Earthbound: the Beginning of the End (of Work in High School)
I'm supposed to be writing about how my experience of Earthbound led other people down that path of righteousness. Before I can do that, I must acknowledge that I, too, was a neophyte in this odd world of 14 dollar hamburgers, long distance phone calls, phase distort-ery, and prophetic bees. It took three friends of mine to bring me to the light, so I might spread its joys to the world around me.
It all started in fourth grade, when I was but a wee lad at 11 years young. My family and I were visiting my best friends, who moved to New Jersey the year before. They were three brothers who were into everything, including video games. When I visited them, the game they were into was... you guessed it... Final Fantasy 3 (6 for you Japanese purists).
But they had also been playing this weird game called Earthbound, and that's what they were finishing up the first night there. That night, I watched them finish the game for the first time, from Magicant (which I found to be no end of trippy) to the Final Battle (which was unbelievably cool). So, yeah, I sort of saw the ending before playing the game. Not like it mattered at the time; an 11 year old's memory is finicky, and with a game that was as context dependent as Earthbound, details pretty much disappeared. The only details I retained were "Krakens are big", "Ness is scared pantsless of a Golden Statue", "everyone became robots!!!1", and "that red swirly thing at the end? Giygas? He rocked."
It wasn't until many years hence that I'd finally get a hold of the game myself. While... ahem... "browsing"* through a "store"** of "used video games"*** (see translation below), I found earthbound, and decided to down... buy it. This time, I played through the whole thing on my own, and found the experience to be even better than I remembered it. I went out and bought the game... for real this time... and had one of my friends try it out. I remember his insightful words well:
"wtf, that bee thing completely tore apart a walking metal death machine, but couldn’t handle a fat woman's hand?"
He was hooked. Earthbound became the amusing diversion that occupied us throughout high school. We spread it to some of our other friends, and the reactions were perhaps... mixed. Generally, the mixed responses from the same person:
"Paul, this is stupid as hell." one week later... "I can't stop playing!"
Because it was so much fun to re-play, Earthbound became the perennial "other option" when it came to work. It was always the start of insidious, month long binges of procrastination, whereby a whole galaxy of digital media would be consumed, before work picked up and we resumed good study habits for a week or so. Then, Earthbound, Morrowind, or Half Life would send out their siren call; "Come on, start a new game. You can always save and come back after your work is done...". Lies, all of that. You didn't stop playing for hours.
Suffice to say, it's been some time since then. I'm in college now, my old friends are "scattered across the land", and video games, like time, have become somewhat of a luxury. But I would be lying if I told you I did not have a new save file I started recently. Earthbound has conquered a niche in my childhood- it's not going away any time soon.
*: Googling
**: websites
***: the haxx0red crack ROMs
incidentally, "haxx0red" is a legitimate word according to Microsoft's spellcheck.
I'm supposed to be writing about how my experience of Earthbound led other people down that path of righteousness. Before I can do that, I must acknowledge that I, too, was a neophyte in this odd world of 14 dollar hamburgers, long distance phone calls, phase distort-ery, and prophetic bees. It took three friends of mine to bring me to the light, so I might spread its joys to the world around me.
It all started in fourth grade, when I was but a wee lad at 11 years young. My family and I were visiting my best friends, who moved to New Jersey the year before. They were three brothers who were into everything, including video games. When I visited them, the game they were into was... you guessed it... Final Fantasy 3 (6 for you Japanese purists).
But they had also been playing this weird game called Earthbound, and that's what they were finishing up the first night there. That night, I watched them finish the game for the first time, from Magicant (which I found to be no end of trippy) to the Final Battle (which was unbelievably cool). So, yeah, I sort of saw the ending before playing the game. Not like it mattered at the time; an 11 year old's memory is finicky, and with a game that was as context dependent as Earthbound, details pretty much disappeared. The only details I retained were "Krakens are big", "Ness is scared pantsless of a Golden Statue", "everyone became robots!!!1", and "that red swirly thing at the end? Giygas? He rocked."
It wasn't until many years hence that I'd finally get a hold of the game myself. While... ahem... "browsing"* through a "store"** of "used video games"*** (see translation below), I found earthbound, and decided to down... buy it. This time, I played through the whole thing on my own, and found the experience to be even better than I remembered it. I went out and bought the game... for real this time... and had one of my friends try it out. I remember his insightful words well:
"wtf, that bee thing completely tore apart a walking metal death machine, but couldn’t handle a fat woman's hand?"
He was hooked. Earthbound became the amusing diversion that occupied us throughout high school. We spread it to some of our other friends, and the reactions were perhaps... mixed. Generally, the mixed responses from the same person:
"Paul, this is stupid as hell." one week later... "I can't stop playing!"
Because it was so much fun to re-play, Earthbound became the perennial "other option" when it came to work. It was always the start of insidious, month long binges of procrastination, whereby a whole galaxy of digital media would be consumed, before work picked up and we resumed good study habits for a week or so. Then, Earthbound, Morrowind, or Half Life would send out their siren call; "Come on, start a new game. You can always save and come back after your work is done...". Lies, all of that. You didn't stop playing for hours.
Suffice to say, it's been some time since then. I'm in college now, my old friends are "scattered across the land", and video games, like time, have become somewhat of a luxury. But I would be lying if I told you I did not have a new save file I started recently. Earthbound has conquered a niche in my childhood- it's not going away any time soon.
*: Googling
**: websites
***: the haxx0red crack ROMs
incidentally, "haxx0red" is a legitimate word according to Microsoft's spellcheck.
