 Over at Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun, Shigesato Itoi, whose Mother 3 goes on sale this Thursday, after twelve years of bizarre delays, has an interview with, uh, himself. (Actually, the interviewer is just one of the copywriters for his blog. Still.)
The interview, in addition to providing bloggers the world over with an image of what Itoi's face looks like now as opposed to twenty years ago (they really need to stop using that image), will be published in a yet-undisclosed number of parts. It will focus on the development of the game. I will translate the interesting parts and report them to you.
The game's development for Game Boy Advance was decided when Shigeru Miyamoto and Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, one day three years ago, were accompanying Shigesato Itoi in a taxicab to Kyoto from Nintendo headquarters. Miyamoto asked Itoi casually, "Would it be possible to put Mother 3 on Gameboy Advance?" Itoi's response was, "I guess."
 Mother 3 had been planned as a movie-like epic experience; the move to GBA was like settling for a "small theatrical production." Itoi admits to being rather afraid of his directorial duties. Yet he knew, "If the script is good, you can put on the play anywhere."
Itoi knew, at this point, that all he had to do was hole himself up somewhere "for at least a month" and finish writing the script, line for line. This is slightly different from how he wrote Mother 2, which was more relaxed; much dialogue was filled in naturally during development. From his comments in this interview, it's clear, then, that when Itoi said in his blog last year "I need to finish it; I need to go somewhere I can be alone and get it finished once and for all," he was talking about the game's script.
Points not being addressed yet: why exactly the Nintendo 64 game was canceled, whether or not the game's text will have kanji in it (which would make the lines easier to comprehend without accidentally speaking aloud on the train), whether or not the story is the same as the original planned story, et cetera. I'll keep up on the interview, just because that's what I do.
Meanwhile, if you haven't read my review of Mother 2 / Earthbound, which is really long, and if you are immune to severe spoilers (and length), go ahead.
The game recently scored 10, 9, 8, 8 from Famitsu, though forget about that -- I have your insertcredit.com exclusive first play impressions on the internet right here: it's pretty good. I like the music.
As always, if you're not getting your Mother 3 news from insertcredit.com, you're probably getting it from somewhere else.
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