whether HAL Laboratories is working on these, or one of Nintendo's second-party RPG developers, like Brownie Brown, Skip Ltd., or Genius Sonority is doing the honors. GBA ports are on the way, too, though.

I hope this clears up all your questions. You're welcome to use this if you desire, and if you've got anything else you'd like to ask, feel free. I will, however, propose one question to you in closing: if you think that it's too good to be true that HAL or Nintendo is reviving this game for the GC, consider that they're doing the same thing with another cancelled N64 game, Kirby's Air Ride. KAR was also a HAL project, but they're bringing it back now to provide more software for the system. Reports indicated that Kirby's Air Ride was pretty "un-fun," but Mother 3 was always a game that piqued interest. Shigeru Miyamoto recently said that HAL's size increased significantly, and they were working on several mystery projects that haven't been revealed. Nintendo has always been praised for their quality first-party software, but criticized because they never managed to release more than a handful of games a year. In an effort to alleviate that, is there any better way to bring more to their system then to restore concepts that have already received a considerable amount of attention?

You and all Earthbound fans have a lot to look forward to. I enjoy your site; keep up the good work!

Thanks for your e-mail!

Christian
--Soul4ger - Editor, Games Are Fun (http://www.gamesarefun.com)

WOO HOO! This information is just great. It certainly can help ease some of the doubt we have. I must say that now, I'm a believer. A HUGE thank you to Soul4ger over at GamesAreFun.com. You rock, man.

But wait! There's even more!

Jonk has done a great job of putting together a timeline of Mother 3 news and rumors. It goes over a lot of important news concerning what has happened to Mother 3 in the last 8 months, in a much more organized fashion than the current news section. Be sure to check that out as well, right here.

Thanks to Jonk for putting that together, and yet another big thanks to Soul4ger over at GamesAreFun.com. Thanks so much for all this stuff, guys.

STARMEN.NET MOTHER 3 ALERT LEVEL:
PAINFULLY BRIGHT ORANGE


Well folks, we're hearing a lot of stuff recently. Things are really starting to go crazy on the rumor front, and due to some correspondence which Skul has been working with, we've got a few reasons to believe that its not just a bunch of Poo like it has been in the past.

So, here's the deal: Worst-case scenario, nothing happens, Starmen.Net stays pretty much the same. Neat.

Best-case scenario, the rumors are true, Mother/EB come out on GBA and Mother 3 is released on Gamecube.

Holy crap.

The consequences: Starmen.Net changes. Forever.

I was going to write a big thing about these potential changes, but I want to wait until I can be sure that stuff is going to happen.

However, even though there are no official announcements and everything is conjecture still, stuff is changing as we speak. I finally got to go on IRC tonight (after finishing a particularly brutal round of exams) and had a great time talking to everyone again. I'm going to call a staff meeting soon, so staffers, please be watching your inboxes. I'll try not to label the email 'LOSE WEIGHT NOW' or anything idiotic like I did when I emailed the new staffers last time.

Site regulars: Be happy. Be pessimistic. Be optimistic. Theorize. Conspiracize. Convolutionize. Undrop the voltage. Whatever you do, get excited, cuz even if this is some huge hoax by some insane group of Japanese m0th3r hax0rs or something, things are starting to move here at Starmen.Net again :)

With the onslaught of Mother 3 news and rumors, all you think you need is more. Well, here ya go. I found this shirt by jumping from link to link, partially guessing my way through a Japanese Mother site Mother Nippon and discovering the images below. Reid and I were both astonished.

Something like this has never been seen and I believe that this isn't a forgery or a fake. I dont think a Japanese Magazine or organization would do copyright infringement with the name Mother 3 wide out in the open like this. Also, this shirt info and images were posted on their site YESTERDAY, so this is brand spanking new.

"This time, they are a Mother 3 sale schedule and the time which was making noise. It was the T-shirt given with the magazine etc. It is a card game next time."

Here is the official Page where I found the info from Mother Nippon..

I wonder what the deal is? What do you think? Post what you think about it on the FORUMS.

Well, I've got some exciting stuff here! I'm sure many of you remember the last update with news concerning Mother 3. Well, GamesAreFun.Com has given us another very interesting piece of news!

Today, we can inform you, through means unspeakable, that Mother 3, otherwise previously known as Earthbound 64 in North America, will be unveiled at this year's Electronics Entertainment Expo. E3 will be held at the Los Angeles Convention Center from May 14th to the 16th. GAF will be there to report from the floor, so you can expect the first coverage! However, we don't know if Mother 3 will be shown in video form or playable. It will be there, though. You can count on it.

Well well, this is very interesting. E3... Once again, there are no other sources reporting on this, so it is very tentative, but they do seem very sure about this. I for one really hopes that something will come of this, because this could really be it.

Be sure to check out the entire article here,.and you also might want to discuss this on the forums! Once again, thanks to Nobiyuki for bringing this to my attention.

Woo!

There are some rumors spreading about not only Mother 3... but also Mother 1 and 2! Now, these are very unreliable rumors, but news is news, and they shall be posted about. Games Are Fun tells us:

"Word has leaked out of Nintendo that two new Mother games are in the works, one for the GBA and the other for the GameCube...

Mother 1 + 2 is a remake of the original Famicom Mother game, plus the Super Nintendo installment (called Earthbound in North America). It will have completely rehauled graphics, and should release around the same time as the Game Boy Player.

Mother 3 was originally in development for the Nintendo 64, but was cancelled because of lengthy development and poor results. The game is being remade for the GameCube, and should hit Japanese retailers this August!"

Interesting stuff, huh? Now, as I said, this is a very tentative rumor; don't put all your faith in it. It is, however, a strand of hope, and that's a very good thing to see. Be sure to check out the whole story here. This story has also apparently been on several other sites as well. Thanks to Nobuyuki and diaperface2000 for spreading the words on the forums.

Jonk's just given me another bit of Mother 3 info, this time from gamesarefun.com. This little tidbit is from an interview with Benimaru Itoh (note: he is in no way related to Shigesato Itoi, although they are involved in the same project. Don't confuse the two.) Itoh (not Itoi) is the art designer for Mother 3, and also a comic book artist on the side. ANYWAYS, Itoh said that Mother 3 IS going to happen, and very soon. I'll quote the article:

According to QUITER, at a recent Super Smash Brothers musical concert, comic book artist Benimaru Itoh revealed that an announcement regarding Mother 3 is going to happen very soon.

Now, I understand that this may simply be a red herring, but it still looks VERY promising! Perhaps EGM's recent rumor of a new Mother coming could be what Itoh is talking about!

Thanks to Jonk for notifying me about it and erthbounddude for being the one to notify everyone on the forums. You can read the full article here.

Once again, Quartermann has given all of us at Starmen.Net a huge thrill with some very exciting news:>

EarthBound is Coming!

Where/how he gets this info is a mystery to us, but we trust him. Since he says that the coming EB game is not Mother 3, we must logically assume that EarthBound is coming to the Game Boy Advance! (What else would it be coming to?) While this isn't as awesome as the idea of having Mother 3 on Gamecube, this is still excellent news. There is also the possibility of EarthBound Zero (Mother) coming to Game Boy Advance, although the only logical way this would happen is if it were bundled with EarthBound. Thats doubtful, but still a possibility.

Are you sure?
Pretty sure. Quartermann is a respected article guy, I don't think he'd ever say something like that without some majorly solid evidence. I think he knows as well as we do that he would be murderized if he was wrong. So, for the rest of this post, lets assume EB is coming to GBA (:D).

How will this affect the site?
Excellent question, I'm glad I asked it. This could register anywhere between very good and very bad on the "Starmen.Net Big Happening Scale". In case you haven't been with us for long, I can plainly tell you that we've been one of the unluckiest sites on the net in terms of webhosts. Very recently we switched to a dedicated server with 150 gigs of bandwidth per month and 20 gigs of space -- more than enough for a site our size. This might change that.

The problem comes in predicting what kind of impact this will have on our site. There is no question that Starmen.Net is the biggest EarthBound site on the net, but who knows how many new visitors this will bring? Time will tell. In order to prepare ourselves, however, we'll likely be taking some precautionary actions around the time the game is announced (the point at which our hits will probably begin to spike).

Poor KindarSpirit.
Poor KindarSpirit indeed. As if she doesn't work hard enough already, she's gonna have to play through every square inch of the game and figure out what was changed in the port ;)

How will this affect the petition?
Under some circumstances, it could be a HUGE help to the Mother 3 Petition. A few people have asked me if I'm going to stop with the petition where I'm at, and the answer is a very solid 'no'. The petition is going to at least 30,000 signatures; the only thing thats going to cut that short is the announcement of Mother 3 itself.

The biggest factor which affects the petition is time. How soon will EB on GBA be released? If it comes soon (like within 6 months), perhaps we'll have a much easier time reaching that 30,000 mark, and maybe much farther than that. I didn't plan on leaving the petition running for this long, but shoot, it would be a terrible waste to skip all of those potential signatures. However, I don't wanna start speculating on that. Just know that the petition is still going strong and this latest announcement impacts it very heavily, if the game comes out soon enough :)

Who is the man?
Reptilian Superiority is the man for both breaking the news and scanning that picture for us. Thank you, good sir.

One last note...
A big huge :P to all the people who laughed at the old Mother on GBC Petition and the more recent EB64 Petition. Nintendo might not be timely, but the dedication of EarthBound fans did not go unnoticed. Congratulations to all of you fans who supported and continue to support these petitions, this site, and this game.

EarthBound forever :)

There's a new piece of Mother 3 News. Before I get to it, I'd like to thank Mad Fnorder for brining this to my attention on the forums.

Now on with the news part. Gamesarefun.com has said that Weekly Famitsu will unveil two new RPG's. One of these RPG's is an unknown square game, but the other is a new Mother game! We know it was originally canned, but could it be back in development? Who knows!

Keep in mind these are only rumors. You can see the full news article here. You can read the little forum topic here.

While I'm on the topic of forum news and speculation, there has been another bit on the forums I'd like to bring up. Makkun reports to us some information from some Japanese sources. Apparently, there's a little section in Weekly Famitsu called Miss Rumor and Mr. Truth, where "Miss Rumor" gossips about all the gaming rumors flying about, and Mr. Truth says the truth in them. Well, look at this recent translation (big thanky thanky to Makkun for bringing us this info and translating it!)

Miss Rumor:
I've heard that one game company is going to revive a great RPG of the past for Advance.
And it's not your usual ordinary game.
The one-and-only unique game that everybody has long waited for.
And this is the part where it gets interesting.
They're first gonna release the revived games, but after that, there're gonna release a completely new sequel for Advance!

Mr. Truth:
Hmm, a one-and-only unique RPG... you mean "******"?
No kidding!? I can still believe the part about reviving for Advance, but it's hard to believe the part about a new sequel on Advance...
Well, but if it's true, I would like to believe the happy news!

Like Makkun commented on the forum thread, how many series have 6 letters? How many games are one-and-only unique games which everybody's long waited for? Finally, how many games CAN fit this, as in how many games have a revived game which can be released before a completely new sequel comes? Seeing that Weekly Famitsu is a Japanese magazine, they would use the Japanese name of the series, which would be MOTHER (and just to clarify, whenever the series title is used, it is always written as MOTHER; not as a japanized version of it, not in katakana or hiragana, just as MOTHER.

This stuff is VERY promising.

James has e-mailed us with a VERY exciting quote from IGN GameCube!

Miyamoto: Of course, Fire Emblem has been an important franchise for Nintendo for a very long time and Intelligent Systems has been working on it the entire time. We're always thinking about possibilities on how we can continue to use that franchise in the future and Mother 3 is something that Iwata and I have always talked about bringing to the users.

Interesting news, huh? WOGROOOGA! Thanky Thanky Thanky for James for the infos, and thanks to reidman for letting me update with it instead of taking it himself.

The title isn't being deceptive; Satoru Iwata mentioned Mother 3 in an interview article from The GIA. However, the news isn't all good...

"...Several attendees asked about specific games or genres. Mr. Iwata cited From Software's Rune as an example of Nintendo's efforts to reach out to the RPG audience, although news on the Mother front was bleak. "We don't have anything to tell about Mother 3," he apologized..."

This is disheartening, but the fact that people are still pestering Nintendo about Mother 3 is good to know. This is the kind of stuff that makes me want to do another petition...

Thanks to The GIA for posting the story and Dali's Clock for informing me of it.

In a recent IGNCube interview, they asked Satoru Iwata (Nintendo's general manager) about Earthbound 64, and if there were any plans for development of it on the Game Boy Advance. Iwata-san answered, saying that he was no longer in any position to do anything about that, and didn't know, but the only way it would come out would be for everyone to work together. He also said that he would be very happy to see this game to come out on the GameCube or Game Boy Advance.

Just a little bit to show that some higher-ups care. Check out the entire interview here.

Yup, yup. I have some news for you. However, I never said this was good news... to tell you the truth, it isn't. However, all news needs to be reported.

Recently, Core Magazine translated an interview from a Japanese Nintendo magazine, Nintendo Dream. Mother 3 was mentioned at the end, in this short snippit:

"nDream: I'd like to talk about Mother 3 for a second. It was canceled for the Nintendo 64, will it be translated to GameCube or Game Boy Advance?

Iwata-san: I'm not sure. I know it's not being worked on at the moment. I don't think Mother 3 is really on anyone's "to do" list, either.

nDream: What about rumors suggesting Mother 3 will be made into a movie?

Iwata-san: Outside of gaming, the rights to Mother 3 belong to HAL. So it's really up to Shigesato Itoi. In any event, I feel bad about letting down fans who were looking forward to it."

Well... I'm not sure what to make of this. Yeah, it means Mother 3 is canned, I guess. It's all unofficial, though. However, I guess we were only hoping all along... :(

Thanks to Jonk for bringing my attention to this piece of news, and Dali's Clock for being the first person to bring my attention to it on the forums. You can check out the whole article here.

Yes, I'm still alive... Just to let you know what I'm doing: I'm ressurecting the News section. Currently it is a humungous mess of exploded HTML... but not much longer! I'm fixing that, but it's going to take a long time to fix, as well as a long time to update with all the other Mother 3 news. However, the endless work is starting to pay off, and I should have the News Section up soon.

However, this isn't an update on the status of the News section, this has some semi-news! I'd like to apoligize to ProjectJ for taking so long to get this up... I guess I've been a bit lazy. Sorry.

Anyways, you may remember an interview with Itoi in which he stated that the basis for Ryuka and Klaus was based on a novel called "Le Grand Cahier." (If you don't remember that interview, or haven't seen it yet, check it out here.) Well, ProjectJ has found the book translated into English (it was originally in French.) After his endless searching, he found the book, renamed as "The Notebook, the Proof, and the Third Lie." If you want to buy it, he also found out that Amazon.Com carries it. You can find that here.

Once again, sorry for taking so long to get this up (he must have e-mailed me about it a few weeks ago...) Thanks to ProjectJ for telling me about this!

I have a very interesting piece of information here! Yay yay yay!

I can't exactly be the judge of this or anything, but Itoi is involved in some meetings with Nintendo executives involving the Game boy Advance! Itoi himself put some pictures up of his meetings with Nintendo executives. This could end up developing into something in the future!

Check out this site here.

Be sure to check out the site, even if you can't read Japanese, there's enough you can understand to get to all 6 of the meetings, and you can still look at the pretty pictures!

Yes, after months of waiting each and every one of you can finally view our EarthBound64 Petition! It's available in both HTML and text formats, unzipped and zipped for your downloading pleasure. So the zipped text format wouldn't be a problem for you people on 28k connections. I however, would be a man and go for the ten meg unzipped HTML page. And now, I present to you petition haiku.

Petition is good
Yes, the petition is great
I like petition

Hey! Da Ploster is here to update you on the latest EarthBound news!! On the newest issue of Nintendo Power (October), EarthBound 64 has jumped back on the Most Wanted list to rank 9!!!!! HUZZAH!!!!!!!! Okay everyone, I ORDER you all to go and get the Nintendo Power issue with The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask on the cover!!! Then, I ORDER you to fill out the card, and put EarthBound 64 as your first choice, then mail that bad boy to keep EB64 going strong!!!!!!! If you want this game, then mail those cards off! Super Smash Brothers was brought to the US (and several other countries) by people like you, who were persistent enough to persuade them to release it! EarthBound 64 isn't much different. YOU can make the difference!!!!! NOW GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Also, there was some EarthBound letter art on the Players Pulse section, thanks to Anthony Castanza. Now! A call to all artists and writers!!! I ORDER you to mob every video game magazine with letters regarding EarthBound 64!!! Make pictures, and send them to Nintendo Power, and every other place possible!!!!! We've already had 2 mentions of Starmen.Net in EGM magazine, and one in Tips and Tricks (thanks to svbman). So! GO SEND LETTERS / E-MAILS / ECT. ABOUT EARTHBOUND 64 TO EVERY PLACE YOU CAN THINK OF!!!!!!!! And as an added incentive, I shall personally congratulate whoever got their letter/picture into some video game magazine, or some online video game site, by posting their picture, name, what magazine they got into, and a quote from them with any of the next Plo's HARD Trivia updates! Now go! GO!! FLY!!! FLY MY LITTLE PRETTIES!!!!! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! ::explodes::

Reidman is the master of everything. Repeat that to yourself several times. Do you STILL not believe it?

Then check out the petition cover now. And if you get bored of that, click here now.

The petition cover looks great. Thank you for all your work, it finally came to this, and hopefully it will finally pay off. To everyone who signed the petition, thank you.

Well, good news (sorta)! I finally found a print shop that could print the petition for a reasonable price. In the end, the total cost of 4 bound copies of the petition came to $280. Some more good news is that 3 of these copies are double-sided, thus reducing the # of pages to 350 (instead of the 700 pages in the one-sided original), and cutting the weight of the petitions in half. This means a major reduction in shipping costs, which I have yet to discover.

Thanks to the good folks at Sir Speedy for being cool and helpful, even though they must have found it funny that a 17-year-old in a bright orange Supertones shirt wanted four copies of a 700 page document :)

Also, I finally got a chance to scan the letter that the now-famous Svbman sent in to Tips and Tricks Magazine. Once again, a million thanks to Svbman for taking the time to mention us in his letter. Check it out!

Starmen.Net in Tips and Tricks Magazine: Sept. 2000

Well, I got chrono cross, and school started. My computer time got very limited. However, I'm getting back on track, so I hope to be updating regularly soon.

First of all, I got a very interesting interview scrap from LocoSan which gives us a ray of hope for Mother 3.

"...a little while ago I had to give up on something that really pained me to do so on, but if I didn't give it up then there's no way anything else could have been done. That title will come out. Conceptually it'll be out next week. Next week I think it'll be taking place, but really, everyone's buying millions of the cutting-edge machines, and not that many were made, and I know there're still more Super Famicoms being played out there."

I know it's a bit unlikely, but this sounds like it might just be Mother 3 for Gamecube! Veeeeeery interesting.

There is also a big mention of Mother 3 in IGN's Q&A, but I don't want to take up too much space here. Please look at the Mother 3 section for more info on these pieces of information.

Also, an apology for being late in my updates. As I said, school started. My sister uses the computer for her 6 hours of homework, I need to use it for homework, and I have little time. However, once I get back into the psycho schedule of school, I'm sure I'll be fine.

Well, I'm glad to report that not only is my computer fixed, but also that the petition is prepared for printing. I hope to take the petition to a print shop tomorrow. You guys might be interested to see these statistics on the petition itself. Its a REAL piece of work, and it takes more than just a normal group of people to get something like this organized:

Starmen.Net: EarthBound 64 / Mother 3 Petition
Signatures: 10,013
Pages: 700 (at font face Arial, size 7)
Words: 243,179
Characters: 1,324,480
Filesize: 3.79 megs
Times reidman's computer crashed trying to open it: 2

Scary? Yes, I should say so! Look for word on the petition tomorrow, and perhaps a scan of a letter about the EB64 Petition that was printed in Tips and Tricks, a well-known gaming magazine - thats the second time Starmen.Net has been mentioned in a major gaming magazine!

WOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! YOU GUYS DID IT!! I am proud to say that I just moved the 10,000th signature on the EB 64 PETITION!!!! This means A LOT to all of the staffers here, and I'm sure it means just as much to all of you... :)

I'm sure reidman will have a LOT more to say...I'm not a very good talker...once again THANK YOU ALL!!!!! And keep the signatures coming in!!! We want to get as many as possible :)

Oh yeah, come join us in the chat room as we celebrate :)

Argh, I think I wet myself from the excitement :(

Just thought I'd post this, since it talks about Mother 3's cancellation. This is from IGN64.

Question: A few days ago the American press was informed that Earthbound 64 was cancelled. Are any measures being taken so that all those years of work will be used for something in the future?

Miyamoto: Yes, I am personally very sorry for myself and for the gamers who were looking forward to the launch of Mother 3 for a long time, but if someone would have said that there are 500,000 users in the U.S. that were looking forward to Mother 3, then our attitude might have been changed. But for now, unfortunately, we have decided not to go ahead towards the completion of the Mother 3 game project, but as you have pointed out there are other works that we have already done for a very long time. As far as costs are concerned, I should say that we have already spent several hundreds of millions of yen by now, and we would really like to make use of them in one way or another. For example, I'm talking with the [scenario] writer, Mr. [Shigesato] Itoi, who has been directly involved with this project of Mother 3 about whether we can make it for another story, or some kind of possibility in the future. But at this time, because we want many of our members more closely on Gamecube projects, we cannot maintain the team for Mother 3, and that's why we have to put it on hold. And again, we are very sorry about this outcome.

Now, a few things to note here. As reid posted before, bits and peices may be used in other games. Also, see that thing about 500,000 users? Now, I know that isn't possible for the petition goal, but I wonder if 10,000 internet users could convince them? After all, I'm sure the people who have signed the petition are a small percentage of the people who would actually like to see this game come out.

Also, note how he said 'on hold.' Just a few things to think about there :) To read the full IGN64 interview (GameCube related), click here.

Welcome to the second edition of reidman's midday update at school. Running around on the forums real quick, I saw a post by DynamiDJZ that mentioned an interview from The GIA. Obviously, the cancellation of Mother 3 isn't a publicity stunt, so this is the hope we have until more news arrives:

From the GIA's Miyamoto Interview:

"...the next game mentioned was the ill-fated Mother 3, or Earthbound 64. Miyamoto stated that the game had in fact been cancelled...While Nintendo would like to see the remnents of the game get put to use in one way or another, it is unlikely that they will see the light of day in the Mother series. He also said that negotiations are going on right now with the original creator of Mother to see if some sort of licensing could be worked out so that the project could be salvaged in some way.

...the GIA queried him about the N64's lack of RPGs...He said that while Nintendo would not make RPGs themselves, they would continue to produce high-quality games for the GameCube, and attempt to get the wide user-base that would attract more prolific RPG developers to the platform. While this might not be the answer that RPG fans are wanting to hear, it is good to know that Nintendo realises that they do need to have quality RPGs on the system."

So this comes as good and bad news. Good news is that Itoi, apparently, is attempting to get the rights to Mother 3. Bad news is that chances of a release on the GameCube are pretty slim. The reason Itoi can't just take the game is that, even though he is (was) the director of the project, he doesn't own the copyrights and all the work that went into it. Hopefully Itoi can pull something out for the fans. Even a salvaged version of Mother 3 is SO much better than no Mother 3 at all.

�Quieres sus tacos?

I'll make this short and spicy. Theres a Mother 3 poll up at RPGfan.com and i want it to read 90% devastated within two hours. VOTE here now. That is all.

I'm still alive. Go figure, the day I can't get access to a computer, the world blows up, but I'm still alive. Because of my sister's many projects, computer time is limited for me until school starts again, and that's a whole different problem... However, I'm still alive, and will do lots of stuff now.

I updated the screenshots section with all the new screenshots. I also updated the Videos/Music section with some of Mother 3's music. You may not know this (I didn't know it until tomato told me) but there were music clips at the bottom for music from Mother 3. Saturn2K nicely converted these clips into MP3's for me (thanks!) If you're too lazy to click that link, here are the two files. Don't ask me what the names mean, I don't speak Japanese.

Sentou
Tatsumarii Mura
Take this update. And keep hoping. We're the biggest Earthbound community on the web. I know we can do something.

We have reached 9000 signatures! At the time of this posting, the current count is 9042! Keep it up guys, only 1000 more to go!

And in case you HAVEN'T YET signed the petition, it is located HERE. Go tell all your friends and stuff.

Thanks to RPGamer.com for linking to the petition.

Also, my surprise is still in the works :)

*cough*GameCube Rules*cough*

Before I start this update, check out this picture. Look at the two houses. Look at the landscape surrounding them (minus the weird tent things in the background). Do these houses and this landscape look familiar? If you don't see the similarities, you haven't played EarthBound enough. The more of EarthBound 64 I see, the more I want to play it.

Anyways, Tomato and I decided that it might be fitting to e-mail the man himself. Tomato typed up a carefully constructed Japanese e-mail, and I tried my best to write something that can be easily read without a translator. We now invite you, the fans of EarthBound, to e-mail Mr. Itoi.

THIS IS SERIOUS. Do NOT for any reason write anything disrespectful when sending your e-mail. This is the man that created the Mother series, he deserves the respect of his fans. If you would like to e-mail him, please type a very simple, short e-mail. Be sure to use short sentences, since long sentences tend to be difficult to understand without a high level of English skills. Mention that you're from Starmen.Net and explain how much you love the Mother series and how saddened you are that Mother 3 has been cancelled.

Once again, this isn't an attempt to send Itoi-san into hiding by bombarding him with thousands of letters (we're saving that for Nintendo of Japan ;) -- the reason that respect and reason are so important is that the e-mails Itoi receives will be like a symbol of what we, the westerners, are like. If we are disrespectful and rude in our e-mails, why would Itoi-san desire to do anything for us? If we show respect and thought in our e-mails, perhaps he just might understand how much all of this really does mean to us.

Once you have your e-mail typed up, make sure you specify that its for Mr. Itoi (put it in the subject line, like "Mr. Itoi - Mother 3 Cancellation" or something). Send your e-mail to [email protected] and cross your fingers.

Well, there's some interesting stuff going on. First off, Shigesato Itoi has taken the time to provide us with two nice sources of "hope", inasmuch as one can have hope in a situation like this. First off, hold on to your seat and go to this page of Itoi's personal website.

If that doesn't make you want to cry (there are more than just a few reasons to want to), then check out this tidbit from GameFan.

Having read the GameFan article and talked to our own staffer Tomato, we understand a few more things about what is going on. Apparently, the decision to stop production on Mother 3 was agreed upon by Iwata, Itoi, and Miyamoto. However, the reasons are different from what we've heard elsewhere. Apparently the upcoming Nintendo Cube system and other large projects Nintendo is working on is really posing a problem; perhaps the lack of willingness/ability to finish the game isn't as big of a problem as we might have thought.

So what does this mean? We don't know. Its all very confusing right now. All we know is that we want EarthBound 64, and we'll do about anything to get it. So, please, Sign the EarthBound 64 Petition.

Until more news...

Wow. I'm at school right now. I just logged on to see if anyone had made any updates. I saw icEFusioN's update and thought it was a joke. However, its not. EarthBound 64 Has Been Cancelled.I don't know what to do quite yet. I'm still in absolute shock. Shock. How in the world could this happen? ...I guess we all have lots of questions. I've got a lot to sort out, as does everyone else now. I'm calling a staff meeting for tonight at 9 PM Eastern time. All staff, its very important that you attend this meeting. This time when I say we're going to discuss the future of this website, it takes on a whole new meaning...In the meantime, hang in there. All of you. I know that some people will scoff at this, but I still haven't given up. In the back of my mind I keep thinking of the last card we have to play. Yes, we do have a very small amount of both power and hope in this situation. Not much of either, but we've still got some. If there's anyone else in the world that might be able to sway the direction things are going, its us, the fans. The dedicated fans. It seems hopeless, but I've learned not to let that get me down, even when I feel like a 13 year old trying to save the world or something.

Yes, you read that right.....EB64 Has been cancelled..... I dont know what else to say....

Read the IGN article.... :(

IGN's article :(

:(

This sucks.

:(