EarthBound

EarthBound
You cannot grasp the true magnificence of this game.
Protagonist(s): Ness, Paula, Jeff, Poo (all renameable) Genre(s): Role-playing Platform(s): Super Nintendo Entertainment System Game Boy Advance Release: SNES JP: August 27, 1994 NA: June 5, 1995 Game Boy Advance JP: June 20, 2003 Developer(s): Ape HAL Laboratory Publisher(s): Nintendo Country: Japan Series: Mother/EarthBound Predecessor: Mother Successor: Mother 3

EarthBound, known as Mother 2 in Japan, is a role-playing video game co-developed by Ape Inc. and HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1994-1995, and then ported to the Game Boy Advance in 2003.

Plot

The game takes place in the 1990s, sometime after events of the original Mother, in the fictional country of Eagleland. A young boy named Ness investigates a nearby meteorite crash with his neighbor, Porky Minch (mistranslated as Pokey Minch) to find his brother Picky. They find that an alien force, Giygas, has enveloped and consumed the world in hatred and consequently turned animals, humans, and objects into malicious creatures. A small, bee-like creature from the future named Buzz-Buzz instructs Ness to collect melodies in a Sound Stone from eight Sanctuaries to preemptively stop the force, but is injured shortly thereafter when Pokey and Picky's mother mistakes him for a pest and passes shortly after. During Ness' to visit the sanctuaries, he visits the cultists of Happy Happy Village, where he saves Paula, and an invaded Threed, where the two of them fall prey to a trap. After Paula telepathically instructs Jeff in a Winters boarding school to rescue them, they continue to Saturn Valley, a village filled with a species of creatures called Mr. Saturn, the city of Fourside, and the seaside resort Summers. Meanwhile, Poo, the prince of Dalaam, undergoes training called "Mu Training" before joining the party as well. The chosen four then continue their journey to visit the sanctuaries and defeat Giygas.

Why It's PSI Rockin'

1. The game itself is a funny RPG where many NPCs in the game tend to break the fourth wall sometimes, and the game does not take itself way too seriously. Even if it does take itself too seriously sometimes, it does that in a very good way.
2. Awesome soundtrack with many themes that fit the area or have unique themes. It can either sound like as if it was telling the player to take their time, sometimes it can sound pretty spooky, especially in the cave of Winters, and of course it has the happy town music that makes you want to relax, especially when Ness is at his home.
3. The plot is so creative and unique it can be even considered as one of the best of any game. At first, EarthBound may seem just like a simple kids game and a friendly RPG will little-to-no creepy moments, but the plot becomes darker and darker as the game progresses.
4. Humorous and quirky dialogue, which, as mentioned before, often breaks the fourth wall, such as a bee from 10 years into the future, as if the game predicted its own legacy, or teasing a story about a creature from a vegetable soup, but making way for your game in order not to lure you in. In fact, the dialogue is so funny it makes you want to talk to every NPC in the game.
5. The art style in the game is very impressive and it features techniques that are rarely seen in any other game. For example, just before you'll be able to enter the Lost Underworld, you can see Ness' thoughts being written directly on a wall with LED pixels as the font, and the backgrounds used when you fight the enemy. Sometimes, it looks as if you're fighting the background itself.
6. The special effects that came from the PK/PSI moves are satisfying and psychedelic, especially when using PK/PSI Rockin' as Ness.
7. Bizarrely unique choices for enemies that little to no RPGs use. Examples of these include a cup of coffee, a car, melting clocks, a hipster, or even a speed limit sign. Some of these even look like they were made due to insanity.
8. Mr. Saturn, the creatures that appear in the game, are some of the funniest and most memorable video game characters. Additionally, when they talk, rather than using the regular in-game font, Mr. Saturn have their own font. They also have a quirky personality and are even trusted by outsiders such as Jeff and his father, Dr. Andonuts.
9. Magicant, a realm created by Ness' mind, is a pivotal point in the game, and is overall a great result of the Eight Melodies. It is one of the most colourful, imaginatively designed and artsy parts of the game besides the battles, with many great NPCs that make you want to stop in your tracks to see what they have to say. The boss fight in it is your evil self in a form of a golden statue, and you radically power up after defeating it and when Magicant disappears.
10. Instead of weapons that you can equip in a regular, simple RPG, you can equip your characters with yo-yos, frying pans, baseball bats, and other stuff, which comes as part of the game's humor. While the game does have a weapon which is a sword, that's it, really.
11. Jeff has some items that are so powerful that they can rival high-end PK/PSI moves, such as PK/PSI Rockin, with them being shield killers, Hungry HP-Suckers, laser guns, and most notable, the multi-bottle rockets, which are capable of causing thousands of HP in damage. PSI Rockin Ω, one of the most powerful moves in-game, cannot do more than 960 damage to an enemy, which itself is impressive how one of Jeff's items can be stronger.
12. The food items are also unconventional and also fit the contemporary theme, and they also heal your party members by a good amount of HP. You can choose to eat some sandwiches, fast food, protein drink, Kraken soup, fish-tasting yogurt, and many more. Some items not only heal one of your party members, but they can make you go faster for a few seconds, mainly the skip sandwiches.
13. The endgame itself is one of the craziest final stretches in any game. Giygas' invasion begins, so you go to Saturn Valley to enter a Phase Distorter in order to counter Giygas, only to find out that Giygas is actually attacking from the past, and you have to travel to the past and leave your human bodies in favour of robot bodies, since human bodies would be destroyed in the process. After fighting some of the toughest enemies in the game, you travel to the lair itself, where the battle takes place.
14. The final boss, Giygas, is one of the most intimidating (not just that, but disturbing) video game villains of all time, becoming an urban legend. Unlike enemies, it is not immediately revealed to you what Giygas' attacks are, with the only exception being in the first phase where he has not broken out of the Devil's Machine. Additionally, he cannot be defeat by any attacks when his final phase begins, as Paula needs to use her pray ability to pray for help several times.
15. Interestingly, when you try to fight an enemy that is much weaker than you, the game defeats the enemy for you. Additionally, when you approach them from behind but will be taken to the battle screen, you get the first turn, but if an enemy approaches you from behind, they get the first turn.
16. Unlike in most RPGs, where the HP is taken away immediately after being hit by an enemy, in the game, the numbers roll down instead, which is pretty good. This is especially important when one of your party members have taken mortal damage by an enemy, as you can have the chance to heal them before it reaches 0.

Bad Qualities

NOTE: Some of these flaws were carried over from the game's predecessor.

1. Some small inconveniences:
   • When buying/selling items, you have to do it one at a time instead of doing so with several at once, which is even worse when the text speed is set to slow. Same with resurrecting party members.
   • There's a part where to find a secret entrance, but to access it after being told by one of Mr. Saturns about it, you have to wait under a waterfall for three minutes.
   • In the Lost Underworld, there are some gaps between walls and trees bigger than you that you can't pass. Even if there seems to be plenty of space near them, you'll still touch them.
2. Some small typos:
   • The game can refer to Paula as a boy.
   • Mashroomized (Mushroomized)
   • "Everything in the unverse could be destroyed in the hands of Giygas."
3. Constant interruptions: You have to wait for your dad to blabber a bit in order to save, earthquakes constantly stop you from moving, and they're very hard to see coming since they sometimes come out of nowhere, and you have to slog through a photographer taking a picture of you, with the end credits being the only purpose.
4. You move fairly slowly, so it can feel like a chore. This can be a problem with trying to escape from the enemies that are faster than you, unless you use a skip sandwitch to go faster for a few seconds.
   • The bike, which is supposed to speed up your game, is only useful when you're alone, not even if a party member is dead, making it almost entirely useless.
5. Your inventory may quickly get filled up with junk which you can only use once, which can be especially a problem if you get too many stuff that you cannot drop, not helping by the fact that every party member can carry up to only 14 items at once, which is 56 when you have all of the party members.
6. The strange status has been taken a little too literally. If a party member is feeling strange, they have the chance to kill another of your party members. This is especially a problem if they perform a strong attack that causes mortal damage.
7. If you get a game over, you get one of the worst punishments ever in an RPG. You return alone, have to go to a hospital, a pool or a spring to revive your friends. However, on the way, Ness is likely to encounter enemies, which makes this process even harder.
8. The PK/PSI moves can be seizure-inducing, due to some them being bright and flashy, such as PK/PSI Rockin, PK/PSI Starstorm, and most notably PK/PSI Flash. Thankfully, in the Wii U version released on the virtual console (but not the Switch NSO release, unfortunately), some of the moves were made more translucent and blurry to reduce harm on your eyes.
9. As mentioned before, Giygas is very disturbing for a kids game, considering the fact the background during the fight looks like a red colored distorted picture of man screaming.
   • The soundtrack itself, while still awesome, is arguably even worse than the boss due to the nightmarish distortion and sound effects that add to the terror.
   • After you manage to defeat Giygas, the screen starts to go static in a really creepy way and the track that plays during the static sequence really doesn't help, especially since the static plays with absolutely no warning.
   • What's even worse is that the game was rated K-A (Kids to Adults) when it was released, which is now known as E for Everyone, which even the Angry Video Game Nerd disliked. Fortunately, it was rated T and PEGI 12 when it was re-released due to violence and disturbing imagery.
10. The GBA version suffers from butchered sound quality. Giygas is Wounded! and the PK/PSI Rockin sound effect both sound very far from their SNES counterparts.

Reception

Upon release in Japan, the game received a very positive reception, but a lukewarm one when it was released in the west, and the game was a commercial failure when it was originaly released due to the slogan for the game, "This Game Stinks", and its high price for coming with a player's guide. However, retrospective reception was more positive, with the game receiving wide critical acclaim and was deemed by many a timeless classic and one of the greatest RPGs of all time. Multiple reviewers described the game as "original" or "unique" and praised its script's range of emotions and humor.

Critics praised its "real world" setting, which was seen as an uncommon choice and its 90s homage as "a love letter to 20th-century Americana", with a payphone as a save point, ATMs to transfer money, yo-yos as weapons, skateboarders and hippies as enemies, and references to classic rock bands.

Trivia

• The game's regions are based off of different parts of the world in a likely homage to the third game in the Dragon Quest series, of which Shigesato Itoi is a fan of.
  • Eagleland: Based off of North America with a mild climate, trees, badlands and urban and suburban cities (consisting of Onett, Twoson, Threed and Fourside)
  • Foggyland: Based off of Europe, in the northern part of the region (Winters) taking place in a freezing-cold, snowy climate region. In the southern part of the region (Summers) it is in a warm climate region, consists of beaches and is fairly urbanised
  • Chommo: Based off of northeast Africa and the Middle East with a desert climate. One of the areas, Scaraba is based off of Egypt with its civilization and a pyramid resembling that of Giza. The Deep Darkness swamp is based off of Africa's swamps like The Kafue Flats. Dalaam, which Poo (a playable character) is prince of, is located there.
• In Mother 2's version of Magicant, Ness wears nothing except for his red cap, since in Japan nudity without being pornographic is a symbol of purity, but since it's considered offensive and adult content in the west, Ness wears his pyjamas in EarthBound in Magicant.
• EarthBound was initially rated Kids to Adults (which is today E for Everyone) upon release, but when the game was re-released, it was cranked up to T for Teens, probably due to Giygas.
• The "Sanctuary Guardian" theme spawned the "what" meme.
• Aloysius Minch's first name is a reference to the Looney Tunes cartoon Beanstalk Bunny where the name was mentioned.

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