Shigesato Itoi interview comic explores the origins of MOTHER

Unfortunately not a scratch-and-sniff comic

Shigesato Itoi is not what you would call a video game superstar. He broke into the game industry as a copywriter with a question: “What RPG would Steven Spielberg create?”

From that question, coupled with his perseverance to bring his vision to life, he created the MOTHER franchise. Sure it’s only three games, two if you wanna count the ones that have seen western releases, but it cannot be denied that fans of the MOTHER series are passionate about the trilogy. But does even the greatest fan know what the first MOTHER game was an homage to?

If you don’t know the answer to that last question, fear not because series creator Shigesato Itoi himself was recently interviewed by Japanese author Keiichi Tanaka about the inspiration, the arduous development process of the MOTHER, MOTHER 2/EarthBound‘s development and, briefly, MOTHER 3. The best part? It’s all presented in comic form, which brings a great visual aid to Itoi’s story. The interview could also serve as inspiration for anyone that strives to complete their goals, as it also touches on persevering through multiple failures, while still maintaining enthusiasm for your vision.

The translated interview comic can be found here and is part of a series of interviews on denfaminicogamer.jp where notable Japanese game developers are interviewed about the passion projects of the early parts of their career. So far, beside Itoi, the creators of Yakuza, and Zoids as well as the legendary Hironobu Sakaguchi have also been interviewed as part of the series.

Keiichi Tanaka explores the history behind MOTHER [denfaminicogamer]