The fan made game Mother 4 received its first gameplay trailer yesterday. Whilst the project has been around for a while, progress on the project has been relatively silent with the occasional blog update since work began 5 years ago.
For those of you who are unaware, Mother 4 is a free fan project that aims to provide a long-awaited sequel to the much loved JRPG franchise Mother. The most notable game in the series being Earthbound. These games garnered a following due to their unconventional story, unique humor and bizarre tonal shifts. With Earthbound being the only title in the series to be released in the US, western fans have been without a new entry in the series for over 20 years.
Their have been numerous petitions that have been run by Starmen.net that attempted to persuade Nintendo to release an English translated version of the other games in the series in the US. Despite gaining a overwhelming support, the petitions were unsuccessful.
The first footage we saw of Mother 4 was a minute long teaser trailer back in 2013 that received over 650,000 views. Mother 4 is entirely a fan-made project with no publisher or consumer backing. The team is comprised of ‘volunteers’ each complete with their own little sprite and biography on the Mother 4 ‘about’ page.
The new trailer looks very professional. The graphics resemble Mother 3 almost to a T with slightly more detailed enemy sprites and a tidier UI. The trademark childish humor, team of colorful characters and psychedelic battle visuals are all in there. The trailer draws to an end with hopeful release date saying: ‘we’re aiming for June’. Whilst there were original plans for an unspecified late 2014 release, the title was pushed further back into 2015.
The games composer Shane Mesa, has a Soundcloud with 13 Original tracks from the upcoming Soundtrack that seem to hit the tone of Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka’s original work dead on. The taster of the Soundtrack is comprised of the jolly chip-tunes typical of the Mother series as well as a hint towards slightly darker or disturbing moments apparent by the conversely named song ‘Happy Days’.
Going onto the FAQ section on the website will likely appease fans. It seems like Mother 4 is set to be a self contained story at an unknown point in the series timeline and will see return of the ‘rhythm combo system’. The title will apparently also include Controller support, tools for easy translation into any language as well as a Linux, OSX versions as well as Windows.
Do you like the look of this project? Are you skeptical? Let us know below!
Fuzzy Pickles.