Aside from this, however, the initial story and plot for this game greatly intrigues me. I almost wish that a proper, 3-D (or 2-D, personally it doesn’t really matter)”Earthbound 64″ worthy of the Mother series name be released with the original plot, while retaining the current Mother 3′s designs. I guess it would be considered like an alternate universe/dimension sort of scenario. From the bits and pieces given to us by Itoi, the media, and other reliable sources, the game was radically different in various ways. Ahhh, one can always dream, even if it has no chance of ever happening.

But I digress, the tribute video was very interesting. There was a lot I’ve never seen before when it comes to EB64 so it’s great that you’d share it with everyone Mato. Good thing you saved the video before it was taken down. And kudos to turk_ranma for making it.

Don’t get me wrong, of course I love Mother, but I think that their reasoning that the 3D rendering wasn’t working out is a it of an understatment.

I mean, I think that the game looks fairly terrible and the character designs are atrocious. It looks, feels, and resembles nothing even remotely Mother-like. Everytime I see these screenshots I feel simultaneously let down by them, and relieved that even if it was YEARS later, we got a far, far better product that what it would have been on N64.

Moreover, so much of it looks and has a general feel like a typically sub-standard and very cliche-standard RPG, with VERY ugly characters. And what sets the Earthbound/Mother series apart was it deviation away from standard looking RPG-towns.

Looking at this, and trying to put it into a frame of mind of what I would have thought of seeing this after playing Earthbound, I would have been so let down by this and would probably have lost all interest.

The future for Mother 3 was very uncertain for years after the cancellation of this iteration, but quite honestly, I look back at this, see what we got now, and just feel relieved that the history of M3′s production worked out the way it did. I think they were right to cancel this as it just looks incredibly sloppy, and unappealing in every regard I can look at it from.

I think that what we got, all these years later, was the definitive Mother 3.