I think I'm one of the only people that actually enjoyed that one. Then again, I'm biased since it's the game that actually got me into the series (after watching the commercial). The difficulty didn't bother me much, since I wasn't yet spoiled by Earthbound's relative easiness.
About a year ago, Mato started tinkering around with a Mother remake by hacking Earthbound. Unfortunately, doesn't look like he's working on it at all now.