Ex-Nintendo president Reggie Fils-Aimé says "don't hold your breath" for more Earthbound or Mother 3
Fils-Aimé also said that it's just a small group of fans that are asking for Mother 3.
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Reggie Fils-Aimé, former president of Nintendo of America, has recently touched on the possibility of more Earthbound or a Mother 3 localisation, but unfortunately only to say fans shouldn't expect anything any time soon.
While in the west only two Earthbound games have officially been released, known as Mother in Japan, there is a third game that you might have heard of that never came out over here. It's a bit of a meme that Mother 3 will never come out in the west, and Fils-Aimé recently made some comments that don't exactly spell confidence in it ever happening. Speaking to Kinda Funny Games, Fils-Aimé spoke about how there are older franchises he'd like to see get a refresh.
"I want to see older franchises with a new look," said Fils-Aimé. "I'd love to see something with Kid Icarus and a new direction there." However, when asked if he'd like to see more Earthbound Fils-Aimé pretty matter-of-factly said "Don't hold your breath." Continuing on from that, he said "Again, I’m not there [anymore], I don’t know what’s going on."
He did however say, "While Mr Iwata was alive, he really understood the passion that fans had for the Mother series. And you need to remember that it was under his watch that Earthbound Beginnings was first brought on to the Virtual Console platform.
"And so, the company knows that there’s a lot of passion for that franchise, but thinking about how to make it current, thinking about how to make it bigger than just the, you know, let me call it the relatively small group of fans that desperately want to see Mother 3 or something next in the Earthbound series."
The original Mother came out for the Famicom in 1989, and later released in the west as Earthbound Beginnings. The followup, Mother 2, better known as Earthbound, came out on the SNES in 1995 in North America, later available digitally in Europe. But Mother 3, which came out in 2006 on the Game Boy Advance, never released outside of Japan, and is now something of a cult classic thanks to the very good fan translation. But fans do still want an official release of the game in English, and have done for years, but Fils-Aimé's comments do seem to indicate it might not happen.
