Earthbound and Popularity
Written by Deck690
This is my first article, so I hope you think it's good. I also hope Ultimoo posts it, and I hope people read it. Oh, and I hope that it's original, because I really haven't read too many of the other articles so I don't know if anyone else has written an article like this. If they have, sorry.
Okay, reading through all of the topics and replies in the Message Board on earthbound.net, the topic of Earthbound's popularity and/or success in the gaming industry has come up a few times. I noticed that some people were arguing about whether or not Earthbound was a "failure" for Nintendo. Some people seemed offended by the posts and tried to defend Earthbound, while others simply accepted the fact that Earthbound wasn't a popular game. I personally believe that Earthbound, even though it didn't rake in a ton of cash for Nintendo, was a great game and enough people think the same thing, or else we wouldn't have earthbound.net and I woulnd't be writing this article.
Anyways, another thing that I was thinking about while posting on the Message Board is: What would have happened if Earthbound had been immensly popular? It is a very interesting question, and this is what I think about it:
Had Earthbound been a popular game (i.e: Pok�mon, and I'm going to use this example a lot), one of the differences would be a lot more Earthbound sites would exist, and earthbound.net might not have been the best EB site out there. The "Earthbound Community", which is just what I'm calling all of the people who post on the forum and get on #earthbound, would be a whole lot bigger. Because of this, #earthbound would have tons of different people going in and out all of the time, and we wouldn't all know each other very well because it would be too hard to keep us with all the people that get on.
Also, there would be alot of people who would say, "Yeah, I love Earthbound! It's the greatest RPG ever!!! My favorite enemy is Starguy!" but in reality they wouldn't know the first thing about the game and probably havn't played it. People would like Earthbound just to go with the popular crowd, and it would really make me sick to my stomach to see that.
Now, let's think about what Nintendo would have done do differently had Earthbound been a hit. There would be Earthbound merchandise everywhere. Ness dolls, Starman dolls, Mach Pizza air refresheners in stores, Pencil Erasers, you could find Trout Flavored Yogurt and Peanut Cheese Bars in grocery stores. Little kids would run around screaming, "PSI Fire Alpha! You're dead!" "No I'm not, I have a PSI Power Sheild that deflected the attack!" "Cheater!" and so on. There might even be a cheesy Earthbound cartoon show, where Giygas comes back every show and narrowly escapes every time the heroes are about to beat him. At the end of the show there could be an "Earthbound Rap" where they sang every sanctuary name to the sound stone tune. EBTCG would exist for real, and all of the kids would play it and have tournaments and all that junk. Some people might think this is great, and would go out and stock up on Peanut Cheese Bars and play EBTCG with their freinds, but I would hate it. All of these things happening would just turn Earthbound into, well Pok�mon. And I'm sorry if I'm offending all of you guys who love Pok�mon, but all of that commercialism just made me lose respect for the game. I guess one good thing would be that Nintendo would pay more attention to our opinions, and might even consider releasing Mother on GBC, but that's the only good thing I can think of.
I guess the reason I think that all of this would be bad is similar to the reason most people hate it when their local bands get really popular and everyone starts to like them. I know some people that didn't like it very much when The Urge released "Jump Right In" and that became a hit, because now everyone is singing to that catchy tune and the term "Sell Out" comes to mind and people get all jealous and mad and all that bad stuff. When I saw the first episode of South Park, (by amasing luck I was at my dad's freind's house who had Comedy Central, I didn't at the time) I loved it, and tried everything I could to get my next-door neighbors' mom's freind to tape it for me. Then when it became super popular, and everyone loved it and tried to do crappy Cartman impressions (I do great Cartman impressions) it kinda made me mad, because now it's a fad that everyone loves South Park, and when I try to say that I loved it even before it mas mega-popular they don't believe me. Oh well.
Okay, now this article is getting really long and is tracing off the subject, so I'm just gonna end it right here. I hope you thought it was okay, I didn't really proofread it much and there's probably way too many commas and not enough periods. That's just what I do when I write. Feel free to flame me and tell me how much this article sucked, and thanks for taking the time to read it.
Written by Deck690
This is my first article, so I hope you think it's good. I also hope Ultimoo posts it, and I hope people read it. Oh, and I hope that it's original, because I really haven't read too many of the other articles so I don't know if anyone else has written an article like this. If they have, sorry.
Okay, reading through all of the topics and replies in the Message Board on earthbound.net, the topic of Earthbound's popularity and/or success in the gaming industry has come up a few times. I noticed that some people were arguing about whether or not Earthbound was a "failure" for Nintendo. Some people seemed offended by the posts and tried to defend Earthbound, while others simply accepted the fact that Earthbound wasn't a popular game. I personally believe that Earthbound, even though it didn't rake in a ton of cash for Nintendo, was a great game and enough people think the same thing, or else we wouldn't have earthbound.net and I woulnd't be writing this article.
Anyways, another thing that I was thinking about while posting on the Message Board is: What would have happened if Earthbound had been immensly popular? It is a very interesting question, and this is what I think about it:
Had Earthbound been a popular game (i.e: Pok�mon, and I'm going to use this example a lot), one of the differences would be a lot more Earthbound sites would exist, and earthbound.net might not have been the best EB site out there. The "Earthbound Community", which is just what I'm calling all of the people who post on the forum and get on #earthbound, would be a whole lot bigger. Because of this, #earthbound would have tons of different people going in and out all of the time, and we wouldn't all know each other very well because it would be too hard to keep us with all the people that get on.
Also, there would be alot of people who would say, "Yeah, I love Earthbound! It's the greatest RPG ever!!! My favorite enemy is Starguy!" but in reality they wouldn't know the first thing about the game and probably havn't played it. People would like Earthbound just to go with the popular crowd, and it would really make me sick to my stomach to see that.
Now, let's think about what Nintendo would have done do differently had Earthbound been a hit. There would be Earthbound merchandise everywhere. Ness dolls, Starman dolls, Mach Pizza air refresheners in stores, Pencil Erasers, you could find Trout Flavored Yogurt and Peanut Cheese Bars in grocery stores. Little kids would run around screaming, "PSI Fire Alpha! You're dead!" "No I'm not, I have a PSI Power Sheild that deflected the attack!" "Cheater!" and so on. There might even be a cheesy Earthbound cartoon show, where Giygas comes back every show and narrowly escapes every time the heroes are about to beat him. At the end of the show there could be an "Earthbound Rap" where they sang every sanctuary name to the sound stone tune. EBTCG would exist for real, and all of the kids would play it and have tournaments and all that junk. Some people might think this is great, and would go out and stock up on Peanut Cheese Bars and play EBTCG with their freinds, but I would hate it. All of these things happening would just turn Earthbound into, well Pok�mon. And I'm sorry if I'm offending all of you guys who love Pok�mon, but all of that commercialism just made me lose respect for the game. I guess one good thing would be that Nintendo would pay more attention to our opinions, and might even consider releasing Mother on GBC, but that's the only good thing I can think of.
I guess the reason I think that all of this would be bad is similar to the reason most people hate it when their local bands get really popular and everyone starts to like them. I know some people that didn't like it very much when The Urge released "Jump Right In" and that became a hit, because now everyone is singing to that catchy tune and the term "Sell Out" comes to mind and people get all jealous and mad and all that bad stuff. When I saw the first episode of South Park, (by amasing luck I was at my dad's freind's house who had Comedy Central, I didn't at the time) I loved it, and tried everything I could to get my next-door neighbors' mom's freind to tape it for me. Then when it became super popular, and everyone loved it and tried to do crappy Cartman impressions (I do great Cartman impressions) it kinda made me mad, because now it's a fad that everyone loves South Park, and when I try to say that I loved it even before it mas mega-popular they don't believe me. Oh well.
Okay, now this article is getting really long and is tracing off the subject, so I'm just gonna end it right here. I hope you thought it was okay, I didn't really proofread it much and there's probably way too many commas and not enough periods. That's just what I do when I write. Feel free to flame me and tell me how much this article sucked, and thanks for taking the time to read it.
