As an upcoming book about the life of Satoru Iwata is about to hit the shelves in Japan, game director Yasuyuki Honne said Nintendo and Namco discussed about creating an Earthbound game for GameCube.
According to the post on Nintendo Everything, Honne said he met with both Iwata and Shigesato Itoi (creator of Earthbound). He was working for Namco back in 2003.
During his conversation with Itoi and Iwata, Honne showed them a visual concept for what could be an Earthbound game. Unfortunately, Itoi didn’t show a positive expression.
On Twitter, Honne showed two images of the game in development.
続き→糸井さん『どうせ岩田くんが話仕組んだんでしょ』。一同ポカーン。岩田さん、アチャーな表情。結局話は流れちゃったけど、私が持ち込んだフェルトテイストで80年代米国を再現する絵回りのアイデアは糸井さんも面白がってくれた。二度と表に出ないと思う絵がこれ。2003年夏の思い出。 pic.twitter.com/AzvFgqNGoi
— 本根 康之 (@honnesan) July 10, 2019
According to the message on Twitter:
“I’m looking forward to the forthcoming book about Iwata-san. I met both Iwata-san and Itoi-san at the same time – it was back in 2003 when there were talks between Namco and Nintendo about a GameCube version of Mother. I was happy to come up with a visual concept, and when I went to Aoyama Iwata-san was also present. Itoi-san didn’t seem very interested; he felt it was a little strange, and yet we continued talks. Itoi-san said, ‘I wonder if Iwata-kun has any ideas?’ He seemed flabbergasted, he had an aura of something akin to ‘Aw jeez.’ In the end nothing came of it, but Itoi-san enjoyed the felt-like recreations of 1980’s America that I had come up with. Here are some images that I didn’t think I’d show off more than once. Ah, memories of the summer of 2003.”
[Source]: Nintendo Everything: Nintendo and Namco discussed a potential EarthBound game for the GameCube, concepts shown.
