EarthBound 64 (Mother 3 in Japan) was initially the third game of the Mother franchise. After multiple delays, it was cancelled and Mother 3 for the Game Boy Advance was released in its place.
Development
EarthBound 64's development began in 1994, during the end of the development of EarthBound, under the name Mother 3: Chimera Forest. It was briefly started out as a SNES/Super Famicom game before the project moved into the Nintendo 64, being announced in 1996 with small footage. During the time, overseas fans and gaming magazines referred to Mother 3 as EarthBound 64, as if led to believe that the game may have the localization for the title.
The development was soon moved to the Nintendo 64 Disk Drive, where it was to be a launch title. The N64 DD would allow the game to be much bigger than an average N64 game, as well as having a built-in clock that would allow the game to took place in real-life time. However, due to the many delays caused by the team's inexperience with the hardware and 3D graphics,[1] and the release of the N64 DD getting delayed as well, it was announced that the game would be released on a normal N64 cartridge, and its subtitle was changed to "The Fall of the Pig King" since "Chimera" was an already owned trademark.[2]
A playable demo of the game was present on Nintendo's Spaceworld event on August of 1999,[3] where elements such as the start of the story and the battle mechanics were shown to the public. After the event, it was stated that the game had some improvements,[4] but the system change caused programming to be wasted. Around this time, Satoru Iwata had to leave the development team as he had other projects that needed to be worked on.
On August 21, 2000, Itoi officially confirmed the game's cancellation. The game was full of bugs and problems, and Nintendo decided to invest more in the upcoming release of the Nintendo Game Cube.
After the release of Mother 1+2 on the Game Boy Advance, Itoi was inspired to revive the project for the handheld, under the impression that development would be quicker and easier. This led to the release of Mother 3 in April of 2006.
History
EarthBound 64 had the same characters as Mother 3, however, it is not known how close the story was from the GBA version. The game was initially intended to have 12 chapters, with this number being reduced to 8 in the final version. As the final game, the story would follow different characters, sometimes through the same scene but with different points of view, with the main focus being around Lucas. Apparently, much of the game's story is the same as the GBA version, but Shigesato Itoi mentioned that the N64 ending was darker than the final version's one.
References
- ↑ Itoi-san: That's just about done. If we were still in the SNES age, this game would have gone on sale long ago. There are so many new issues in 3D. For example, a character running around a sharp corner, things like that happen constantly. [...] - Shigesato Itoi's interview with Mycom Inc.
- ↑ Iwata: We can't use the word "Chimera" in the subtitle anymore because someone else already owns a trademark on that. - Shigesato Itoi's Interview with Weekly Famitsu Magazine
- ↑ MOTHER 3 / EarthBound 64 preview - Youtube
- ↑ Itoi: The content hasn't changed that much, but it looks much better. That's mainly due to improvements in our development tools and the efforts of the Pokemon Stadium team, who have given us plenty of help. - Shigesato Itoi's interview with Mycom Inc.