05/27/2002

To coincide with my EarthBound review, I'm going to write a little about its cancelled sequel, Mother 3. Back in 1996, Mother 3 was planned for the N64. It was being shown off at all the major gaming industry events, and all the signs pointed to a game that would be released very soon. However after being constantly and sadly delayed many times, it was finally cancelled in 2000.

The story would have revolved around a large number of characters, as it was split into different 'Chapters', where you took control of a different party, possibly with some members from older chapters. The story begins with the crash of a mysterious UFO into the town of Flint, one of the main characters. Flint goes off to investigate and that's where the game begins.

Unfortunately, the game was destined to be a failure, and the reason given for the cancellation was the staff having difficulty working with 3D environments, since all of there previous experience had been in the 2D era of the SNES. Other problems included the myriad of bugs in the game, and the impending launch of Nintendo's new GameCube.

Many people believe that Mother 3 could still be in development for the GameCube, since the majority of the game was already finished. Essentially, all it would need is a facelift before it could become equal to any other of the current GameCube games. Other people think that Nintendo might need a little (or large) push to persuade them into continued development. This is where Starmen.net comes in. They're a large community of EarthBound fans who are passionate about the Mother series. Starmen.net had previously made a petition to get Mother 3 released on the Nintendo 64. They achieved an amazing number of signatures with this petition, finally completed when it reached 10,013 signatures.

Now Starmen.net has risen to the challenge again, creating another petition. Their aim is to reach a whopping 30 000 signatures, and so far they have reached almost 18 000 signatures. Once they are done, they'll be printing out and sending the petition to Nintendo Co., HAL Laboratories (the people behind the series), and Shigesato Itoi (the man behind the series).

If you too would like to see Mother 3 released, please sign the petition, and allow the fans and those many others who have never heard of the Mother series to be able to experience Shigesato Itoi's great work.

Thank you for reading.

By Rago