Chadius on 17 March 2008
The rough answer is that Mother 2 (Earthbound) never sold well enough to justify the localization costs.
With the VC out, Nintendo could at least release Mother 1 on the (modded) Famicom. They've translated it already, so it wouldn't cost them anything right now.
Mother 3 would require translation. And they'd have to release it as a GBA game. And it probably wouldn't sell (see Mother 2 sales.)
There is no such thing as a console war. This is the first step to game design.
