Of Rusted Bikes and Faceless Dreamers
The other day, I saw a picture of that Mach Pizza air freshener you could have gotten if you guessed the mystery smell on one of the cards in the back of the Earthbound player’s guide, and something dawned on me: not many people got their hands on one of those. Nobody I knew sent in that card, because none of us wanted to deface our player’s guide. And all the copies of Earthbound I see on eBay always say they have the cards intact, which means none of them could have sent away for it either. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if fewer than 20,000 air fresheners were made, and only a fraction of those must still be in existence today.
The more I pondered the situation, the more I stared at the picture of that lonely, forgotten air freshener, the sadder I felt. It was like passing by a garbage can and seeing a grimy doll peering out, unloved, unused and discarded. The more I looked at it, the creepier that little Mach Pizza man looked, until I shut down the browser and did something else.
This isn’t the first time something Earthbound related has done this to me, either. I’ve played Earthbound Zero plenty of times with no problems. But like that Mach Pizza air freshener, things go awry when I start thinking too much. Every once in a while, when I’m playing EBZ at night, and the house is silent as a tomb, strange ideas slither into my subconscious, pushing until they burst into my waking thoughts.
We were fortunate enough to have got our hands on Earthbound Zero, I’ll think, but who knows what else we’re all ignorant to? How much of my childhood did Nintendo quietly cancel because it wouldn’t have brought in enough of a return on their investment? Who knows that else they could be hiding from us... And on a much grander scale, who knows what secrets the rest of the world conceals.
Paranoia – the mild kind, not enough to make me stop playing, but enough to make me uneasy – washes over me. “I shouldn’t be playing this. This game... doesn’t exist,” I say.
And yet, it clearly does. It defies logic. Thinking about it creeps me out.
People I’ve never met before – faceless, nameless people – put hundreds of hours of their lives into creating Earthbound Zero for me; for us. Yet they’re nothing but names in the credits. I saw a picture of the game’s translator once; the man’s name was Phil Sandhop. He was smiling. But I wonder if he even remembers the day the picture was taken.
I’m sorry your game never got the wide release it deserved, Mr. Sandhop. I want you to know you did a great job on it, and I really enjoyed it. Tell me, though; would you have worked on the project as hard as you did if you knew what fate had in store for it?
But everyone else I can’t thank, because I don’t remember their names, I’ve never seen their faces, and they probably don’t speak my language anyway. They are faceless, nameless people who once dreamt of making Earthbound great, and it makes me sad.
When I was about four years old, before I went to school full-time so and my mother could start working outside the home again, she used to take me for walks through the path in woods about a quarter mile down my block. At the end was a street that led back to civilization. But right before the intersection, just steps away from the road home, a stream ran next to the street. Oddly enough, inside the stream was a small, rusted bike, designed for a young child. The steam flowed over it like it had always been there, like it was some sort of natural debris. Every time I saw it, it made me sad.
Earthbound Zero, even thought it was lovingly crafted, even though it was nurtured and had a chance to mature, never made it out Nintendo's door. Like that rusty bike in the stream next to the street, it never fulfilled its true purpose. Like the rusty bike, the trees grew around it so it was obscured; no one could see it anymore, and everyone forgot about it. I’ll wager that aside from my mother, I’m the only one who remembers that discarded, unloved bike anymore. If that one-in-a-million chance hadn’t brought the prototype to us via emulation, Earthbound Zero might as well have been tossed into the stream next to that poor bicycle. Even with the way it is now, one can only wonder how many people who otherwise would have loved it missed out on such a wonderful game.
The Metal Gear Solid series often asks the player to contemplate what happens to professional soldiers when the war has ended. Almost a year after graduating college, I'm starting to understand what that really means: Like a soldier without a war, I've discovered that I'm a student without a classroom. No one will pay me to read books or write essays comparing Henry James to Emily Bronte, so there's not much for me to do except pretend to be a reporter. Perhaps it’s less an air freshener, an unreleased video game, Phil Sandhop and a forgotten bicycle that I lament for, and more myself. After all, in one way or another, all of us on that list aren't fulfilling our true purposes. It’s wasted potential.
And that, I realize, is why that innocent-looking Mach Pizza air freshener made me feel so sad and creeped out: It never really did what it was made to do. Nobody really had one, and most kids who did probably left it in the package or threw it out if they didn’t like the way it smelled. While it’s just a piece of scented cardboard, it represents someone’s thoughts and creative actions that are, for the most part, ignored and lost in the stream of time. I just hope that one day I don’t see a picture of Mother 3 somewhere on the internet and feel that same, sad, creeped out way. Better yet, I hope I don’t ever look into a mirror and feel like that either.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go pull an ancient bicycle out of a stream.
The other day, I saw a picture of that Mach Pizza air freshener you could have gotten if you guessed the mystery smell on one of the cards in the back of the Earthbound player’s guide, and something dawned on me: not many people got their hands on one of those. Nobody I knew sent in that card, because none of us wanted to deface our player’s guide. And all the copies of Earthbound I see on eBay always say they have the cards intact, which means none of them could have sent away for it either. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if fewer than 20,000 air fresheners were made, and only a fraction of those must still be in existence today.
The more I pondered the situation, the more I stared at the picture of that lonely, forgotten air freshener, the sadder I felt. It was like passing by a garbage can and seeing a grimy doll peering out, unloved, unused and discarded. The more I looked at it, the creepier that little Mach Pizza man looked, until I shut down the browser and did something else.
This isn’t the first time something Earthbound related has done this to me, either. I’ve played Earthbound Zero plenty of times with no problems. But like that Mach Pizza air freshener, things go awry when I start thinking too much. Every once in a while, when I’m playing EBZ at night, and the house is silent as a tomb, strange ideas slither into my subconscious, pushing until they burst into my waking thoughts.
We were fortunate enough to have got our hands on Earthbound Zero, I’ll think, but who knows what else we’re all ignorant to? How much of my childhood did Nintendo quietly cancel because it wouldn’t have brought in enough of a return on their investment? Who knows that else they could be hiding from us... And on a much grander scale, who knows what secrets the rest of the world conceals.
Paranoia – the mild kind, not enough to make me stop playing, but enough to make me uneasy – washes over me. “I shouldn’t be playing this. This game... doesn’t exist,” I say.
And yet, it clearly does. It defies logic. Thinking about it creeps me out.
People I’ve never met before – faceless, nameless people – put hundreds of hours of their lives into creating Earthbound Zero for me; for us. Yet they’re nothing but names in the credits. I saw a picture of the game’s translator once; the man’s name was Phil Sandhop. He was smiling. But I wonder if he even remembers the day the picture was taken.
I’m sorry your game never got the wide release it deserved, Mr. Sandhop. I want you to know you did a great job on it, and I really enjoyed it. Tell me, though; would you have worked on the project as hard as you did if you knew what fate had in store for it?
But everyone else I can’t thank, because I don’t remember their names, I’ve never seen their faces, and they probably don’t speak my language anyway. They are faceless, nameless people who once dreamt of making Earthbound great, and it makes me sad.
When I was about four years old, before I went to school full-time so and my mother could start working outside the home again, she used to take me for walks through the path in woods about a quarter mile down my block. At the end was a street that led back to civilization. But right before the intersection, just steps away from the road home, a stream ran next to the street. Oddly enough, inside the stream was a small, rusted bike, designed for a young child. The steam flowed over it like it had always been there, like it was some sort of natural debris. Every time I saw it, it made me sad.
Earthbound Zero, even thought it was lovingly crafted, even though it was nurtured and had a chance to mature, never made it out Nintendo's door. Like that rusty bike in the stream next to the street, it never fulfilled its true purpose. Like the rusty bike, the trees grew around it so it was obscured; no one could see it anymore, and everyone forgot about it. I’ll wager that aside from my mother, I’m the only one who remembers that discarded, unloved bike anymore. If that one-in-a-million chance hadn’t brought the prototype to us via emulation, Earthbound Zero might as well have been tossed into the stream next to that poor bicycle. Even with the way it is now, one can only wonder how many people who otherwise would have loved it missed out on such a wonderful game.
The Metal Gear Solid series often asks the player to contemplate what happens to professional soldiers when the war has ended. Almost a year after graduating college, I'm starting to understand what that really means: Like a soldier without a war, I've discovered that I'm a student without a classroom. No one will pay me to read books or write essays comparing Henry James to Emily Bronte, so there's not much for me to do except pretend to be a reporter. Perhaps it’s less an air freshener, an unreleased video game, Phil Sandhop and a forgotten bicycle that I lament for, and more myself. After all, in one way or another, all of us on that list aren't fulfilling our true purposes. It’s wasted potential.
And that, I realize, is why that innocent-looking Mach Pizza air freshener made me feel so sad and creeped out: It never really did what it was made to do. Nobody really had one, and most kids who did probably left it in the package or threw it out if they didn’t like the way it smelled. While it’s just a piece of scented cardboard, it represents someone’s thoughts and creative actions that are, for the most part, ignored and lost in the stream of time. I just hope that one day I don’t see a picture of Mother 3 somewhere on the internet and feel that same, sad, creeped out way. Better yet, I hope I don’t ever look into a mirror and feel like that either.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go pull an ancient bicycle out of a stream.
