Re-View: Earthbound

Around the time Super Smash Brothers Melee came out, one question was on every gamer’s mind: who is this small Asian child beating Link to death with a baseball bat?

As it turned out, this was Ness: the protagonist of an old gem on the Super Nintendo called Earthbound. Like a lot of older Nintendo titles, the series from which Ness comes has received little love in recent years, particularly in the West. A few months ago many were pleased to find Earthbound posted on Nintendo’s e-store, and since then the game has been very positively received. Debates about the imagery of the game’s main villain, the story’s social commentary and the fact that the name of one of the protagonists is a bit silly have been done to death, and so I shall endeavour to stick with my own interpretations of the game. With Earthbound being held in such high esteem, I was eager to test out its staying power, and whether we ought to hope for future installments outside of the Smash Bros series.

From the outset, Earthbound demonstrates a wonderfully whimsical style which illustrates perfectly the fantasy of the story. You play Ness, a child born with psychic abilities who awakes one night to find a meteor has landed outside his home. He is quickly informed that he is one of four prophesied heroes that must travel to 8 sanctuaries, collecting a melody from each in order to defeat the powerful alien entity Giygas. His adventure takes him through haunted carnivals, Egyptian pyramids, and even an underground land of dinosaurs as he strives to defeat the alien threat, which just so happens to command moving vinyl records and barf monsters.

Even on the surface the game is swimming with parody, both of contemporary life and video games in general. Everyday objects become cartoonishly strange and funny enemies which are somehow able to give direness to a situation which would otherwise seem like a dream. There are a number of references to the real world, from street gangs, to rock & roll bands, and even to crazed cults. Earthbound uses a unique blend of fantasy to flesh out its world, building on real life in order to create what seems like an impossible adventure. It amounts to what could almost be called the Alice in Wonderland of video game worlds, with the danger and drive of your traditional RPG combined with your real life childhood experiences.

Now, we’ve all heard of the climactic battle in this game: a supposedly terrifying confrontation with an alien foetus. Don’t go into the game expecting such things at every turn. Instead your enemies tend to consist of cartoonish representations of objects and crazes, such as vampire mushrooms and ‘new age retro hippies’. The appearance of the final boss is actually a huge departure from the style of the rest of the game, giving much greater strength to the terrifying appearance of Giygas.

Earthbound uses a unique blend of fantasy to flesh out its world, building on real life in order to create what seems like an impossible adventure.

In practice the battle system is fairly basic. Levelling up is key, certain characters have unique skills and you are required to constantly update your equipment. This is fairly generic but hardly a fault: the system is well polished and sticks to the game’s aesthetics by having characters use weapons like baseball bats and bottle rockets. Unfortunately, outside of battle the game can be stringent on hinting as to what you need to do next. There were many cases where I had to wander around a town searching for any kind of vague clue on how to progress the story. It halts the linear progression of your adventure, which for such an otherwise well-polished game seems like a rookie mistake.

Another issue I found is that the relationship between the characters and the story can be somewhat thin. Ness is a device for the player to project onto for the sake of making them associate his experiences with their own, and as a result he has been given little personality of his own. He is a generic hero archetype who sets off from home on an adventure to defeat a universe-destroying villain, almost like a simple Pokémon protagonist who wound up in the middle of a Final Fantasy game. This has never been uncommon with video game characters, but for a game that has this amount of substance, having a hero with some real identity would have led to a more complete story. It is worth remembering that not all gamers, particularly not the kids who played Earthbound when it originally came out, come away from gameplay for long enough to project themselves onto characters or appreciate the depth of a story. The game is still fun, but if you try to take more meaning from it you will see a number of holes.

And yet with Earthbound I found these faults easily forgivable. Plot, presentation and gameplay blend together seamlessly to strive for the fun and excitement that only truly great games achieve. It works so well that whenever I noticed any particular faults I was quickly distracted by, say, an off-the-cuff NPC joke, or an insanely designed new enemy. Though the complete product may not be perfect, it remains intensely enjoyable and is hard to put down.

Earthbound is very much worthy of the esteem gamers have for it. The story, game world and battle system are memorable and immensely enjoyable, and I came out of the experience with a strong desire to sample the rest of the Mother series. Please Nintendo, take a break from Mario and Zelda and return to your classics. After the success of your new addition to the Fire Emblem series, why not take a chance on Mother 4?