 Well, here we go with Earthbound, the ultimate example of a game that you either absolutely love or you just don't get it. It's like the Big Lebowski. You ever run into someone that said they've never seen that movie? What's your first reaction? It's probably, oh my god, you have to see it, it's the best, and you get the idea. But if you want to try and be fair and unbiased, that movie's probably not really for everyone, because it's pretty dang weird, and Earthbound fits the same category. Now I've played through Earthbound a bunch of times, and recently I tried to give it one more playthrough with more of a critical eye. But once again, I just got so sucked into the game's utterly bizarre atmosphere and the sweet good-natured story that I completely forgot why I was doing another playthrough in the first place, which was to try and tell people why I think they should play this game. Let's do another analogy, but with music this time. Earthbound is like one of those bands without a genre that plays a kind of music that's really hard to describe. My comparison has always been Tom Waits. How on Earth do you describe Tom Waits to someone? And even if you try, it'd take you like 5 minutes and you'd be better off just listening to a song. Earthbound is very much like that. How the hell do you describe this game to someone that's never played it? You'd just be better off playing it yourself. But that wouldn't make for a very good video, so I'm gonna try my best here. I can start by saying Earthbound is first and foremost a story-driven game. Well duh, it's a role-playing game, but this isn't your generic fantasy fare. It takes place in a more modern setting that's predicated on a specific brand of humor, and that can be kind of dangerous since humor is of course entirely subjective. But Earthbound, and the entire Mother series for that matter, has such a strangeness to it that you can't help but get into it, just to find out what the hell is with this game. Because I mean, on the surface, Earthbound appears to be very, uh, down-to-earth, no pun intended. You equip and use everyday items for the most part, like baseball bats, hamburgers, frying pans, and, uh, calorie sticks, and you traverse seemingly well-to-do towns that consist of regular folk going about their everyday lives. That in and of itself is not what makes Earthbound unique. The thing is, despite its appearance on the surface, every single aspect of this game is totally unpredictable. Let me give you some examples. Like this guy in foreside? Last night there was a solitaire tournament. I lost my shirt. I'll invite you next time. Ha ha ha, duh. I think I'll pass on your one-man shirtless tournament, dude. Or this one-off line in the Onette library? There's a monster guarding giant step, but I wonder if he's stronger than my wife. Okay, cool. There's no filler dialogue or boring exposition here. Everything is presented in at least a mildly amusing way if it's not laugh-out-loud funny. A good example of the depths in the dialogue here is this guy in the Tucson Hotel, and he has about 20 different things he can say, and if you go through them all, he gives you 50 bucks. And yes, by the way, this is a game where you do have to talk to absolutely everyone because it may be necessary to trigger the next part of the story. But these people are so funny and so strange that I don't care. I'm having fun hanging out with these weirdos. Anyway, one criticism I hear about Earthbound and about the entire Mother series is the visual presentation and that it's too bland, too basic, especially when you had stuff like Super Mario RPG and Chrono Trigger blowing the doors off the system. But to me, it was a brilliant idea to keep the visual presentation dialed back because you can't help but expect something easy, basic, and relatively harmless, and then the game goes ahead and destroys your expectations. There's all sorts of weirdness everywhere, like when you visit Moonside, holy crap, or when you get caught in your own dream, and maybe the biggest surprise in the game is the final boss music. It starts out as your typical 8-bit fare and then... Hoooooly shit. The battles definitely have their share of weirdness, too. Like when you get hit with certain status ailments? Whoa, what the hell? Just the names of the enemies are funny, like Unassuming Local Guy, Annoying Old Party Man, and especially New Age Retro Hippie. He uses toothbrush and his teeth were white and breath was fresh. The brightness of New Age Retro Hippie's teeth made the enemy scared. I especially like it at the very beginning when Pokey is too scared to fight. That cracks me up every time. And this is just barely scratching the surface of what this game is all about. One criticism I have to point out, though, is that the combat is distant and detached, especially compared to games like Breath of Fire, for instance. But it's almost like the developers didn't want the combat getting in the way of the game's overall theme and presentation, because you're allowed to use a handy auto-battle button. But not only that, if your level is far and beyond a random enemy's level, you don't even get taken to a battle screen, you just win by default. That is brilliant, and it saves a ton of aggravation, not to mention a lot of time. Enemies in battles are avoidable, some easier than others, so it's not quite a random battle system here, but there are sections where you have to take out everything. I wouldn't say the battle system is bad, but it's definitely not the game's strength. Another interesting aspect of the battle system is this odometer-styled hit points counter. It counts down somewhat slowly as you take damage. If you take a mortal damage hit, you can still live if you finish the battle before the counter hits zero, and you'll have the exact number of hit points the odometer stops at when the battle ends. That's pretty innovative, but yeah, the typical RPG stuff is all here for the most part, with spells, character-specific items and armor, and all sorts of gear. One irritating aspect though is the limited item space you get, and this is especially annoying at the beginning of the game when there's only one or two of you in your party, like at the Monkey Maze where it's just Ness or Jeff. I have no room to keep all this junk. Anyway, despite the game's overt humor and bizarre qualities, the lead storyline in Earthbound is pretty straightforward and actually pretty serious. A meteorite crashes in the small town of Onette, and her hero Ness, along with his scumbag friend Poki, leave in the middle of the night to go investigate. Turns out, a mysterious alien force named Gai-Gas is consuming all that's good in the world and is turning everything from people, animals, and random objects into malevolent creatures. From this point on, Ness and Poki split in opposite directions. Poki runs off and shows up here and there for no other purpose than to be a dick, while a bee of all things shows up to tell Ness what he must do to save the world, which is collect a series of melodies that will string together to form one song that when played through a sound stone will make the world right again. Along the way, you meet a psychic girl, Paula, an eccentric inventor, Jeff, and a ponytailed martial artist, Pooh. Yeah, I have no idea why everyone has normal names, but Pooh is named Pooh. That's Earthbound for ya. But yeah, going back to what I said earlier, the story here is pretty straightforward and uncommonly sweet. Despite how eccentric this game is, there's something really comforting about Earthbound. The story is certainly a reason, and I think the music is a big reason why as well. The Earthbound soundtrack creates an atmosphere you just wanna hang out in, just like Super Metroid and Super Castlevania IV, but it has the complete opposite effect, if that makes any sense. It's closer to Sim City, which sounds weird for an RPG. The soundtrack has so much depth. There's seemingly an endless amount of music in this game. Every little segment has its own theme. There's even like two dozen battle themes, and that really goes a long way in keeping the combat from getting old. And also the town themes that are just uncommonly comforting. I absolutely love the foresight theme and could hang out here forever. Sometimes I get this music in my head when I visit a new town in real life. So yeah, does Earthbound live up to the hype? Is it as good as everyone says? I truly believe it is because it's an absolutely ideal balance of eccentric weirdness and a good-natured, warm-hearted story. Earthbound also has one of the best endings in any game I've ever played. It's also worth mentioning real quick that there is a sequel, Mother 3, that made its way to the Game Boy Advance in Japan in 2006 that has since received an English translation. So if you like Earthbound, you'll wanna play that too. I do think when it comes to Earthbound that it helps to be familiar with other classic RPGs. A big part of the charm with this game is that it doesn't take itself very seriously to the point that it makes fun of the RPG genre itself. And I will say this, if you wanna get into Earthbound and you want a tactically sound, combat-heavy classic role-playing game cut from the cloth of Final Fantasy VI, you're in the wrong place. This is not a game like that. Earthbound is more about sitting back, having a beer, enjoying the music, and chilling out with your friends Ness, Paula, Jeff, and Pooh as you walk from town to town, trying to investigate what in the blue hell has happened to all these people. There's just nothing like Earthbound on any other system or in any other era of gaming. You could live to be a thousand years old and never play another game like Earthbound.