Mother 3 was announced initially for the Nintendo 64, and although Earthbound 64 was in the talks, that was scrapped rather quickly. Understandably, when Nintendo decided to give Itoi another shot at the Mother series, they ultimately decided that they would only release the third entry in Japan. Because of the commercial failure in the US, Earthbound did not release in Europe. This had a lot to do with poor marketing and the “this game stinks” ads that did a lot more bad than good. What’s more is that Mother 2, the Japanese release, sold 300,000 units, meaning the US only accounted for roughly 140,000 Earthbound units sold. Earthbound sold 440,000 copies worldwide, which barely beat the original that only sold in Japan. Unfortunately, sales did not meet expectations with Mother 2/ Earthbound, as Nintendo took the risk of releasing the sequel in America as well. The biggest complaints about the original were the high difficulty and balancing, so many Japanese eagerly awaited Mother 2 when it was announced, hoping that it would improve upon everything that Itoi established in the first. The original Mother did incredibly well in Japan, its only market, as it sold over 400,000 units and received lots of high praise from critics thanks to its quirky nature and parodying of tropes within the genre. The first title, which released on the Famicom (NES) in Japan on July 27th, 1989, was a strong shift from the normal settings in most RPGs, as the contemporary setting allowed Itoi and company to do and include things that were not in RPGs at the time. He simply presented the idea of an RPG set in the modern world to Shigeru Miyamoto, and once Itoi showed full commitment to the project, Miyamoto gave his blessing.
Mother is the brainchild of Shigesato Itoi, a Japanese entertainer with many titles under his belt.
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