Great topic!
While the only work I’ve read of Itoi was his collaboration with Haruki Murakami in a roughly English translated document “Let’s Meet in a Dream” I did finish Earthbound, the fan translation of Mother 3, and about 20 hours of Earthbound ZERO before my save file got corrupted…
I’ve been recently playing the 2005 RPG, PoPoLoCrois PSP, and I’m getting a bunch of MOTHER vibes..
From the deceptively simplistic art direction and quirky dialogue, it just exudes MOTHER vibes to me. The beginning premise is actually bringing your MOTHER back to consciousness.
While walking around the world, your team also follows you around
A bunch of NPCs also just look like Mother 3’s DUSTER.
There’s a bunch of wacky towns too, just like Earthbound. This town is just a bunch of robots, who do and say wacky things (sorry, didn’t take pictures for the wacky things these robots do).
And in Mother 3 you meet this really tall guy.
But this guy just takes the really tall guy to the next level!
There’s also a transportation creature… in the form of a SPACE WHALE.
Which reminded me of Nessie.
I don’t know, I’m only like five hours into this journey, I will update as I play more.
Another game that felt like MOTHER is YAKUZA LIKE A DRAGON/ YAKUZA 7.
But it’s more like FATHER than it is MOTHER..