earthboundgamecube

Upcoming Book Describes Debated EarthBound GameCube Game

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Published: July 11, 2019 9:00 AM

Former Namco producer Yasuyuki Honne, who was the director for Baten Kaitos, is writing a book about the late Satoru Iwata. An interesting tidbit in the book describes a potential entry into the EarthBound (or MOTHER) series for the Nintendo GameCube.

Of Iwata and MOTHERs

Tomorrow marks the anniversary of the passing of late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. To commemorate this anniversary, someone writing a book about him is sharing a juicy bit of information relating to a cult classic RPG. The book's author is Yasuyuki Honne, who is currently an artist, director, and producer at Monolith Soft. Yesterday (which is July 11th in Japan,) Yasuyuki went to Twitter to recount an interesting story about a meeting in 2003. There, he met with Iwata and EarthBound/MOTHER creator Shigesato Itoi to talk about a potential Nintendo GameCube release for the famous RPG:

https://twitter.com/honnesan/status/1148813965025140737

The tweets, as translated by NintendoSoup (with clarification by professional translator @Mato, describe Honne's excitement for the new book and how he met Itoi and Iwata in 2003. The three were discussing Namco and Nintendo possibly making the Nintendo GameCube EarthBound/MOTHER game. Honne drafted a mockup seen in the above tweet, to show to Iwata, but Itoi seemed uncertain and stated that it's obvious Iwata set this proposal up. The conversation wound up drifting, but Iwata amused himself with the felt aesthetic of 80s America. So this is the picture that I thought would never see the day of light again" Honne concludes. "My memories of Summer 2003."

The last EarthBound/MOTHER game, Mother 3, was released for the Game Boy Advance in Japan only in 2006. Fortunately, dedicated fans (including @Mato) made a translation patch two years later. As for the fan game MOTHER 4 (or whatever it's going to be called now due to the rebranding,) we'll reportedly get an announcement by the year's end.


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| Former Staff Writer

I am a graduate of Southern New Hampshire University with a major in writing and a minor in gaming. I have a passion for video games and writing. I also… More about Brian