The Mother series — more widely known in North America as Earthbound — has developed a loyal cult following, with fans expressing their adulation and hoping that we’ll see the franchise revived in some way. The most common requests include localizing Mother 3 (a Game Boy Advance title) and releasing Earthbound (that’s Mother 2 in Japan) on the Wii Virtual Console.

It looks like something related to the series is definitely going on as creator Shigesato Itoi has tweeted a couple of hints regarding the Mother name. Thanks to some translation work by Earthbound Central, we’re able to report that Itoi stated, “Since it’s now okay to blurt this out, here goes: the ‘MOTHER republication’ thing I mentioned briefly before is making progress.”

The developer continued, saying that there was still no news on a Mother 4 game. Instead, he could very well be talking about the entire series. “It’s not ‘MOTHER 4,’ though!” tweeted Itoi. “This has to do with making ‘MOTHER‘ playable. I can’t give out any details just yet, but I do at least need to say that it isn’t 4.”

It’s hard to say what this means at this point, but as a huge fan of Earthbound, this news has me excited. We could be in store for some sort of compilation on the 3DS or Wii U, digitally or at retail. Perhaps we may finally get a digital release of Earthbound. Or possibly, we’re in store for a localization of Mother 3. Nothing is official yet, so this is all just speculation on my part — speculation and wishful thinking.

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