Ever since Mother 3 — the third & final game in the Earthbound series — got released 11 years ago in Japan for Game Boy Advance on April 20th, 2006, Earthbound fans have been clamoring for an official English translation. More and more rumors have been showing up in the past few days that say Mother 3 AKA Earthbound 2 will be coming to Nintendo Switch’s Virtual Console download service in the second quarter of 2017 between April and June.
According to unnamed sources from Laura K., Mother 3 AKA Earthbound 2 will be announced at the January 12th, 2017, Nintendo Switch Live Stream event that starts at 8:00 p.m. PT / 11:00 p.m. ET.
Additionally, the developer behind Mother 3 — 1-Up Studios — announced on their Facebook page that they will be attending that very Switch reveal event by showing off the invite to the presentation. To quote them: “Happy new year! This year is going to be a very interesting year since the new stuff comes out of the world. Thank you for your best wishes this year.” But that could be wishful thinking and they may reveal a new Nintendo game at the event. Keep in mind they are the team behind Sword of Mana, Heroes of Mana, Magical Vacation, and Magical Starsign.
It’s fun to note that back on December 17th, 2015, Mother 3 was released for the Japanese Virtual Console on the Wii U, so Nintendo’s definitely not opposed to showing the series some love and attention. Fingers crossed an English-language port of the RPG game isn’t too far off.
End-Note: As much as I like rumors & speculation, personally I think all the recent Nintendo Switch rumors & leaks outed by twitterers Laura Kate Dale & Emily Rogers completely ruined the latest Nintendo Digital Online Events. Since up until last year Nintendo has been really good at keeping huge projects cloaked in secret, always leading to fantastic surprises during their reveals at E3 and at Nintendo-hosted online presentations the rest of the year. So here we are in the wait leading up to the January 12th Nintendo Switch livestream and one after the other rumor is making the rounds, often leaving us to doubt their legitimacy and if we should write about it and ruin the surprise? With social media nowadays it seems you’ll find out one way or another anyway, and news is news, so sometimes in our excitement we will cover these rumors. I hope that’s ok.
Sources: Laurakbuzz, Realotakugamer & Rumorexplain
Do you want to see Mother 3 get translated into English as Earthbound 2?