Earthbound the Rose Tinted goggles come off

Anyone who knows me will know one simple fact I love Earthbound in ways that are a little bit creepy, but I know and understand this isn't the view everyone takes. I figured for a change I'd try taking off the rose tinted glasses and look at it from an impartial view.

Basic Rundown and Mechanics

Earthbound is a Super Nintendo rpg that is done as a parody of most other rpgs at the time. The basic menu system is done in the style of Dragon Quest with all combat being written in that style as well. Though it is one of the earlier rpgs to involve having the enemies appear on the overworld to run into for battles. Getting a green swirl if you attack them from behing signifying you get a free attack, a red swirl if they get the upperhand, and a grey swirl for neutral. The combat in the games is also unique with the scrolling health bars. Health is signified numerically and if you get hit it scrolls down for the damage you take. Earthbound was also one of the few early games to include autofight, though even new games don't have it that often. Also unlike many games with autofight it didn't just have you autoattack, if someone got hit they would be healed, and poison would be cured. Mechanics wise it was fairly innovative trying things not done very often or ever before.

Story

A giant meteor hits the hill behind your house in the middle of the night. What do you do go outside still in your pajamas and walk to see what its like of course. Somehow the cops already have it blockaded by the time you get up there, and take it down in the blink of an eye as soon as all the animals go nuts and start mauling people. You find out you're the chosen one and need to visit places of power to save the world. Now that I've given you a basic rundown on the story you can see how it's a little lacking in depth at times, but being a parody of the average game that might be a little expected. The 4 characters in the game are Ness the silent protagonist, Paula the psychic love interest, Jeff the weak genius, and Poo the martial artist. For most of them thats about all you really find out. With Jeff you figure out a little bit more but not that much.

Graphics and Sound

The music in this game is one of the few that I'll actually put on a playlist and listen to for games. Graphically it's passable for it's time. It wasn't anything outstanding suchas Chrono Trigger, but at the same time it wasn't as bad as it could have been. The battles have trippy spinning, flashing, swirling backgrounds that make you wonder what drugs the creators were on and if they'd share. Many of the music tracks are just higher bit-rate versions of things done for the original Mother 1 one of the notable cases being the Runaway Hippies theme song. The sound effects unlike the music are rather dull and more splashes and bleeps.

Epilogue

If you've ever wanted to beat Hippies with baseball bats, smash bears with frying pans are shoot flying saucers with bottle rockets this may be a game to look up, if a deep and epic story that leaves you thinking for weeks is what you want. You might want to pass. Being quite a few gaming generations ago it's rather surprising how well this game has actually held up. Since the graphics are sprite based and not polygonal there isn't the ugliness of most psx rpgs. and with the low difficulty curve it's easily accessible to the average player. So even trying to be impartial in this it seems I might be biased for the game with how positive a review this is overall. I still would give this game 2 thumbs up and a pat on the back.


This is Scorch109 thanking you for taking the time to read the product of my overall boredom.

I was both thrilled and disheartened to see this review come up, my friend. Thrilled because I absolutely LOVE to see people who appreciate such an underrated and lesser known game as this one. I for one regard Earthbound as one of, if not, my favorite game of all time. The humor, the character development, and the replayability are all there enough for me to have beaten the game FAAAAR too many times to admit.

Oh yea, and the part that disheartened me was the fact that I, myself I was also going to review this game haha! Very good pick though!