New Earthbound Being Developed Secretly?

As the old X-Files adage goes, "I want to believe".  There's a flurry of rumors regarding Mother 3, also known as the sequel to the classic Super NES RPG Earthbound.  Mother 3 has quite the rocky history, if you'll recall.  It started as a Nintendo 64DD project, then dumped the 64DD features to become a pure Nintendo 64 game, then became dormant for several years before allegedly jumping to the Game Boy Advance.  Now there's word that the series creator, Shigesato Itoi, is secretly at work in Japan on Mother 3 for the Nintendo DS.  A Flash movie from developer Brownie Brown has surfaced (in Japanese, no less, so why not view the unofficial English translation instead) that features many stylistic elements from Earthbound, while over at developer Marvelous there is this countdown featuring a fellow who looks a lot like Earthbound's Dr. Andonuts Marvelous is actually working on a Nintendo DS RPG currently known as Contact.

It's all terribly circumstantial and may not amount to anything, but after waiting more than ten years for a follow up to Earthbound, I'm ready to believe.  If this sequel does see the light of day, Nintendo had better release it in North America.  I'd even spend a few dollars extra to get the unreleased-outside-of-Japan Mother 1+2 game pak for the Game Boy Advance included in the same package.

(via 4 color rebellion)