The Appeal of New Age Retro Hippies and turn-based combat.

Earthbound is good! I swear!

Anyone who takes the time to talk to me about games has probably heard at least a little of my affection for Earthbound. More often than not, the person I'm speaking to has never even heard of the game. So then I have to go on my stammering spiel about why Earthbound is good and why it's even worth the time to listen to me blabber on and on. It never turns out well.

"Well, it's got grumpy old men for enemies and you get to use a baseball bat as a weapon!"

"It trashes video game cliches in a way that no other game ever has!"

"The music! The music!"

Those might be catchy sentences to some, but it never really conveys why Earthbound is one of the greatest achievements in video game history. How can you explain to someone the complexity of something like Earthbound in just a few sentences and a few awkward hand motions?

I don't think you can.

What I think I can do is create a few well thought out points in a written form. Maybe that will do it.

Welcome to the real world.

There has yet to be a game as original or genre-shaking as Earthbound was in 1995. Good-bye convoluted plots of empires and destroyed home towns. I won't miss another game filled with swords and maces to swing, goblins and dragons to slay. In Earthbound, you can expect baseball bats and frying pans for weapons and rambling shrooms for enemies. If that's still a little on the mundane side, then did you know that by the end of the game you'll fight your lazy, spoiled brat of a next door neighbor who has managed to join up with an alien-super power? I bet that's not in Final Fantasy XIII.
As great as replacing the stereotypical sword with the a yo-yo is, it doesn't make a good game. What adds to Earthbound's quality is what the game does with the modern theme. Don't you think it's dumb that every rabid rodent you kill drops some cash? Earthbound thinks so too. So instead of using enemies as cash pinatas, Ness's dad drops you a little cash in your bank account for everything you kill. Wanna get your cash out? Then stop by the ATM and make a withdrawl. Early in the game you come across a town that is on the receiving end of your typical RPG terror attack. Usually you'd find some goblins (or any any other rotten fantasy creature) at the root of the attack. In earthbound, it's a street gang. Earthbound strings together a series of conflicts that the player can relate to.

Now if that was all Earthbound was about, it would get boring pretty quickly. Thankfully this doesn't happen and what Earthbound mixes in to it's real world them is what gives the game it's charm.

A Scalding Coffee Cup Appears!

Even with it's modern setting, Earthbound somehow manages to also be one of the most wackyand unpredictable games I've ever played. Thrown in with all of the bike-riding and pizza-ordering is a plot that only a madman could have come up with. Ness is awoken one night by a meteor crash near his home. Despite his mother's protests, he leads a pajama clad investigation all the way to the crash site. There he makes contact with a bee from an alien planet who informs him that he is the chosen boy who must stop the pending alien invasion. Throughout Ness's quest, he encounters a mind-controlling statue, a cult obsessed with the color blue, teleporting monkeys, dinosaurs, zombies, and ancient heiroglyphics bent on giving Ness a bad day. All of this he has to do while battling the occasional case of homesickness.

Amazingly, Earthbound manages to tie this all together into an experience that makes sense. Can you imagine playing a game for an hour and in that span of time fighting a giant pile of puke, a zombie, a crocodile, and a giant mole? That kind of random would typically leave a bad taste in your mouth. In earthbound it fits together so well that it's natural.

Eating Dots, Running From Ghosts.

If Earthbound retained all of its charm but managed to string it together with some shitty RPG action, it would still manage to be good. But like I said, Earthbound isn't just a good game.

Sure, by today's standards Earthbound falls short in terms of it's combat. It's all a very linear experience. My level 50 Ness is going to be exactly the same as your level 50 Ness. Every play through is going to be exatly like the next one, but that's ok. Earthbound succeeds by offering enough varied enemies and new abilities to make the game interesting.

Your four characters each provide a different set of options for combat. To keep the battles from being just a tedious act of pressing A, the game requires you to use the unique abilities of your four characters to defeat enemies. Fire bottle rockets with one character for a lot of damage while using another character to create a shield over your party. It's a long way from the deep combat in many modern RPGs, but Earthbound provided enough variety to support the rest of the game.

The Beatles and Breaking The Fourth Wall.

If Earthbound is not the best written/localized game ever made, then it's damn close. In your typical RPG, characters are placed only to provide you hints on your quest. They're all very uninteresting, and if it wasn't for their neccisity in finishing the game you would likely just skip right over them. Every line of dialog is something to be savored.

"You're the enemy of all zombies! You monster!" - Zombie

"I heard Venus made an appearance at the Runaway Five show. I missed her 'cause I went to the bathroom. I'll hate bathrooms for the rest of my life. - Venus Fan

First Floor - 'Fourside Bakery'
Second Floor - 'Second Floor of the Bakery' - Sign outside the Fourside Bakery

Those are just three random quotes from the game. EVERY character has something just as interesting to say.

In a sea of RPGs that took themselves too seriously, the creators of Earthbound recognized their game for what it was, a game. Frequently the game breaks the fourth wall, reaching out to the player. One character talks about how he just picked up this new Earthbound game and how hard it is. A gang member tells you to come back after you've finished the game and maybe he'll let you in. In Fourside, you can visit a building where the people inside are apparently making Earthbound 2 (according to the sign outside). At one point, a friend of one of your characters calls Ness up and asks to speak to the player. He specifically asks for the players name, which comes into play at the end of the game. It's something I wouldn't dare spoil.

The End

Above is a pretty expansive list of reasons why Earthbound is the most amazing video game experience I've ever had and it barely touches the game's charm. I didn't even mention the game's trip to Stonehenge, or the mind-expanding cake your characters eat. How about at the end of the game, where the party must give up their bodies to travel back in time for the game's final confrontation? How about the ending? Did you know that during the ending of the game, you can visit EVERY location you've been to before? Every character you've met earlier in the game now has something different to say now that you've saved the world. There are books that could be written about Earthbound's depth.

For a 12 year old game, Earthbound has aged rather well. You can still play the game today and appreciate what made it great in 1995. Earthbound oozes charm, and that's the key to it's success.

Wahjah.

Wahjah - Embarrassment by proxy. The awkward feeling is most pronounced when the person making a fool of themselves is so earnest in what they're doing that they don't see it as being embarrassing.