Shigesato Itoi on Mother 3’s development and much more

The enjoyment of crammed texts and ‘things people couldn’t care less about’

ND: Is there any advice for ‘how to properly play this’ to the young readers who are going to touch Mother 3 for the first time with this digital release?

SI: I have… no advice for that (laughs).

ND: So there are all kinds of messages included inside the game.

SI: It’s really perhaps indeed like that. I might want to say things like ‘you shouldn’t play too hastily in this part, but you shouldn’t move too sluggishly in that part’, but no matter how they play it, each person should be able to find their own way to enjoy Mother 3.

ND: I see.

SI: However, I might be bothered if they don’t read the text (laughs). When the frog spoke about good-for-nothing things but people skipped it, [I feel like] ‘Hey I’ve wrote that after much trouble!’

(both people laugh)

SI: I think games are basically an interaction of numbers, but I want [people to] also enjoy the nuances of speeches. For example, things like people who said ‘I’m sorry the speech is getting long’ but then keep talking, or the mood of people who are mumbling after adding ‘Ah, wait a minute’. Let’s read the text, this is an important thing.

ND: Finally, would Itoi-san please leave a message you want to say to the fans right now.

SI: In this generation perhaps games like Mother, that has a lot of things people couldn’t care less about included in it, are difficult to make. Even among players it might be criticized as ‘It’s crappy!’, but Mother is the lump of things like that. However, even after a long time has passed this is still getting supported, so I would like to stand still and think about the reason [why people still support Mother to this day].

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