Hey guys, just wanted to provide a fast update on a few things.
So first, regarding music takedowns, I've done some minor research. First, the music and fan stuff didn't go down the same date. It seems based on the timeline I've been finding that Pollyanna and other such fan projects were taken down first and then a few days later, the OST got nuked. It appears anything not the OST has had its copyright claims lifted. So this appears to have been a coordinated attack on the fan projects and OST, but someone stepped in and reversed the decision on the fan works. Another note, as stated earlier, is that the OSTs for Mother 1 and 3 are fine. 3 will stay fine; Sony has no claim over the third game's OST. Watch out on Mother 1's. That one may get nuked. If there's a song you want saved, I'd get it now.
Regardless, I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that these are not in regards to the albums. A quick search reveals that none of the popular uploads for the various Mother 1/2 albums have been taken down, and these albums released months ago. But that does make it interesting that they choose May to do this.
In regards to HAL, there's been no credible leaks as to what HAL has been doing, one of the few major Nintendo studios like that right now. Further, their silence and lack of game output is extremely out of character. From what I've gathered about the company, they need to regularly put out games in order to stay in good financials as none of their properties besides Kirby have any major sales history behind them. For reference, during the 3DS' lifespan, HAL released 13 games, plus 2 on the Wii and one on the Wii U. 16 games in 8 years. For Switch, they've done five in 4, and two of these were games where a partnered studio did most of the development and the third was a port (Part Time UFO). The remaining two were Kirby Star Allies and BoxBoy+BoxGirl. And the most recent of those two were 2019, and BoxBoy definitely isn't a development heavy title, by HAL's own admission. Which means most of HAL has been working on something completely under wraps for about 3 years now. No one has been able to leak what it is and HAL has completely shoved aside their regular release schedule for whatever they're working on. It's undoubtedly a huge project either way. They haven't taken a break like this since the mid 2000's when HAL was trying to figure out what it wanted to do.
If Mother was to get remade, it's extremely likely that Nintendo and Itoi would attempt to get one of the teams that worked on the original games to handle it. Which leaves three candidates. First, we have APE, now known as Creatures. Considering their now intensive investment in the Pokemon franchise, it's doubtful this team would accept the job due to a lack of resources to handle it. Then you have 1-Up Studios (known at the time as Brownie Brown), who even then was only a support developer, so while they could certainly provide support for the Mother remakes, they wouldn't be able to handle it alone. That leaves the only real candidate being HAL Laboratory. This studio is one that constantly jumped between projects so they always had a team ready. I think that if remakes were being done, HAL would probably end up being the leading team unless HAL declined (At which point, I think Monolith would probably get the job, but we know what they're working on so it can't be them).
In regards to the theme parks, we can't seem to find anything in regards to Mother at these parks. I've already received word that Nintendo and Universal have been incredibly active taking down any leaks in regards to the parks as they come out. It's entirely possible that it has disappeared. I also found documents that show Kirby will eventually also be included in this park (alongside Zelda and DK). Anyone else find interesting that the two non-fully owned Nintendo properties are those with extensive ties to HAL? In addition, another note I want to add is that Nintendo's stuff appears to be getting preferential treatment with talks of parks getting closed down to build more Nintendo stuff. I expect something like Toon Lagoon may be torn down to create a HAL Laboratory exclave where Kirby and Mother will be found.
Mother is also the only franchise confirmed to be at the park that has no games on Switch. Pikmin also had this "honor" but that changed with Pikmin 3 Deluxe last year. Why include a series in a park if there's no way for most consumers to enjoy the original product? That's not a smart business decision for Universal or Nintendo and I doubt Universal really pushed hard for Mother, that was probably Nintendo's request. And if so, why?
I also want to notice that I have now seen 4 things get taken down this year. First, there was a tweet from years ago (just after Earthbound got released on Wii U) where Itoi was working on a "Mother republication" project that would make "Mother playable". Then, we had Itoi's like and retweet of a mockup of a Mother 1 remake disappear. Now we have the Earthbound OST and the theme parks scrubbing mention of Mother all in the months leading up to E3. It's starting to feel like someone is trying to prepare for something/hide their tracks.
That's all I have to say for now. Feel free to ask for clarification.
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