Trivia / Oddity

• Content Leak: Prior to its rebranding, a disgruntled anonymous 4chan user (supposedly one of the previous devs from before the retool) managed to leak some major spoiler-heavy details about the plot of the game back when it was still known as Mother 4. The devs have confirmed the leak was legitimate and were rather dishearted by it, though apparently the rebranding has caused some of the details to no longer be true.
  SageWaterDragon: This is all significantly outdated information, but it's real. Major plot and design elements have changed.
• Creative Differences:
  • The staff eventually wound up arguing with Shane, an up-and-coming musical artist who technically owns the soundtrack he composed for the game (from when it was still going to be Mother 4). They came to the tough decision of removing the former soundtrack and letting him strike a deal with GameChops, which distributes video game-related albums that can be bought. However, weeks later the staff made a deal with GameChops to get the rights for the non-remix songs for Mother 4, with the aid of DJ Cutman.
  • When the rebranding was happening, a former dev ended up leaving the project and apparently wasn't very pleased with how it was turning out. He leaked a large amount of information on 4chan in retaliation.
• Development Gag: An NPC from the gameplay trailer looks like Meryl's design from an old prototype.
• Doing It for the Art:
  • Why this whole project began. It started as a game made on RPG Maker, then moved to Game Maker for better capabilities, before finally having its own custom engine made. Simple, low-quality sprites evolved into what they are now, cleaner, polished looking sprites similar to Mother 3. To top it all off, the team went all the way, even having clay models of the cast created like past games. All of this was done for free, no donations, no gifts, just the MOTHER 4 team wanting their game played when it comes out after over around seven / eight years of development.^note It should be noted, however, that the game in its current state has only existed since 2012, when it was taken more seriously.
  • Then when the devs rebranded to an original I.P., many were worried that they'd end up putting it up for sale. However, in a surprising move, the devs made it explicitly clear that they would not be accepting any form of payment for it. The game will still be 100% free. That's right. After years of working on it, years of polish and script rewrites, and creating something very much worthy of selling for a good price, the devs are still putting it up for free, just so people can play and enjoy their game.
• Schedule Slip:
  • Got hit with this hard during 2014 / 15. After years of development, the dev team finally announced a release date of winter 2014... which eventually got pushed back to summer 2015. They then said it would be sometime in June... only to then announce that they'd no longer be announcing release dates until they were sure it was one hundred percent ready. When the rebranding trailer was revealed, the only hint of a release date was ""It'll be out when it's ready. Relax til then."
  • To note; the dev team has said the game is complete, but it's still rather rough around the edges. They want to touch up on certain aspects of it before releasing to make sure there aren't any major Game Breaking Bugs, as well as touch up on certain story aspects and map design, while also making sure the difficulty is well balanced. They've also ramped up the development team and are putting more effort into it than before to hopefully get it out quicker. All of this is to hopefully prevent a possible backlash from releasing then fixing these possible issues, which other fangames such as Mega Man Unlimited and Mega Man Rock Force ended up experiencing from doing that.
  • The teaser for the Oddity rebranding was finally revealed on January 2, 2020, with the release date being as follows: "When it's ready.".
• Trolling Creator: When the dev team started up their bi-weekly updates, they immediately started playing with the fans expectations with what the updates were. Some examples include...
  • When they first started, one of the dev posted a gif of Travis walking up to a broken spire. People believed the update would go into what the spires were. Turns out, the gif was part of the game's Attract Mode, which is what the dev ended up showing off next update.
  • During an update going into how EarthBound style battle backgrounds are made, one of the dev showed off a tool he created specifically for the game. ^note Also, no, for anyone wondering if it was released, it wasn't. According to the Dev, it only works and translates well for Mother 4 mechanics and programming, and thus wouldn't work well for any other MOTHER fangames on the net. Notably, in the window showing what background it is, the name for it is conspicuously blurred out. Naturally, fans ended up having a field day over guessing what it's for.
  • During an update when they were going into the streamlined menus, they had a gif that quickly went over Zack's inventory that was filled to the brim with items, and went to fast to properly see. Taking a screen cap of it at the very second it shows reveals... An undershirt◊, nine cups of coffee, and a banana.
• Vaporware:
  • The game has had a rather bumpy road, since all the way back to when it was a fanmade MOTHER 4.^note Hey, fan-made or official, it wouldn't be a MOTHER game if it didn't face this to some degree To give a good idea, the game started development in early 2008, and didn't even get an estimated release date until 2013, and then that release date got pushed back to 2015, and then the team stated that they wouldn't make that deadline and will no longer state prospective release dates until it's done. On March 1st 2017, the devs revealed the game would be undergoing heavy rebranding. While the game is still in development, this also meant that it would not be MOTHER 4 any longer.
  • The game has gone through at least five engine changes and redesigns since its initial reveal as Mother 4 in 2008. The last official update has been at least two years ago. The devs themselves have gone mostly silent since. Whether or not Oddity will ever be released in any shape or form at this point is, unfortunately, hard to say.
• What Could Have Been: As mentioned many times on the pages of this work, the game was originally intended to be a proper Fan Sequel to the Mother series. However, concerns over getting Cease and Desisted by Nintendo over them wanting to protect their I.P. made the dev team rebrand the game into an original I.P., so that years of work wouldn't go to waste. However, on November 28, 2021, a separate trailer for another Mother 4 fangame styled after Oddity was announced on Youtube.

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