What are Mother 3+ and Mother 3i?

Mother 3's music, 250 tracks by composer Shogo Sakai in the game's own Sound Player, reached album form twice. Mother 3+, a CD released November 2, 2006, is an arranged album whose plus sign marks its outside performers, guest musicians and vocalists joining Sakai's score; its lead track is the vocal Love Theme, We miss you, with lyrics by Itoi, music by Sakai and vocals by Taeko Onuki.

Mother 3i followed on February 6, 2007 as a digital-only release: fifteen long medley-style tracks arranged by Sakai himself, the i standing for both iPod and I, as Itoi explained it. It reached American iTunes that April at $9.99, one of the very few official Mother 3 objects ever sold in the West in its era.

Both albums were issued on Tokyo Itoi Shigesato Office, Itoi's own imprint, rather than a major label, the series' music kept in the family the way its books would later be. Both have since been removed from iTunes, leaving the CD of Mother 3+ and secondhand digital accounts as the surviving forms.

For collectors the pair complete the series' album shelf: the 1989 vocal record, the 1994 Mother 2 album, and these two, an arranged and a medley reading of the third game's score.