If EarthBound is one of the greatest cult hits in gaming history, you can consider me one of the earlier cultists. While I admittedly never owned a cart until very recently, thanks to my incredible wife who bought me the shining star of my collection, I had played EarthBound at my friends' house, and absolutely loved it.
I always looked up to these two girls, and they had excellent taste in games. When I had an NES, they had a Sega Genesis, and I loved playing Sonic, Sonic 2, and Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine at their house. I later upgraded to the SNES, and they would always play Link to the Past at my house. My friend across the street then got a Genesis, and I mistakenly assumed that the Genesis was the better console, got rid of my SNES, and got a Genesis, which is still my biggest gaming regret.
Later on, after those two girls moved away, we visited them, and I found out that they had a SNES, and informed me that I had been a fool to get rid of my SNES for a Genesis. As proof, they had me play EarthBound for an hour or so.
I was captivated.
I loved naming my characters (I don't remember what I named Ness, Paula, and Jeff the first time, but I do remember naming Poo Goku), picking my favorite food, and my favorite thing (DBZ). I loved the crisp, colorful, retro look of the game. I loved the humor of the game. I loved how the game took place in the real world. I loved that it anachronistically reminded me of Pokemon. It was my first non-Pokemon RPG.
When I came back home, I told all of my friends about it. I told them that it was just like Pokemon, but with real people.
Once I figured out how to use emulators, and had finished Pokemon Gold, EarthBound was one of the first games I played. I never beat it on the emulator until later in life, but I loved starting the game over and experiencing the beginning of the game again, and playing until I got stuck.
I later beat it on an emulator, as the cart was WAY too expensive. I cheated, though, and used save states and other emulation trickery extensively to get the Sword of Kings, restart boss battles, etc. It never felt right.
So I decided to do it the right way, and beat it on my very expensive cart, and finally finished up this weekend.
And my love for the game hasn't waned one bit. The graphics are still delightful and have aged very well. The game has a sharp sense of humor, and delights in turning the standards of RPGs on their heads, exposing their silliness, yet delighting in the core mechanisms underlying the JRPG. I love the diverse and silly set of enemies with whom you can fight, and the absurd situations in which you find yourself. Just when you think the game can't get any weirder, it gets truly poignant and beautiful. And then it swerves back to weirdness.
The music is really excellent, as are all of the sounds in the game. The music strikes a diverse note, drawing from a wide range of musical influences including rock and roll, psychedelic, classical, and jazz. It is at times intentionally bad, including the brilliantly horrible theme inside of the dungeon man, which a sign inside pronounces as "his greatest achievement".
The core combat mechanics are mostly unremarkable, yet solid and fun. The addition of a rolling counter for HP introduces a kind of desperation into your strategy that a purely turn-based RPG shouldn't have, which gives the combat an addicting edge to it as you desperately try to heal that character who has just taken a mortal wound, or finish off the enemy before their life runs out.
The end boss and ending are among my favorite endings of all time. I will spoil nothing of this beloved gem, but it's a must-see type of ending.
As much as I hate to say it, EarthBound isn't perfect. But I think that's the nature of a game which experiments with as many things as does EarthBound. True transformative genius generally has its moments in which it goes off the rails, and I don't think EarthBound had the chance to really develop it's identity, in the way that truly perfect games like Super Mario World were able to improve over time. The inventory system is super annoying. Your spaces in your inventory are shockingly limited, and your equipment itself will take up nearly a quarter of the spots you have. This requires frequent selling of your gear and loot to have space for new items.
As much as I like the graphical rendering of the game, I feel like they could have done more to improve the way it looks, particularly in battle. While the Dragon Quest type of battle perspective is fine, including more animations for ordinary attacks, such as swinging bats and frying pans for Ness and Paula would have been nice. And while the sprites for the enemies are lovingly drawn and beautiful, they are entirely stationary, and have no attack animations to speak of. The UI is also extremely boring, and could have used some improvements like including portraits of the characters, or even their sprites a la FFIV.
Technically speaking, the game has flaws as well. There are times in which you can gets stuck behind NPCs in various parts of the game, with no real way to escape. There is also a large amount of puzzling slowdown for a game which is as graphically basic as this.
Ordinarily, a game with flaws like this would rate a bit lower. And no, it's no Chrono Trigger, still the shining star of RPG excellence on a system replete with excellent RPGs. But EarthBound is an experience that can't be missed. A game that over twenty years later still has tried things that no game since has really nailed to the degree that EarthBound did. It's an excellent game that everyone needs to try, warts and all.
I'll give EarthBound a 9.8/10.
-TRO
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