EarthBound Central , Itoi posted the following on Twitter : “Since it’s now okay to blurt this out, here goes: the ‘Mother republication’ thing I mentioned briefly before is making progress. It’s not Mother 4 though! 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.”

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Mother, of course, is the name of the EarthBound series in Japan, and EarthBound Central notes that Itoi is referring to the entire series when he says Mother, rather than to the first entry specifically. The site also notes that by saying “playable,” Itoi is referring to the fact that the games are hard to come by and out of print rather than implying that they were bad or unplayable to start.It’s unclear exactly what Itoi is referring to, as making the original games more readily available could include anything from a Virtual Console release to a release for DS. A collection of the first Mother games (including Mother 2, which became EarthBound in the West) was released for Game Boy Advance in Japan in 2003 but never saw a release in other territories. Mother 3 was released in Japan in 2006.For now, EarthBound fans will have to keep waiting, but it’s certainly nice to get a glimmer of hope for a re-release, isn’t it?

Andrew Goldfarb is IGN’s associate news editor. Keep up with pictures of the latest food he’s been eating by following @garfep on Twitter or garfep on IGN.