A False Sense of Security
Another article where I may be entirely stating the obvious. But how can I know? This never seemed obvious to me, so I wrote it all down.
Who has played Earthbound and not loved it? Honestly. I don't know a single person who's sat down to engage in a little bit of Spiteful Crow bashing and New Age Retro Hippy killing and not had fun.
My brothers and I had never heard of Earthbound when I received it for Christmas, shortly after it's US release. My mother bought it for me, and I'm not sure what prompted her to do it. Probably she saw the characters on the box and thought "Oh, they're cute and little and weird." and immediately thought of me (great). I doubt she realized little else about it - perhaps she read the back and the idea of a thirteen-year-old saving the world from a creepy alien and an egomaniacal fat kid appealed to her and thought it would appeal to me, too (I was about thirteen at the time, myself). I don't know.
Regardless, I received this game, and it was the first video game that I OWNED. Our littlest brother got Yoshi's Island. (GRRR.)
My memories of those early days of playing EB are hazy. I do know it involved many hours, over the course of a couple of weeks, and a lot of late nights. I do know I had fun. And I know that somewhere along the line, I started a game where I named my favorite food "crap", much to my pre-adolescent merriment.
I could say a lot here about how affected my brother and I (the middle one, not the youngest - he couldn't read yet) were by EB. It certainly wasn't like any other RPG we'd ever played - and we'd played plenty of them. I could talk about all of the conventional rules it broke in the video game industry and the interesting ideas implemented in it, etc. etc. But anyone who is taking the time to read this knows all of that already.
The important thing - the backing behind this article - is going back and playing it years after the first time you've gone through it. Because that's what I did just recently.
Oh, I'd beaten the game over and over again since that Christmas. Of course. It was too much fun to leave alone. But this last time I played it through (in the course of about a week or so, since I had work and finals to contend with, too), I recall a moment where I was in battle - and I can tell you exactly what happened - when suddenly, it hit me. What the heck kind of game was this I'd been playing? How did this sneak up on me this way?! My entire perception of Earthbound had been all backward for years.
Earthbound starts off as a quaint enough little game. It's full of cutesy elements like fights with runaway dogs, moles, and crows, the hero in his jammies, and his mother saying "jammies". Weapons of choice are limited to toys, cooking utensils, and mad-scientist creations. You do crazy, goofy little mini-quests (e.g: entering a cave full of monkeys and trading them food and random objects for passage through the doors they're guarding, or getting a singer's autograph on a banana peel for a needy, fanboy scientist). And most importantly, you start off in Onett, which is for the most part a safe zone (despite the presence of The Sharks, who aren't a threat for long, and the above-mentioned renegade animals) where Ness and his family live, where his dog sleeps on the living room floor, where there's a tree house that all of Ness' buddies frequent, and you're only a short walk away from a nap in your own bed and your favorite meal. Ah. Nice. Even the first big battle is in Onett so that if the Titanic Ant scares you too much you can always go home and hide under the covers.
The game slowly takes you away from that comfort, steadily putting distance between Ness and his house. Before you realize it, you're trapped (TRAPPED!) in Threed, in a creepy basement, and there's nothing you can do. Until Jeff comes. Hooray for Jeff. *cough* Yes.
The atmosphere gradually begins to change, however, especially in Threed. There are zombies and creepy hookers. And it only gets worse from there, getting weirder and more harsh. Saving your "noses-with-feet" friends, the Mr. Saturns, from enslavement for instance, and journeying to the odd and strangely acid-trip-ish "town" of Moonside, where walking fire plugs attack you. But throughout all of this, a sense of realism is maintained. Food restores you, so instead of going to the item shop to buy potions, you can order a pizza or buy a bag of cheeseburgers. If one of your friends goes down to zero hit points and becomes "unconscious" you must go pay a doctor's fee to get them out of the hospital. Certain status conditions - being paralyzed or "diamondized" - can only be cured at the hospital - at least at first.
And then Ness and his troupe finally get to Fire Springs, and the Sound Stone plays, and he is transported to Magicant, where he must defeat "Ness' Nightmare", or his evil side (symbolism!). Naturally, the experience yields a much-improved, more powerful Ness. However....
This is when the cuteness of the game begins to unravel and transform it into a sort of dark comedy. Ness is now ridiculously powerful - so powerful that you hardly ever have to worry about him dying. It's about at this point that you think to yourself: "How long has it been since I've been to the hospital?". You cease to rely on the realism of the game. It slowly begins to make less and less sense, while still making perfect sense. You must travel through time to defeat Giygas, and for the time machine itself to be built, you must retrieve a piece of the meteorite that landed behind Ness' house. Returning to Onett, Ness' hometown, finds a darkened, dangerous version of the place you had previously been safe within. Plus, it's overrun by monsters. Well, of course - Giygas doesn't want you to get to the meteorite! You are suddenly fighting crazy enemies. Eyes with legs growing out of the sides of their heads, ghosts of enemies you've fought before. And your psychic powers are now almost at their greatest level - and the high-level powers are really loud and bright. When before you'd been skipping around dragging teddy bears and eating cheeseburgers, you are suddenly curled in a fetal position on the floor, suffering an epileptic fit because of the flashing of PSI Thunder Omega. And that is the moment that did it for me. It was late at night, my PSI powers were lighting up my entire apartment, the battle music was pulsing and I found myself saying "WHEN DID THIS GAME BECOME SO INSANE?! HOW COME I NEVER REALIZED HOW INSANE IT REALLY IS?!"
And before you know it, Ness is a robot-boy, leading his crew of robot children up a long, winding path, fighting aliens and - well, robots - until, inevitably, they fight and defeat the ultimate evil in the universe, leaving their tiny, crumpled, metal bodies lying on the ground of an alien landscape.
I can't believe it never occurred to me before how intense this game actually is. It comes across as so sweet and innocent - it's a game you could give a six-year-old kid and let her play it without fear. Did I only notice how intense and dark it ultimately ends up being (before the end, when it magically turns happy and innocent again) because I am older, and when I was a kid it just flew right over my head? All I know is that it's a disturbingly beautiful game, with an ending that is predictable but defies most expectations. And after all of the confusion and insanity that the last chapter of the game builds up, it's very surreal to return to the calm, sweet atmosphere that the game began in. It is the most perfect ending, I think, any video game could hope for, because it ends in the kind of world that everyone really hopes for - and you brought it about. Everyone is happy, the entire planet is safe, and it's all thanks to Ness. Hooray.
Another article where I may be entirely stating the obvious. But how can I know? This never seemed obvious to me, so I wrote it all down.
Who has played Earthbound and not loved it? Honestly. I don't know a single person who's sat down to engage in a little bit of Spiteful Crow bashing and New Age Retro Hippy killing and not had fun.
My brothers and I had never heard of Earthbound when I received it for Christmas, shortly after it's US release. My mother bought it for me, and I'm not sure what prompted her to do it. Probably she saw the characters on the box and thought "Oh, they're cute and little and weird." and immediately thought of me (great). I doubt she realized little else about it - perhaps she read the back and the idea of a thirteen-year-old saving the world from a creepy alien and an egomaniacal fat kid appealed to her and thought it would appeal to me, too (I was about thirteen at the time, myself). I don't know.
Regardless, I received this game, and it was the first video game that I OWNED. Our littlest brother got Yoshi's Island. (GRRR.)
My memories of those early days of playing EB are hazy. I do know it involved many hours, over the course of a couple of weeks, and a lot of late nights. I do know I had fun. And I know that somewhere along the line, I started a game where I named my favorite food "crap", much to my pre-adolescent merriment.
I could say a lot here about how affected my brother and I (the middle one, not the youngest - he couldn't read yet) were by EB. It certainly wasn't like any other RPG we'd ever played - and we'd played plenty of them. I could talk about all of the conventional rules it broke in the video game industry and the interesting ideas implemented in it, etc. etc. But anyone who is taking the time to read this knows all of that already.
The important thing - the backing behind this article - is going back and playing it years after the first time you've gone through it. Because that's what I did just recently.
Oh, I'd beaten the game over and over again since that Christmas. Of course. It was too much fun to leave alone. But this last time I played it through (in the course of about a week or so, since I had work and finals to contend with, too), I recall a moment where I was in battle - and I can tell you exactly what happened - when suddenly, it hit me. What the heck kind of game was this I'd been playing? How did this sneak up on me this way?! My entire perception of Earthbound had been all backward for years.
Earthbound starts off as a quaint enough little game. It's full of cutesy elements like fights with runaway dogs, moles, and crows, the hero in his jammies, and his mother saying "jammies". Weapons of choice are limited to toys, cooking utensils, and mad-scientist creations. You do crazy, goofy little mini-quests (e.g: entering a cave full of monkeys and trading them food and random objects for passage through the doors they're guarding, or getting a singer's autograph on a banana peel for a needy, fanboy scientist). And most importantly, you start off in Onett, which is for the most part a safe zone (despite the presence of The Sharks, who aren't a threat for long, and the above-mentioned renegade animals) where Ness and his family live, where his dog sleeps on the living room floor, where there's a tree house that all of Ness' buddies frequent, and you're only a short walk away from a nap in your own bed and your favorite meal. Ah. Nice. Even the first big battle is in Onett so that if the Titanic Ant scares you too much you can always go home and hide under the covers.
The game slowly takes you away from that comfort, steadily putting distance between Ness and his house. Before you realize it, you're trapped (TRAPPED!) in Threed, in a creepy basement, and there's nothing you can do. Until Jeff comes. Hooray for Jeff. *cough* Yes.
The atmosphere gradually begins to change, however, especially in Threed. There are zombies and creepy hookers. And it only gets worse from there, getting weirder and more harsh. Saving your "noses-with-feet" friends, the Mr. Saturns, from enslavement for instance, and journeying to the odd and strangely acid-trip-ish "town" of Moonside, where walking fire plugs attack you. But throughout all of this, a sense of realism is maintained. Food restores you, so instead of going to the item shop to buy potions, you can order a pizza or buy a bag of cheeseburgers. If one of your friends goes down to zero hit points and becomes "unconscious" you must go pay a doctor's fee to get them out of the hospital. Certain status conditions - being paralyzed or "diamondized" - can only be cured at the hospital - at least at first.
And then Ness and his troupe finally get to Fire Springs, and the Sound Stone plays, and he is transported to Magicant, where he must defeat "Ness' Nightmare", or his evil side (symbolism!). Naturally, the experience yields a much-improved, more powerful Ness. However....
This is when the cuteness of the game begins to unravel and transform it into a sort of dark comedy. Ness is now ridiculously powerful - so powerful that you hardly ever have to worry about him dying. It's about at this point that you think to yourself: "How long has it been since I've been to the hospital?". You cease to rely on the realism of the game. It slowly begins to make less and less sense, while still making perfect sense. You must travel through time to defeat Giygas, and for the time machine itself to be built, you must retrieve a piece of the meteorite that landed behind Ness' house. Returning to Onett, Ness' hometown, finds a darkened, dangerous version of the place you had previously been safe within. Plus, it's overrun by monsters. Well, of course - Giygas doesn't want you to get to the meteorite! You are suddenly fighting crazy enemies. Eyes with legs growing out of the sides of their heads, ghosts of enemies you've fought before. And your psychic powers are now almost at their greatest level - and the high-level powers are really loud and bright. When before you'd been skipping around dragging teddy bears and eating cheeseburgers, you are suddenly curled in a fetal position on the floor, suffering an epileptic fit because of the flashing of PSI Thunder Omega. And that is the moment that did it for me. It was late at night, my PSI powers were lighting up my entire apartment, the battle music was pulsing and I found myself saying "WHEN DID THIS GAME BECOME SO INSANE?! HOW COME I NEVER REALIZED HOW INSANE IT REALLY IS?!"
And before you know it, Ness is a robot-boy, leading his crew of robot children up a long, winding path, fighting aliens and - well, robots - until, inevitably, they fight and defeat the ultimate evil in the universe, leaving their tiny, crumpled, metal bodies lying on the ground of an alien landscape.
I can't believe it never occurred to me before how intense this game actually is. It comes across as so sweet and innocent - it's a game you could give a six-year-old kid and let her play it without fear. Did I only notice how intense and dark it ultimately ends up being (before the end, when it magically turns happy and innocent again) because I am older, and when I was a kid it just flew right over my head? All I know is that it's a disturbingly beautiful game, with an ending that is predictable but defies most expectations. And after all of the confusion and insanity that the last chapter of the game builds up, it's very surreal to return to the calm, sweet atmosphere that the game began in. It is the most perfect ending, I think, any video game could hope for, because it ends in the kind of world that everyone really hopes for - and you brought it about. Everyone is happy, the entire planet is safe, and it's all thanks to Ness. Hooray.
