Today, a 40-minute Nintendo Direct is coming to knock our socks off, blow our minds, and/or deliver crushing disappointment. Whatever happens, it will be a scene. And whenever an event like this draws near, people lose their minds and start reading extremely hard into minor details that might mean nothing. Case in point: Mother / EarthBound series creator Shigesato Itoi has retweeted the Nintendo Direct, causing instant, baseless speculation that maybe the series is finally coming to Nintendo Switch. (The tweet itself is just about what time the event starts and how it might be snowing in Japan at that time.) At the moment, none of the games are playable on Switch, and Mother 3 has never been officially released in the West.
?7?????????????????????? https://t.co/TQk985WDqp
— ?? ?? (@itoi_shigesato) February 9, 2022
Despite how absurd it is to fixate on Shigesato Itoi choosing to retweet a Nintendo Direct, there is one extra morsel of information that makes this “Is EarthBound coming to Switch?” situation more interesting than usual: The NES and SNES apps for Nintendo Switch Online are scheduled to receive maintenance today, and the timing seems too coincidental to not be connected to the Direct in some way. Since the launch of Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack, which added Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis games in a separate pricing tier, Nintendo has added no further games to the NES and SNES libraries, despite previously saying that it would.
So if you combine a Shigesato Itoi retweet and NES / SNES app maintenance, it looks like at least EarthBound Beginnings and EarthBound could be coming to Nintendo Switch Online, if not Mother 3. But is this a sure thing? Good lord no. Brace yourself for enormous disappointment as usual.
But in the meantime, Itoi is trolling international fans pretty hard:
“This Tweet is getting a really big response in foreign languages, but are people really that interested in the snow?” https://t.co/S3WZ9PUPqz
— Cheesemeister ???? (@Cheesemeister3k) February 9, 2022
Update 1:28 p.m. ET: Uh, Itoi is still busy trolling people. This is getting very interesting.
“Looking at the current temperature, cloud cover, precipitation, etc. on this ‘EarthBall,’ it doesn’t really look like snow. But will it?”
[Ed.: The AR-powered ‘EarthBall’ is called the Hobonichi Globe in English.] https://t.co/111HIrUgjJ— Cheesemeister ???? (@Cheesemeister3k) February 9, 2022
Update 6:29 p.m. ET: EarthBound Beginnings and EarthBound are now confirmed for NSO.
