Recently I’ve been getting into the Final Fantasy series. I don’t have a reason at all. It just all of a sudden popped into my head that I should be playing Final Fantasy. I’m sure the release of XIII didn’t help anything, but that’s not even what I’m playing or interested in playing. I’m going back, actually, to the classic Final Fantasy games. right now I’m playing Final Fantasy IV, VII, and VIII. I’m caught up on all of them, though. I just started VIII, I’d been playing VII for awhile, but quit it and IV looks like it’s next on my ditched list. This always happens to me. All the fucking time. I just can’t seem to get myself to stick with a game, but this time I’m really trying. I’m going to progress in VIII and IV as best I can.
However, there’s a problem that seems to have come out of absolutely fucking nowhere.
Mother 3.
I remember being a kid–I had to have been around 8 years old at the time. I had a best friend who lived across the street from me. His name was Ethan. Well, Ethan had a Super Nintendo, something I didn’t have when I was growing up. (My first system was a SEGA Genesis and my next was a PS1.) He had a great library of games. Mega Man X, X-Men Mutant Apocalypse (I think that’s the name of it) and some others, but the one that sticks out in my mind the most out of all of those is also my favorite game in the entire world.
EarthBound.
Wow. Look at that box. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before, right? A giant golden…thing for lack of any other kind of description you could give it (it’s called a Super Deluxe Starman) just gleaming at you with Ness’s face reflecting from it’s visor. Say no more, EarthBound. You’ve successfully drawn me into your trap!
The first time I saw anything of this game was actually watching Ethan beat the end of it. I already knew what was going to happen, but there were so many questions to be answered. Why was Pokey in the Devil’s machine? Who the hell was that swirling red guy? What’s with his dialogue? How did you get so damn powerful?! All these questions just pushed me, screamed at me to play this video game. Once Ethan was done with it, I borrowed it from him and my life was changed forever.
You’re Ness. You might know him from Super Smash Bros. Well, this is the game he’s from. It’s the year 199X and you’re sleeping peacefully in your bed, in your house, which resides in Onett, a part of Eagleland, when out of NO WHERE a METEOR crashes into the cliffs by your house! HOLY SHIT! So you get out of your bed, because as a kid, you’re curious and you want to know what’s going on, right? When you were 9 did you just accept something for what it was? No, you wanted to know what was going on, and that’s already part of the beauty of EarthBound. You’re playing as a child. Someone who is still pure and curious and adventurous. It’s like the game transfers Ness’s curiosity to you and it takes a part of you. Anyway, skipping ahead, you go back to the meteor site with Pokey to find his brother Picky, when a flying bug comes out of the meteor and tells you you’re destined to save the world from Giygas. The bug, who calls himself Buzz-Buzz, is from the future, where Giygas has already taken rule. Weird shit starts happening in the present, already a foreshadow of Giygas’s powers in effect. Dogs, crows, hippies and taxi cabs are all trying to kill your ass. It’s just even more charm that goes into EarthBound.
Another one of the greatest things about this game, aside from the story, is the setting of the game. It’s an RPG. It’s not what you’d expect at all from an RPG. You’re a kid with a 
baseball bat who is later joined by a girl who wields a frying pan. Typically, you’d expect them to have swords, shields, and summoning giant dragons to set every enemy they run into on fire. Also, remember that the enemies are dogs, crows, people and even inanimate objects like vehicles as opposed to goblins, dark knights and wizards. Instead of drinking potions and using phoenix downs you use hamburgers, fries and a cup of life noodles. EarthBound takes an amazing modern stance instead of the typical medieval times. There’s a ton of enemies like this and there’s wacky environments everywhere, I could really just go on and on, but I’d rather not type out a whole book about it.
Usually when you play an RPG, you make an effort to talk to everyone in the game, since they might know something you need to know or they could trigger an event of some sort. In EarthBound, you WANT to talk to people. It’s not because you have to, it’s because they say some damn crazy shit. In Twoson, when you get to Happy Happy Village to go fight Carpainter, when you talk to a receptionist at the desk, all he does is scream. Then he explains that he couldn’t think of anything else to say. It’s hilarious and unexpected. The game just doesn’t take itself overly serious. While the story is a bit serious, the majority of the NPCs in the game are just living their lives and being ridiculous all while you’re trying to save their asses from being overtaken by evil. Seriously, the dialogue is well written and it makes talking to everyone a lot more bareable.
One of the best things about EarthBound is the music. My god, if this isn’t one of the greatest soundtracks you’ve ever heard, there’s seriously something not right with you. There are so many different styles incorporated into this unworldly collection of sounds. You’ve got reggae, rock, electronica, noise, even the Giygas’s th
eme is heavy metal. There’s just no way you can go wrong with this soundtrack. It also adds an amazing sense of atmosphere to what you’re playing. When the music is serious, that’s when shit is serious, but most of the time it’s just loony sounds that lure you in. It’s hard not to catch yourself humming them or getting them stuck in your head from time to time. When I got my own copy of the game for my 16th birthday, the first thing I did was walk into Onett after the sun rose and listened to the loop of the town’s theme for an hour. It’s just a perfect sound for that game. There’s no other way I can describe it.
Lastly, the ending. When you finally beat the game, you have the option to go around to the different places you’ve visited and talk to the people you’ve come across to see how they’ve changed since you’ve defeated Giygas. It’s a really powerful moment when you have conversations with them. You really feel like you’ve saved the world and people are actually happy that you’ve done something for them. Places close down, people thank you and allies (like a talking rock), die… or really just turn into a normal-not-talking-rock. You get the idea. It’s just a great feeling and that’s what playing a video game is all about. That sense of reward and satisfaction of overcoming obstacles and winning. Ah.
There was finally a sequel. Mother 3. It wasn’t released in the states, but there is a translated patch of it on the Internet and I’ve been having it for quite sometime now. As much as I enjoyed EarthBound, I figured I would enjoy this a lot, too, but I haven’t really gotten around to actually playing it. Now, for whatever reason, I want to play this very badly. I want to just start and not stop, but I don’t know when that will happen. Hopefully soon enough, because from what I’ve read, this game is just as good as the predecessor.
I hope they’re right.
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Now playing: Grateful Dead – Truckin’
via FoxyTunes
