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Template:FeaturedRandom/Prerelease:Mother 3
Featured Article
Developers: HAL Laboratory, Brownie Brown
Publisher: Nintendo
Developmental Timeline: 1989-2006
Nintendo 64DD, Nintendo 64, Game Boy Advance
Mother 3 was one of the most ambitious games that was hyped throughout its period of development in prerelease media, both in Japan and overseas, especially after EarthBound's initial failure in America. Many interesting details about the game's plot, world, and mechanics were hyped throughout the game's 12-year developmental cycle up until the long-awaited release.
Development turned out to be a huge burden to the team, where their ideas turned out to be much more ambitious than originally expected, being developed for much more advanced hardware at the time such as the cancelled Super Famicom CD add-on and the constantly-delayed 64DD. Even with development scaling back to N64 cartridge format, it would be canned due to the impending launch of the GameCube and to avoid going through the lengthy process of porting it to said console.
The move to Game Boy Advance still ended up taking the team a lengthy amount of time, but was able to preserve a good amount of gameplay and story elements whilst taking greater advantage of the handheld's limitations. Despite it all, the game's amount of unused oddities and sheer amount of prerelease media suggest that it was much more open-ended back then.
