So far, their is no news that Mother 1 & 3 are ever going to be released over in US. If you want to play them, the only way that you can do so is to get them on their original platforms and learn Japanese, or by other means...

As much as I want it to I know thanks to common sense that Mother/ Earthbound will never ever be back in the USA or the UK ever again. Those games are basically gone for good sadly.

I know one day we will get a Mother/Earthbound game outside of Japan. It could be a remake, or it could be Mother 4, but I know one day we will.

Remakes and re-releases are out of the question. Nintendo doesn't like lawsuits, and attempting to iron out the legal issues would be like separating a desert of sand and salt with a pair of tweezers.

On the topic of Mother 4, series creator Shigesato Itoi is done with Mother games. Nintendo could make a game called "Mother 4" without him, but given the series' circumstances, they won't.

Also, here are a couple things Itoi has said about Mother 4.

There won’t be a MOTHER 4.

... I’ve started to grow fond of people who like the MOTHER games, but to put that in a cooler way, I might say, “The very lives you’re living now are MOTHER 4.” I really feel that way. “Today we had lots of ridiculous thoughts, today we felt sadness, today we laughed a lot.” That’s what I had set out to do within the world of those games.

... If someone were to come up to me and say, “I’d like to make a MOTHER 4,” I might just say, “Sure, go ahead!” (laugh) Yeah, if there was a MOTHER 4, I’d really love to play it.

And that's why the fans are making Mother 4.

Anything can happen, but I don't see any flying pigs, so it's too early to speculate.

@Rift What legal issues?

Most people don't even know what Earthbound is. No EB games are going to be re-released.

Earthbound itself has some licensed music supposedly and that is a big hang up. Also as much as people froth and beg for it online, it's a very small outstanding vocal minority that are a mix of fans of the game but also just rabid collectors who need another piece to make their collection of 'all SNES RPGs', 'total cart only' collection or more for the most part.

The thing is, the honest odds of this ever coming out on the 3DS VC is about the same chance evidence will come out that Hitler, JFK, and Elvis didn't die before their time and were hanging out in an Argentinean based bunker sitting back enjoying retirement and laughing at all the ongoing speculation until the day they died or will die.

We will see Mother 1 and Mother 3 in the West...after a hundred years.

No, the problem with Earthbound is that it doesn't have licensed music. Unfortunately many of the things in Earthbound skirt the line of parody and plagiarism (through a lawyer's eyes), and it's honestly a wonder it saw a western release at all. As pleasant as a surprise it would be, there's really no chance whatsoever of it coming out on the 3DS Virtual Console. Or any Virtual Console. And considering the VC is driven by re-releases, and neither Mother 1 nor 3 were released, that basically means: don't hold your breath.

Luckily, both the Mother 1+2 and Mother 3 carts look lovely sticking out of my DS Lite so I ain't complain'. :V

I'm still wondering how it got released in the first place?
Why wasn't all the copyrited material a big problem back when it came out on Snes?

It was a huge problem back then, there were many graphical changes to the game to try and remove all the references for copyrighted material (the most famous one I think are the changes made to the Tonzura Brothers/Runaway Five to make them less obviously the Blues Brothers) and also many bits of text that were translated so as to not mention copyrighted stuff. However they didn't redo any of the game's soundtrack and I think that's where a lot of issue still lies.

It was, but as in an article I read pointed out, they didn't have the Internet back then, so it was harder to look everything up.

And yet many other games people don't know about get released on the Virtual Console.

And Earthbound is more well known now thanks to the Super Smash Bros. series.

wwww: As I've had it explained to me some years ago, yes, it is the soundtrack that is the largest block against it. There's stuff in there a lawyer would have a field day with trying to sue the crap out of NOA for. I wish I knew the specifics of why, but that would be it, and it's not economical for them to bust open an old SNES game, remake the music, and then republish it at $8 as a lame download. That's why it's toast, and with it gone and being so many years beyond the 3rd one, and then shelving the first, that's why it's a dead franchise outside Japan.