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In a new interview, former Nintendo President Reggie Fils-Aime has revealed more details on why the game was never localized for North America
Speaking to Bloomberg while promoting his new book, Fils-Aime explained that when the game arrived in 2006 on the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo was already making a transition to the Nintendo DS handheld console. It simply didn’t make good business sense to spend money on a game for an older platform at the time, according to Fils-Aime, and it had nothing to do with fan rumors about the game having provocative content.
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Now Playing: Earthbound Nintendo Switch Online Update | Nintendo Direct February 2022
“That is not at all the issue why Mother 3 in particular never made it to the West,” Fils-Aime explained. “It was all based on the business needs and the business situation at the time.”
A cult classic game series, the original Mother game–or Earthbound as it was known in the West–first arrived on the Famicom in 1989 and told the story of the psychically-powered Ninten who used psychic powers to battle against sinister aliens. Earthbound and Earthbound Beginnings was eventually released on the Switch back in February.
Earthbound Beginnings is a retitled version of Mother that did receive an English translation from Nintendo, although this version of the game was originally only available on the Wii U Virtual Console when it was released in 2015.
As part of the press tour for his book, Disrupting the Game, Fils-Aime has touched on a number of gaming-related topics such as his thoughts on Elden Ring, the best-selling game in the US during February and March 2022. Fils-Aime officially retired from Nintendo in 2019 and then briefly served on GameStop’s board of directors until he See More
