The latest Nintendo Direct hit on plenty of unsurprising topics, likeKirby and the Forgotten Land, Advance Wars 1+2: Reboot Camp,andSplatoon 3, but it came packed with a couple surprises as well.Nintendo Switch Sportsappeared as the successor to Nintendo’s belovedWii Sportsfranchise, andMario Strikersfans have the newMario Strikers: Battle Leagueon the way. Perhaps most surprising of all, though, RPG fans learned thatEarthBoundand its predecessorEarthBound Beginningsare on their way to Nintendo Switch Online. As an acclaimed and influential member of the RPG genre, its no surprise to seeEarthBoundmake its way to the NSO library.
Notably, though, Nintendo didn’t announce that the full trilogy ofMothergames would join NSO just yet.EarthBound BeginningsandEarthBound,known asMotherandMother 2in Japan, won’t be reunited withMother 3on the Nintendo Switch just yet. This is in spite ofMotherfans spending yearsdemanding an official English localization ofMother 3.Nintendo has missed a major opportunity to curry favor with theMothercommunity by leavingMother 3out of the conversation once again, rather than giving it the acknowledgement it deserves.
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Primetime for a Mother Comeback
Getting the first twoMothergames back right now is great. Some thirty years after it began, interest in the franchise remains high, thanks in part torecent indie RPGs likeUndertaleandOMORIthat take inspiration fromEarthBound.Since bothEarthBoundandEarthBound Beginningshave had international releases in their time, it makes sense to simply bring them to NSO.Mother 3,however, has yet to leave Japan. Nintendo could’ve arranged a 2022 international release ofMother 3as part of an event connected to the otherMothergames joining NSO, but it doesn’t seem to have planned anything like that.
To a certain extent, it’s not surprising that Nintendo didn’t opt to bringMother 3back immediately. It’s historically proven averse to portingMother 3in spite of high fan demand, possibly due to long-term doubt caused byEarthBound’s difficult launch in 1995. NSO also hasn’t addedGame Boy or Game Boy Advancegames yet, so a digital version ofMother 3might have to be integrated as an NSO expansion pack. Nevertheless, demand forMother 3is high, and fans would’ve been thrilled to see a physical release of the game, even if it didn’t join its predecessors on NSO.
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Rebuilding the Mother Brand
It’s possible that Nintendo only putEarthBoundandEarthBoundBeginningson NSO as a way to gauge interest in the series. Maybe it’s already discussing the possibility of aMother 3localization, and It’s waiting to see how fans engage withthe return ofEarthBoundbefore making a final decision. If that’s the case, then hopefully Nintendo will announce aMother 3re-release later in 2022 after it gathers some new data on support for the greaterMotherfranchise. Considering how hyped fans are aboutEarthBoundon NSO, it should be clear to Nintendo that aMother 3localization will succeed.
That type of data sourcing really doesn’t seem necessary at this point. Fans of all kinds have spent years asking Nintendo to make an official localization, and some have even taken it on themselves totranslateMother 3for fellow fansto enjoy. Still, a fan translation is completely different from official acknowledgement from Nintendo. IfMother 3isn’t going to join its peers on the Switch just yet, then hopefully Nintendo will at least take the positive response toEarthBound’s return as a sign that theMotherfranchise deserves a revival. The Switch already has its fair share of big games, butMother 4would be a true breakthrough for both the console and theMotherseries.
EarthBoundandEarthBound Beginningsare available now on Nintendo Switch Online.
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