(sniffing)
What is that smell?
(sniffing)
Wh-- what could it... (sniffing)
All these years, I thought a skunk crawled in here and choked to death on dogshit,
but it's actually coming from this corner... (sniffing)
I-It's coming from one of these magazines! It's...
It's this one! Nintendo Power: Volume 74!
Huh... (sniffing)
Of course. The Virtual Boy.
It was so bad, even the mere mention of it in print emits the rancid odor of buffalo barf.
Wait... no, it's this!
"Warning! Use only in a well-ventilated area..."
"... because this game stinks."
Earthbound, well, that's a game nobody ever talked about.
So they're saying it stinks?
If so, it'll be the first time Nintendo Power was honest.
"As if life didn't stink enough already."
Oooooh, that's beautiful.
"...the first roleplaying game with B.O.
Scratch here, if you dare."
(scratching noises)
(sniffs)
OOOUUGHHHH, that stinks!
Ugh, let's try the pizza...
UUGUHHGHH! (coughs)
OH GOD!
Wow...that must mean the game is foul!
Like REAL rotten...
And that means, I gotta play it!
I know nothing about Earthbound, other than the fact
it was the second part of the Mother trilogy
which was only released in Japan.
First was Mother on Famicom, then Mother 2 on Super Famicom,
which became Earthbound in the U.S, then Mother 3 for the Game Boy Advance, and then Mother!, based on the
psychological horror film, starring Jennifer Lawrence.
So Earthbound must've been so bad, we didn't even GET the other games!
Well, what do people have to say? Let's find out how bad was Earthbound.
Oh, ok. It's just "one of the greatest RPGs of all time." That's all.
When did this happen?!
One of the top Super Nintendo games? And of course, when Nintendo rounded up all their most iconic
characters for the Super Smash Bros. series, they included Ness, from Earthbound. And that doesn't even sum up
Earthbound's legacy. This game has a whole community. It's worshipped! If God had a favorite game, it might be Earthbound.
Everybody and their grandma talks about it. Earthbound, Earthbound, Earthbound, the Mother series, the Mother series, mother fucking shit!
Well, guess I missed out on that one.
How was I supposed to know? Nobody gave a shit back then!
Now, I really need to play it. But it's the one game I don't own. Let's see here.
Oh, you son of a bitch. Oh, you got to be kidding me.
It's one of those, ok...Well luckily, it's been released on the Virtual Consoles
for the Wii U and New 3DS. And also, the fun-sized Super Nintendo Classic with several built-in games.
But this thing probably isn't THAT much easier to get. I usually play the original cartridges, but this time, for the convenience,
I'll make an exception.
So the game centers around the young boy. As I mentioned already, his name is Ness,
or whatever you want to name him since it's an RPG.
He's eventually joined by Paula, Jeff and Poo. That's right, Poo.
Your goal is simply to collect 8 sacred melodies and save the world from Giygas, who was one of the most
intangible villains I've ever come across, since it's never really explained exactly what Giygas is.
It's more like a vague evil force that hovers over the world.
Unlike most fantasy RPGs, it has a contemporary setting.
You'll see drugstores, burger shops, stop signs and vehicles that all resemble real life.
This is kind of a breath of fresh air. As much as we love the far-out fantasy stuff,
it's cool to see something we can sort of relate to. Even the first enemies you fight are common animals.
At first I didn't find this battle system to be very appealing. You can't see yourself.
You can only see the enemies. Compare this to Final Fantasy III, Chrono Trigger or Super Mario RPG.
That's how I prefer my RPG battles.
I want some kind of visual representation of the hero characters. If I wanted to read through the whole fight,
I'd get out of pen and paper and play some D&D or something. Also, a common complaint
I have with all RPGs is I really wish
you could see the enemies' hit points. When I inflict damage on them, those numbers mean nothing to me.
Is he almost dead? Should I be keeping track? How about a damn counter?
But after a while, I got used to it, because I had to, right? This is what you do more than half the game.
But then, I started to really like it.
(slash, slash)
Hearing that slashing sound when you make a successful strike on an enemy is so satisfying.
(slash, slash, slash, slash, slash, slash, slash)
You can't mention the fight mechanics without talking about the rolling hit point counter, which is a real cool idea.
When you take damage the numbers roll down, where in most RPGs, it would be subtracted immediately.
Why does this matter?
Well, let's say if an enemy inflicts mortal damage on you, you have a chance to heal that character before it hits 0.
This can get real tense, because when you see those numbers going down, you're hoping to get your turn in quick.
There's some other cool ideas here, like the auto battle option.
So if you need to take a piss or do something else, you could let the game play by itself.
There's also the sneak attacks if you approach an enemy from behind, you get the first turn.
But if they approach you from behind, they get the first turn.
The dialogue is never boring. Characters will often break the fourth wall,
making comments that allude to the fact they're inside a game.
This guy says "...it could only cost you your life,
and you got that for free!"
Or they'll say something that has nothing to do with the game, like "I want to tell you the story of the creature from the vegetable soup,
but I won't do that, because I don't want to bother you with a story that has nothing to do with your adventure."
I want to know! You don't just tell me about a creature from a vegetable soup and leave me hanging here!
In lots of RPGs, the dialogue can be tedious. But here, because it's so funny,
it makes you want to talk to everybody. The music is very diverse. It can be jolly,
or creepy. And of course, it has the mandatory happy town music.
Oh-ho, those towns. Always so peaceful.
Yeah.
Ye...yeah.
The moment I think best exemplifies the shifting tones in the music is when you're walking in the desert and
through the winds and trippy ambience, you start to hear a song come in, as if being played on a distant radio.
There's no way to cover everything that happens in this game. But just to give you a taste of how unpredictable
it is, let's just say you use a pencil eraser to erase a pencil.
Ness rides on a Nessie-type creature on your snare. You use zombie paper to catch zoombies,
like flypaper, so it makes perfect sense.
You follow a hooker into a hotel room, where a bunch of monsters gang up on you. You wake up in some weird room.
You telepathically communicate with Jeff in a snowy land, where he fights giant caveman at Stonehenge,
and goes into a lab, where a scientist builds a spaceship.
You fly around, crash into a graveyard, ending up in the same weird room, you get a carrot key to use on
shadowy bunnies to enter a cave.
There's a town where nobody talks, unless you give them a book to overcome shyness.
There's a guy who turns himself into a dungeon. You go inside him to get a submarine.
This is not normal. You got to be insane to come up with this.
W-what just happened to the game?
And we got to talk about these enemies. What the hell is THAT thing?
You never know what you're gonna have to fight.
It might be a pile of puke, or a UFO with a pink bow, or a cup of coffee, a car, happy vinyl records,
gas pumps, melting clocks, a speed limit sign.
I'm fighting a SIGN! And they chose such a moderate speed limit.
It could have been 9,000 miles per hour, but they picked something ordinary.
Even handsome Tom makes an appearance. And now, I'm fighting a tent.
Dude, I'm fighting a tent!
Woah...dude...
That's it. This game is awesome. You know, I've talked a lot about wasting your time playing bad games.
But there's something equally sad about missing out on a good game. I thought it was shit.
I thought it was shit.
I thought it was shit!
I THOUGHT IT WAS SHIT!
Y-YOU DIDN'T TELL ME IT WASN'T SHIT, YOU FUCK!
(sobbing)
You know, why did it flop?
Some say it was because of those smelly ads. But that couldn't have been the whole reason!
The '90s was all about gross-out humor. That was the same decade that gave us Boogerman,
Nickelodeon's Gak, Beavis and Butthead, Earthworm Jim, Ren and Stimpy!
The '90s was the Barf Age! All the grunge bands that they sang, like they were just getting over a sickness.
Marilyn Manson! He sang like he was perpetually vomiting!
[As Marilyn Manson] Sweet dreams ARE MADE OAUAUAUAUAAGH!!!!
It doesn't make sense. Like how did it tank so bad?!
Some say it was because the game was overpriced, because it came with a Player's Guide inside of an oversized box.
YOUR MOM HAS AN OVERSIZED BOX!
So it's a good game. Maybe even a masterpiece. That means I'm gonna let it off the hook. There's nothing wrong with it. It's perfect.
My ass! Yeah, I don't mean to piss on everybody's parade, but I do have some gripes.
Beginning with my most minor complaint.
All the money you earn from defeating enemies, you have to withdraw from an
ATM or cash machine. Whenever you die, you lose half the money you're holding. You might say it's an
interesting game mechanic, because, it's like real life, where you only want to take out as much as you need.
But it only causes you to keep making extra stops, and is a constant inconvenience.
There's a part where you have to give somebody a diamond, but she won't take it, unless
you walk around to the other side of the desk.
Have you ever had to walk around a desk to give somebody something?
Here you go.
(sighs)
It doesn't help that walking around anything could get you stuck. Hey, it's just trees!
Look how tiny I am! I can't fit past that tree? This is almost as bad as Little Red Hood!
Also, you move pretty slow, and with such a big world, getting around can be a chore. Sometimes you want to outrun enemies, but they're all the
same speed as you, or faster. But oh hey, I found a bike! That solves that.
Oh shit.
Seriously? As soon as more characters join your party, you can't use the bike anymore. It's a one-seater only.
Well since Ness is solo for only a small part of the game, that means the bike is pretty much worth jack shit!
Thanks for the tease, ASSHOLES!
There's too many incidental items that only get used once, like the Piggy nose, which we use the sniff for magic truffles.
I can't think of any other area in the game where you need that.
So your inventory gets filled up quickly with all these items that you don't even know if you're gonna need
again. And yes, what you see on screen, that's all the inventory you can hold for each character.
You can use Escargo Express, which is a pickup delivery service that can take items off your hands
and save them for you.
But every time you call these bastards over,
they only pick up three items at a time. So it's more messing around than jumping through hoops
just to keep what you want to keep. When you buy items, there is no option to pick quantity.
If you want to stock up on many of the same item,
you have to buy them one at a time.
Would it be so much easier just to do this?
Something as simple as buying items from the store is torture. Absolute FUCKING torture!
Then, there's a secret entrance that you have to access by standing behind a waterfall.
You're supposed to stand still and wait.
This is very similar to the tornado in Simon's Quest, which I've referenced a thousand times.
But that's nothing! You only have to wait about five seconds.
But you want to know how long you have to wait here?
Three whole minutes! I'm dead FUCKING serious!
If you die, you get the worst punishment ever.
All your friends remain dead and have to be revived.
To revive them, you have to take them to a specific place, usually a hospital. Along the way,
Ness will most likely be forced into fighting a bunch of enemies without the help of his friends,
which makes the whole process take even longer. When you get to the hospital, you have to pay a fee.
Oh shit!
I need to go to the ATM to get some money.
So get the money, go back to the hospital, and now, the friends are revived.
One at a time.
But their PSI, or magic, is still not replenished.
So you either have to find a bunch of magic butterflies, or go to a hotel and pay another fee for that.
But the craziest thing is many of the areas in the game don't have hospitals,
or hotels. It might be a spring, or a pool, a geyser, or
some weird character with healing powers. You never know, so you do not want to die in this game, because depending where you are,
it can take maybe 30 minutes to get everybody powered up again, when a simple reset would have done nicely like every other fucking game.
Even something as simple as saving the game is a hassle. You have to call your dad who records your progress.
That would be fine, but the guy just won't stop.
"Your dear old dad was thinking about hitting the hay for the night.
I have recorded a record of your adventure to this point. Good night, sleep tight."
No, I'm not done! Continue!
"...you like to work hard, just like your mother. But I don't think it's good to work too hard."
This happens every time. Every single FUCKING time. You want to know how you save a game?
THAT'S how you save a game. Instead of having to wait through all this bullshit!
UUUGGGHH!
And sometimes, your dad calls you out of the blue.
"Hello, it's your dad. You've been out there for a long time now...It may be none of my business, but
don't you think it would be a good idea if you took a break?"
Don't you think it'd be a good idea to go FUCK YOURSELF?!
This game is all about interruptions.
Again, seemingly using Simon's Quest as the model. Here, earthquakes constantly stop you from moving.
And you know it's coming, but there's nothing you can do.
Oh, any second now. Any sec...oh, OH, COME ON!
HMPFF! GO GO GO!
But the worst interruption of all,
the photo guy. He drops in to take your photo, again, and again, and again, for no real purpose.
except for the end credits. Woopity doo. He shows up all the time, and I mean,
all the time.
LEAVE ME ALONE!
LET ME PLAY THE GAME!
Often, you may need to backtrack to areas in the game
you've already been to. And with such a big world, and so many enemies in your way,
it could take forever to get from one place to the next. So, thankfully you get the power to teleport.
Now, you can instantly go anywhere you want.
Or not.
There can't be anything in your way.
You need extra clearance. Perhaps, just enough to reach 88 miles per hour. This isn't Back to the Future!
What is this shit? And if the roads are on an isometric angle, forget about it.
You know how teleporting is supposed to work? Like this.
Many areas in the game, the space just doesn't exist. How am I supposed to teleport here, or here, or here?
You have to take a long hike to get somewhere else, which defeats the whole purpose of teleporting.
It's another useful ability gone down the shitter.
By the end of the game, you get an upgrade. Now the teleport goes in a circle,
which is significantly better, but still you can slam into things, even when there seems to be plenty of space.
ASS!
I'll throw the game out the window,
but it's on the Super Nintendo Classic, so that would mean throwing out Street Fighter II, Donkey Kong Country,
F-Zero, Castlevania IV. And after all, I'm willing to excuse most of this shit, because the game
charmed me so much with its unique style. I still maintain it's an awesome game.
But those are some serious strikes against it. No matter how frustrating it gets,
I can't stop playing it, because I want to see what happens next.
You never know what this game is gonna throw at you. All of a sudden,
you're fighting a bunch of police officers. Police officers are trying to beat up a child! Then, you're fighting a
bunch of Klansmen who worship the color blue. Holy shit!
I'm so overwhelmed trying to explain everything that happens here! The question is, what doesn't happen?
Each area invents its own set of rules. In the neon town of Moonside, you can't walk around much.
You're always trapped inside invisible barriers,
so you have to talk to certain warped people who look just like everyone else, and they warp you to the next place.
Also in this town, yes is no, and no is yes.
So you have to answer everything opposite. Pay for the doctor's fee? Y-yes, no, yes, n-no. S-should I say yes or no?
There's a part where you have to navigate through a series of caves by trading items with monkeys.
This is where your inventory skills of what to keep and what not to, are put to the ultimate test.
If you want to see how complicated this part is, just look at the player's guide.
And it's just so you can get a yogurt dispenser to give to a
secretary to grant you access to a certain floor in a building to fight robots, rescue Paul, and escape in a helicopter. Or not.
It's like The Wizard of Oz with the hot-air balloon.
Come back, asshole!
You eat a magic cake, which changes everything into a completely different game!
This is where you play as Poo for the first time. You have to go to the top of a hill, known as the
Place of Emptiness to meditate.
This is another instance where you're supposed to stand still and do nothing. Then, a voice calls out and says to
"...stop your meditation immediately."
Okay, so I go back to my master, and he says to try again.
What? So I go up the hill again, because you can't even trust what the game tells you.
Okay.
"To complete your trial. I am going to break your legs.
You will lose the use of them. Do you accept this I?"
I'm supposed to say yes?
(slash)
AAAOOOHHH! This ain't good! "I shall then take your arms and feed them to the crows."
Oh sure why not? I'm almost dead anyway.
(slash)
AH!
Taken my arms! Taken my legs! Taken my soul!
Left me with life in HELL!
"Without legs at arms you can only lie there...Now, I'll cut your ears off." Well my HP is 0, so what could happen?
(slash)
UUGUHHGHH!
"No legs, no arms, and no sound...Do you care if I take your eyes? Do you want to live in eternal darkness?
I shall steal your sight. Do you accept this?"
(slash) HUUGUHH!
(slash)
That was weird, man.
Progressing toward the end of the game, you fight Diamond Dog, the first legitimately hard boss battle.
Because he deflects almost anything you throw at him.
But if you make it through, you touch the Fire Spring, which
transports you to some dream where you visit your childhood home as a ghost, and see yourself as a baby, who exhibits some signs of
Telekinesis, I think? If it all isn't cerebral enough, next thing, your mind creates a realm called Magicant, which is made
up of Ness's memories, such as the flowers from Pee-Wee's Playhouse.
"...introducing the King of Cartoons."
They say this land will cease to exist when he wakes up, but in the meantime,
he's reunited with past characters, both friends and enemies. "I still feel pain where you wounded me."
Well, that makes you feel sad.
This really is one of the most fascinating dream stages I've ever played in a game.
There's so many interesting lines of dialogue that just makes me stop in my tracks. Like this snowman from Ness's childhood.
"We had fun one snowy day.
I melted, but I'm still real in your memory."
And when Ness meets his younger self, this might be the most brilliant quote in the whole game. "It's me...
I'm you when you were younger. Hey, let's play ball. Do you prefer reading comics or playing games?
What? You're busy?..."
Pure gold.
Then you're joined by flying warriors, who represent your courage. When they die they populate a graveyard.
How cool is that?
You also find the grave of Buzz Buzz, a bee from earlier in the game.
Lots of people have theories on who Buzz Buzz really is, but I think Buzz Buzz is a collective entity that
represents all the other Earthbound players out there who have shared this experience with you from a
distance. Near the beginning of the game, Buzz Buzz says he's from the future, which is when the game finally got popular, as if it predicted its own legacy.
And I like to think the tomb belongs to a player who gave up on this spot in the game,
which is why you must go on.
Then. you go deeper into your subconscious. OH, SHUT UP, DAD! COME ON! You go deeper in your subconscious
to a place where you touch the truth of the universe, and then fight your evil self in the form of a gold statue.
This game is nuts!
It's really nuts! And
And once the statue's beaten, Ness "...absorbs the power of the land into his heart...", and all of his memories flash before him.
Shit pickle. Shit pickle, shit pickle, shit pickle, shit pickle, shit pickle, shit pickle, shit pickle. Shit pickle.
(airplane screeching noises)
(airplane crashing noise)
Where did you learn to fly?
I shit all over it with glitches.
Hey Nerd! I'm your younger self! Want to play some ET?
Fuck no! Oh, well why so angry?
Stop playing these games. They'll ruin your life.
But...games are fun. What happened to you?
Ghostbusters!
Yippee! Woops!
I was fun, too. You used to watch me over and over.
I destroyed you. I slashed you with the sword and smashed you with the hammer.
That's true, and it's still painful. But I still exist in your memory.
I shit all over it with glitches.
I shit all over it with glitches. (Mattel Electronics presents...B-17 Bomber!)
I'm Bimmy!
I'm Bimmy! Want some shit?
No!
That's right, Nerd! Don't take shit from nobody! Only give shits.
And while you're at it, get some clothes that fit! Yes, it's a little on the baggy side.
Hey! I don't need any advice from you, or the shit talking shit.
I'm not just any shit. I'm the shit you dropped on the Atari Jaguar.
Where's the Jaguar? You didn't want it. All there is now is shit.
Everything now is all shit. That's how you made it.
But I don't want it to be shit! Not anymore. I've been through so much.
I recorded so many memories and experiences.
But the shit is still spreading. It lives on and on.
To defeat it,
you must go back to the source of the anger, the beginning. You can't go back to your childhood.
Not physically anyway.
You can only go back in spirit. And even then, you'll be isolated inside your own world.
You'd be powerless to win without help from the outside.
Yeah, Nerd! Do what the shit said! Beat Earthbound! Keep on trucking, you fuck!
Alright.
The final stretch of Earthbound is one of the craziest things you'll ever experience in a video game.
You're now ready to confront Giygas.
But a scientist explains that Giygas is actually attacking from the past.
So, the only way to fight him is to get in a time machine called the Phase Distorter to take yourself back to the past.
But the time machine can only transport inanimate objects. Any living beings are demolished in the process. So first,
you have to transplant your souls into robots.
Yeah.
Uh essentially, you can only go back in spirit. So, when you're successfully sent back, the place known as
the Cliff that Time Forgot becomes the Cave of the Past. Then, you have to fight a whole bunch of enemies in your new robot bodies.
Every few steps you take, you get stuck in another battle. The Starmen are some of the toughest enemies in the game.
They just pulverize you, so you need to put up magic shields, if only you get the chance.
And if there's one of those enemies that explodes and causes mortal damage to everyone, you better make sure to kill them last.
Ugh, this whole thing is an endurance!
And if you don't have enough items to heal, or revive party members, or replenish PSI magic, you could be
fatally screwed. As far as I know, there's no way back anymore.
You can't teleport to find a store to stock up on items. Whatever you have now,
that's all you get. If you die, the items don't come back.
If you run out of items, I really don't know what you would do here.
And I don't want to experiment by hitting reset or anything like that.
When you make it this far, this is when all the classic symptoms of gaming fever
occur. Your hands sweat all over the controller, your face gets hot, you might even stand up
like I do. You get so hyped, you think you might end up in a hospital.
And if you want to experience this amazing finale for yourself, consider this a spoiler alert.
Up until now, the game has been cute and adorable.
But now, it's about to hit you with a precision mind fuck. You walk through a weird passage that looks like
intestines or something. You step up to the Devil's Machine, which contains Giygas.
A portal opens revealing Ness's face, whatever that means. And to make things even more confusing, Ness's neighbor, Pokey, appears as a secondary villain.
He's a recurring character who's always had a rivalry with Ness. It's not very clear how he ended up here,
but what interests me is that you're fighting your own face.
But anyway, now with that metal music going on, you know you're in for some serious shit.
Come on. If you win, Pokey turns off the Devil's Machine, releasing Giygas, and then,
this happens.
Holy mother of shit! I'm glad I didn't play this as a kid! I'd be traumatized.
I can't believe this was rated K-A. When you finally see Giygas, you still don't know exactly what he is.
He's just a vague swirling red face. Even when he attacks, it says "You cannot grasp the true form of Giygas' attack."
It's as if Giygas isn't really a thing, but more of an idea. In fact, he can't be harmed by physical attacks.
You have to use Paula's ability to pray for help.
Then, you see all the supporting characters from all over the game praying for your safety.
The idea of praying goes along with the idea that Giygas is the vague
embodiment of evil, or the devil itself, which makes this whole battle feel like an exorcism.
After each prayer, Giygas changes shape as the visuals start to look even more like you're in Hell. And
What's that?
Oh, I am so freaked out, I don't even know what to say.
Intentional or not, there is the distinct shape of a baby. More specifically, a fetus as seen through an ultrasound.
Whoa! And now look what it's doing.
It's like an ultrasound machine got possessed. If you've seen Gremlins 2,
you remember the Electric Gremlin that goes inside the electrical equipment?
It's a little bit like that, except
if it was the devil, and if I wasn't already impressed by the technical capability on the Super Nintendo, this is
something I've never seen it do. Think about it. You're fighting the background.
It's a surreal immersive experience that feels like you're actually fighting the console itself, and that it's been possessed.
And you want to see something really wild?
You know those magic eye images where you stare at a pattern and let your vision go blurry,
or whatever until you see a 3D image pop out.
You can actually do that here. I don't recommend it if you're not comfortable.
There's several ways to do it, and everybody's different. The technique that works best for me is I cross my eyes
until the double images converged, creating a false focus. And that gives you this crazy
three-dimensional depth. So if you want to freak yourself out even more, there you go. But I warned you.
Many fans have given theories as to what the baby means, just like
analyzing the baby at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
It's worth noting that there was a theory spreading around, saying that Giygas himself
is a fetus. And that the reason you travel back in time was to destroy him before he was born.
Now, let me state, this is not my own theory, but it's interesting. An abortion basically to
prevent the birth of an evil villain is such a morally complex idea.
And they say the entrance to Giygas' layer represents, um, a woman's spread legs, which means the cave in the
middle is, well, use your imagination, it's a vagina!
When you're going inside, you're traveling toward the uterus.
Yeah.
Again, keep in mind, this is just an old fan theory.
Many fans have debated against it, or pointed out other plot elements in the Mother series that
contradict it. And the game designer, Shigesato Itoi, denied the theory.
But I still think one of the artists might have put the baby in there, because it's the shape of a baby!
That's the only thing that's clear.
As far as the rest of the theory goes, if Itoi denied it, then it's not true.
It's just based on a movie scene where a woman gets strangled and hacked to pieces. That's all.
Itoi recalls being at the movie theater as a child and walking into the wrong film.
It was called The Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty from 1957.
There's a scene where a man strangles a woman, then
carries her to an operating room where he cuts her up to hide the body.
If you try to compare the film with Earthbound, you're not gonna see any similarities. There's no lines of dialogue that carried over.
Even if they were somehow inspired by it, even Itoi remembers the movie differently than how it actually is.
But nevertheless, it shocked him and left a permanent impression. So when he was creating this final
boss battle, he was remembering that feeling of childhood trauma.
Giygas is just a symbol of all your childhood terrors.
Oh!
Itoi said Giygas is something you can't make sense of. And it gets the player's minds working.
This means you can interpret it any way you want, just like any Stanley Kubrick film.
That's what makes the game so great. It's that we're all able to share our own different ideas.
So what I'm about to say is just a personal hunch. Nothing more. What I like to believe is that Giygas is an eternal being who's
reincarnated as Ness. Whatever alien life form he existed as in the first Mother game was just another body for him to inhabit.
There's no better way to explain it than in the lyrics of one of my favorite Black Sabbath songs,
A National Acrobat, which itself is open to interpretation.
But it goes hand in hand so well.
I believe Giygas is the same traveling entity that is speaking from those lyrics.
So I like to think Ness was the reincarnation of Giygas all along.
And he has powers that he can't even understand. Those powers are what influenced animals and people to become violent.
So when he fights them, he's fighting against his own evil side.
After all, so much the game seems to exist inside his own imagination. It begins with Ness
waking from bed having heard a strange noise. Then, taking a bat and ordinary household items,
an innocent, imaginative child, arming himself in the only way he knows how.
The sacred melodies that he records each remind him of something from his youth,
connecting him closer and closer to his childhood. Only after he obtains these memories, he creates
Magicant, where he's able to examine all his life experiences, putting everything into
context, and coming to terms with the events from his past. Only then can he go back to the source of the evil, the beginning.
You go back to the very moment in the womb when Giygas was reincarnating into Ness.
Yes, this kind of plays along with the much contested fetus theory, except the fetus is Ness, and
Giygas is trying to take over. So what you're doing is driving Giygas out, or performing a sort of exorcism, if you will.
Even if this is not at all the idea that was intended, I find it more interesting, in my opinion.
A double image of a demon and a baby. Who will take control good or evil? Now, I'm starting to sound like a movie trailer.
And if I haven't already lost my mind, get this. The final battle takes place in a separate dimension, which
exists as a metaphysical bus to transport Giygas from one life to the next.
So, when Ness and his friends leave their bodies behind, they become travelling entities themselves.
That's the only way they could exist in the same dimension as Giygas in order to fight him.
But they still can't defeat him on their own while trapped inside that world. They're powerless to win
without help from the outside.
And that's where the prayers come in. So, everybody, please help. Help me beat this game!
Go Nerd! Go Nerd!
Come on! COME ON!
Yeah!
I am blown away. That was one of the craziest games I've ever played.
Sure, it has flaws, but I think it does belong on the list of mandatory Super Nintendo games.
I think the worlds they created here has potential far beyond the games.
Just look at how much imagination they put into the Player's Guide!
There should be an Earthbound animated TV series. That could be amazing!
Well, let's hope more things happen with the Mother series. And if not, the fans will still keep it alive.