Earthbound.

First off, someone has broke a milestone. Joseph, congratulations on getting 5,000 points since this competition started. I got that many last week.

Heh.

I've spent a long time ruminating on this post. I didn't want to rush it. I want to convey the feelings that I felt in the most readable way possible. The game that spawned this, of course, is the legendary Earthbound. Get some coffee. Turn on some 8-bit SNES music. This will be long winded, I assure you.


Earthbound was developed by APE software and released in 1995 for SNES. I was 6 when this game came out. Joe, in retrospect, was still getting his butt wiped by adults/older siblings, even though he no longer was in daipers. Happy times for Jesse. Sad times for Joe. I remember this game being rented from our local store (Yeah, back when grocery stores rented games out to people) and I chose it for my week. Being six, I remember getting thwarted early on. I couldn't get more than 2 hours into the game. Also, I didn't know what saving was. My, my, how far I've come.

Not Joe. In case you didn't know, he still was incapable of basic hygiene. To this day, he still craps his pants at the slightest scare. Here is a direct quote from a recent blog post: "A tank is rolling towards me, I shart."

With my parents being in Hawaii and all older siblings out of the house, this caused me tremendous worry for Joseph. I doubt he is clean at this very moment.

Earthbound. Recently, I purchased a phone. Not just any phone, mind you. The HTC Incredible. The phone, as a phone, sucks. I can never hear people. That is far overshadowed by one basic fact: in the marketplace you can download an app and have access to EVERY Super Nintendo AND GameBoy Advance game, regardless of language, that has ever been released. Immediately I ran through the list of games. Super Mario RPG, Final Fantasies, Chrono Trigger, then booooom...

Earthbound. Downloaded. Loaded up. Playing.

The very essence of this game is magical. It was written be Shigesato Itoi, and draws hugely on his own life experiences. (More on that later.) There's no dragons, spells, or medieval anything. It's just a boy and his baseball bat out to save the world. The character's name is Ness and he wakes up to find a meteor has landed right outside his house. Ness' mother sends him out with his dog to investigate. Ness' neighbor is named Pokey. He's bad. He sucks.

After fighting some dogs and crows, I make it to the meteor. I'm alerted by an alien that I have to stop Giygas from destroying the world. The alien is a little bee that follows you for the next five minutes. Then Pokey's mother kills him with a flyswatter.

Pokey's family is evil incarnate.

I get the Sound Stone and learn that I have to record melodies of magical places around the world. Once you gather all eight, Giygas can be defeated. The world can be saved.

The game is most difficult in the very beginning. Money is gained when you defeat enemies. Ness' dad just deposits money into the bank account at save points. Problem is, dogs and crows don't carry a lot of money on them. Plus, when there's only one character, the battle system can take Ness out in no time. I took my time leveling up. I was patient. I bought cheeseburgers and a new bat. Then I faced the first boss and recorded the Giant Step melody.

Just getting this far in, I realize a writer of my caliber simply can't explain this game as it should be explained, but I'll keep trying. It's just too good. It's just. Too. Awesome.

I team up with Paula on the next town. There I find a cult of painter's all wearing blue KKK outfits. Not kidding. They want to paint the world blue. Easily dispatched. They're not fighters, they're painters. I'm saving the world and they can't stop me.

Then I meet Jeffrey. He's my favorite. He possesses no magic. He's the only one in the game made that way. But still. He fixes everyone's gear, and when the characters stay in hotels he invents new things. With Jeff's help, I solve the zombie threat in Threed with some fly paper and a jar of honey. Ingenuity at it's finest.

(Joe's pants are still soiled.)

Pu, a ninja prince of Dalaam, is then contacted via telepathy from Paula. He leaves his royal lineage behind because he has to save the world. He also lives on a floating island over a pink cloud. Shigesato Itoi rules. He just throws tons of random ideas together and parades a group of four preteens around, saving the world and kicking the butts of aliens, dogs, piles of puke, angry pedestrians, taxis, U.F.O.s, butterflies, and literally whatever else you can think of.

Once my party was assembled, I guess that about halfway through the game. I've fought gang members, snakes, mummies, and Krakens now. From here on the game gets funky. You think it's already funky? You're wrong. I enter a magical illusion made by an evil statue. I fight through a pyramid to battle a General Mummy. I ride around in a yellow submarine (Beatles??) I fight dinosaurs in a mystic underworld. One of the battles leading up to the end is Ness battling himself in a nightmare world that he's lost in, all projected from his own subconscious.

Despite everything sounding so random, Itoi's ability to keep everything cohesive is unparalleled. I was hooked so hard on this game.

Once you obtain all 8 Sound Stone melodies, you get access to the final area. This is the coolest/freakiest dungeon I've ever been in.

Jeffrey (the fixer upper) has a father who is an inventor. It's discovered that all the evil that has been happening is due to Pokey teaming up with Giygas. Once again, Pokey sucks. They discover that Pokey and Giygas have traveled back in time at the very spot you're located (convenient?) and are ready to destroy the world.

Jeffrey's father, Dr. Andonuts, built a Phase Distorter that can take you anywhere, at any time period. But there's a catch. No living creature can go. The plan seems thwarted. The world will fall into disarray. Joe craps his pants...

Alas! Dr. Andonuts hatches a plan. Guess what? He's also a brain surgeon. Seriously? This guy had to go to school for 50+ plus years to get his degrees. I mean, a brain surgeon aaaaand time machine inventor. Brilliant.

His plan is to take everyone's brain out and put them into robots. Going into the last dungeon, you have four identical robots, except Ness has a hat on. Battle. Battle. Battle.

Remember the 'more on that later' part. Well, I read up on the game before I played it. You just need to read this.

"In an interview on his website, Itoi describes how his inspiration for the final battle with Giygas resulted from a traumatic childhood event. When Itoi was a young boy, he accidentally viewed the wrong movie at a theater, a Shintōhō film entitled The Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty. According to Itoi the film featured a graphic rape scene near a river that traumatized Itoi so much that his parents began to worry about his wellbeing. Years later, Itoi integrated the experience into Giygas' dialogue for the final battle.^"

Tell me you've faced a final battle of that magnitude. Don't even try. Nothing can top a battle that was written by a man who used the event as a catharsis from a traumatic childhood event. Giygas doesn't even have a form. He just has a scrolling red/black template of screaming faces that you have to fight. This guy was jacked up. More so, he made Giygas freaking hard.

Giygas can only be defeated by the prayers of people that I've encountered over the journey.

Pray.

250 damage.

Pray.

567 damage.

Pray.

1404 damage.

Pray.

3523 damage.

Pray.

VICTORY! Cue battle win music. Cue credits. Cue save the world speech!

I win. The game ends with me at my house, getting ready for bed. World saved? Check.

Earthbound was a pure gem. I've never played a game like it, and I'm sure that I will never play a game like it again. This game was good enough that I took 30+ hours out of my time while in the competition to play it. I just couldn't stop. I don't know if there's a way to get this game in the original cartridge anymore, but you can download it. Find a ROM. Find an emulator. Go get it. It was so rewarding to get to the final scene and watch the credits.

Trust me.

You'll thank me later.

Now someone, please, go help Joe wipe his butt.