The official Japanese website for the Game Boy Advance title Mother 3, has uploaded three commercials for the game which is set to arrive on store shelves April 20. The link was courteously dropped in our mailbox by N-Sider reader Samer. The adverts indicate Nintendo is going to position the game as playable on the five different Game Boy Advance compatible platforms including the GBA, GBA SP, Game Boy Micro, Nintendo DS, and Nintendo DS Lite. Like all Game Boy Advance games, Nintendo wishes to make users aware of the many avenues available to play the game.
The content of the commercial is also not of your usual affair for a handheld role-playing adventure. In each of the three segments, a young woman experiences a variety of emotions -- she laughs, frowns and even becomes teary-eyed. Take a look at the video here.
Mother was originally released on the Nintendo Famicom (NES). The story and characters of Mother were born from the refreshing mind of Shigesato Itoi and his colleagues at Ape Inc. Most RPGs at the time depicted knights and warriors. The Mother series on the other hand, took a more lighthearted approach and was set in a suburban town in the 1980s. Enemies consisted of aliens, possessed cars, and hippies. Instead of swords and shields, weapons consisted of a Yo-yo and a frying pan.
The originality of game helped it to acquire significant success in Japan. Unfortunately, limitations in Nintendo of America's localization capacity during the tail-end of the NES generation meant the title was put on hold and eventually cancelled.
In the mid-90s, Mother 2 was released by developer HAL Laboratory in Japan for the Super Famicom (SNES). In North America it became known as and released under the title of Earthbound. Though it didn't achieve quite the success that it had in Japan, the game's charm managed to garner a cult following of fans.
Nintendo showcased Mother 3, the next title in the series at the 1999 Space World exhibition in Japan. The title was being developed for Nintendo's disc-drive Nintendo 64 add-on. In 2000, it was announced that the game, of which was between 30 and 60 percent complete, had been cancelled. The reason given was that of funding. Mother 3 had been in development for over six years and switched platforms from the 64DD to the Nintendo 64. Furthermore, the vision had all along been far too ambitious. One example of the ideas the developers hoped to include in the game involved for example, a player mistakenly drops some of his food on the ground as he makes his way through a forest, the left-over food could then draw a hungry monster to the area and a battle could ensue.
In an effort to not leave fans high-and-dry, shortly after the game's cancellation came the announcement from Itoi that he and HAL Laboratory would revive Mother 3 for the Game Boy Advance. However, they would begin by porting Mother 1+2 to a single GBA cartridge. When responding to a question asking why he decided to bring the series to the Game Boy Advance, Itoi said, "I felt that, even without all the 3D images, or intricately designed graphics, I would still be able to convey what I wanted to express."
Even on the retro-Game Boy Advance, it would appear from these commercials that the emotion of Mother still lives.