Earthbound

Alright! March is here, so now my bandwidth limits are lifted. This month will see the completion of the Battletoads playthrough guide. But because college was getting in the way, I don't have any videos ready to upload right now. I should have three more up by the end of the weekend. So today, in honor of over 600 blog views, I wan't to talk about one of my favorite games: Earthbound.

Mother 2 in Japan. I can actually tell you who all these people are.

I have mentioned this game before. It is really a great game and my favorite SNES game. The sequel to the unreleased in the US Mother, this is a quirky RPG following the exploits of Ness and his friends as he tries to save the world from crazy cults, corrupt officials and aliens. The game sold terribly upon release, mostly because of a very misguided advertising campaign. It has now achieved cult status as a real gem of SNES library and now commands outrageous prices on ebay. So I have only emulated it.

Earthbound did a lot of things that set it apart from other RPGs. The first thing that you will notice is that this is set in the 1990's, a time period very different from the usual fantasy themes of RPG's at the time. And all the weapons and items are set to match: swords become baseball bats, inns become hotels, and food items are things like hamburgers and pizza. The next thing you will notice is the angle. Its tough to explain, but your view is sort of an elevated angle, so most of the paths are diagonals instead of straight up and down. This gave them some interesting art options for the towns and cities because you don't only see the front side of the building. My favorite addition was the removal of random encounters. All enemies had sprites unique to them and when they ganged up on you, you saw multiple sprites charge you before it went into the battle mode. This was a nice addition, taking a lot of the guess work out of exploring. Because of your walk speed you usually couldn't run away, but you could try and some people used edge of screen exploits to get rid of enemy sprites.

Towns were real things, not pictures of towns you walked on top of to enter.

What most people remember about Earthbound was the humor. The game had a really surreal sense of humor that was often poking fun at itself and RPG cliches. A visitor from the future who helps you begin your quest was forced to take the form of a bee to make the trip. After he helps you defeat a really tough enemy, he is promptly squished by a woman afraid of bees. The stereotypical bat enemy is named Mr. Batty and his battle music sounds an awful lot like the Batman TV show theme. One of the enemies is named "The New-Age Retro Hippie" and he attacks you with a ruler, which does nothing. My favorite moments are when the game needs to move the story along and doesn't even pretend it isn't forcefully moving the story along. When you encounter a large pencil shaped statue blocking your path, you get a call from the Apple Kid, an inventor you are funding. He tells you that he has invented a brand new device called the Pencil Eraser: it destroys all nearby pencil shaped objects and you should come pick it up. The below video has my absolute favorite example of a deus ex machina. Skip ahead to 4:45.

But everyone seems to forget how creepy the game was. After beating the first boss, you try to go the next town and the police stop you. Before you can pass through, you have to fight 5 police officers who gang up on you. And they are tough! Its one of the few times the game actually requires you do some grinding to level up. Police brutality much. Later, as Poo, you are training to master your mu. Part of the training requires you to sit still while a creepy spirit takes of your legs, arms and eyeballs. WHAT THE HELL!? THIS IS A KIDS GAME? And of course, the final fight has you fighting an embodiment of true evil, Giygas, who no longer has an actual body. Most people believe he is a fetus, but he probably isn't. One, I have played the first Mother game and Gyiyg (as he was called in the first game) was originally an alien raised by humans. And two, Shigesato Itoi has said that Giygas wasn't a fetus and he made the freakin' game. Giygas has been reborn as pure evil, so there is some traction to the fetus theory. But whatever he is, he is creepy and the battle where you face him is definitely one of the most disturbing moments in video games ever.

Most of the rest of the game was all bright and happy

OK, lets step back for a second. The game was excellent as a game, but it was also a fascinating piece of art. It was set in Eagleland, but it was obviously supposed to be the USA. But of course it is made a Japanese company, so it is really funny to see how Japanese visualized Americans at the time. There are all sorts of little references to pop culture. At one point you ride in a yellow submarine. Honestly, this game is just a masterpiece in its own right. Sadly, Nintendo of America really dropped the ball on this one. We could have had Mother 3 in this country if this one had sold better. Oh well.