In North America and Europe, Mother 2 is a title that’s included on the SNES Classic Mini. However in Japan, Mother 2 is completely absent from the Super Famicom Classic Mini.

In an interview with Famitsu (translated by Kotaku), Nintendo General Affairs Department’s Kazuyoshi Nishi explained that the idea was to balance the game lineup according to genres and games people loved to play.

“It’s not simply because it’s Japan that we didn’t include Mother 2, but with the balance of genres, IPs and characters, there were lots of other RPGs we wanted to compile besides Mother 2. The concept this time around was that this was something to be played with kids and friends,” Nishi said.

Nishi added that if there were too many RPG titles, many people would be playing alone. Thus Nintendo opted to include other multiplayer titles. In addition, we’d like to point out that the North American and European versions of the SNES Classic Mini are missing out on several Japanese exclusive titles, such as Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light and Soccer.