"Thought this was just a kids game? Look a little deeper..."

In all my years playing games, I can honestly say that no other game has given me the same experience as Earthbound. It's not just the oddball characters, the goofy humour, or even the psychedelic backgrounds. Earthbound succeeded in doing something that just about every other game tried, and none other succeeded. This game made me feel for the characters.

On the surface, Earthbound looks, sounds, and plays like a kid's game. It has bright, cartoonish graphics, with much of the scenery shown at strange, skewed angles. I used to draw buildings like that when I was a kid. The characters also have a cartoonish charm to them, and the game revolves around the adventures of a group of fairly young pups. As a kid, I was entirely charmed by the game's self-contained world, but as an adult, I've come to realize just what a sad and heartless world it is, with it's fate resting in the hands of such young protagonists. I'll get back to this.

The game plays like a standard RPG with only a few minor differences, and one rather big one. On the obvious front, gone are the castles and dungeons, imps and trolls, kings and dragons, all in favour of a modern day setting, made to resemble the American Heartland, but from a Japanese perspective. Instead of swords and fire rods, weapons include baseball bats and bottle rockets. Also, the game does away with the standard overworld map, and separate town and dungeon maps, instead creating a single, seamless map. This means that enemy encounters are not limited to the space between between the towns. Fortunately, you can actually see the enemies approaching you before the fight, giving you the option of either fighting them head on, trying to slink away undetected, or sneaking up behind them for a surprise attack.

If killed, you return to where you last saved, but you get to keep your items, money, and experience points. This really helps keep the game moving, and makes grinding your stats much less of a chore. There's also smaller details, like the ATMs, and the odometer style HP display, which means you can save yourself if you heal or end the fight before it hits zero. All in all, the differences are just enough to make a new game experience, but not so far detached from the RPG format as to leave gamers out in the cold completely.

The story also starts out with some fairly standard narrative devices. A meteor falls to Earth near the house of a young boy named Ness, as he goes out to investigate, strange things begin happening. Ness soon discovers that an alien creature named Giygas is using his psychic powers to corrupt people's minds, and that Ness (who was born with similar powers) is fated to bring together a group of humans with the unique powers needed to fight Giygas before he becomes too powerful to stop. The three other people (who reveal themselves along the way) are Paula, a young girl born with equally uncanny mental powers, Jeff, a brilliant young man, destined to be one of the next great scientists, and Poo, a young prince seeking higher spiritual wisdom.

According to much of the literature that accompanies the game, these characters are all in their teens, but there are a lot of details in the game itself that would seem to go against this assertion. Early in the game, to give one example, Ness is about to go investigate the meteor crash, when his mother reminds him to first change out of his pyjamas. When is the last time you've known a teenage boy who needed to be reminded this? In fact, much of the way the adults in the game speak to you implies youth, and the physical appearance of each of the characters also suggests that they are more likely pre-teens. Other details throughout the game would seem to muddy the issue, and it's a bit unclear as to why this would be such a confusing issue. All in all, I would have to place the average age somewhere between 11 and 13 years old.

The exact age of each kid isn't very important, but it is important to keep in mind that the weight of the world is resting on their shoulders. It's not uncommon for fairly young protagonists to save the world in these types of games, but it's another thing entirely when you stop and think about it for a moment. If someone told you, at age 13, that you had to leave home and take off on a death defying quest to save the world, how would you feel? This is the underlying purpose of placing Earthbound in a modern setting. Ness is an average kid from an average town in every sense.

One of the most heartbreaking parts of the game is when Ness becomes homesick, and needs to call him mom in order to feel better. For many gamers, this was probably just a nuisance that got in the way of progress, but it also serves as a reminder that he's not just some heroic killing machine, he's a kid. It also underscores the fact that Ness has left everything he knows behind in order to go on his adventure. It's worth mentioning, at this point, that the Japanese title of this game is Mother 2, named after a song by John Lennon. In the song, John wails about how he was abandoned by his parents, and this game is just littered with all kinds of abandonment issues, from Ness's absent father (you only hear from him over the phone) to Jeff being sent away to a boarding school.

Another issue that plays heavily is the loss of childhood. When prince Poo is first introduced, one of the many NPC characters you can talk to is a little girl who asks him why he doesn't play with her anymore. Paula, on the other hand, is constantly dogged by journalists. Other characters will openly admit feeling uncomfortable asking kids for help with serious grown-up problems.

All of it is there to try and make you, the gamer, feel certain emotions throughout the game. Whether it's the alienation you feel in the Tenda village, confusion and discomfort in Moonside, or the outright disturbed feelings you get while fighting Giygas. Some of these feelings even carry over to other RPGs. I personally felt that Final Fantasy VI (another genuine classic, which came out around the same time) played very differently after experiencing Earthbound.

When I say that everything about Earthbound is meant to evoke feeling, I do mean everything. The pacing of the story is a part of the story itself in a great many places. You'll be well on your way when, out of nowhere, you're pulled into some other, strange place. The enemies will suddenly become much harder to kill, and there's no way to get back to where you were before. You feel as if you've stumbled on this part before you were ready to go there, but in fact, that feeling of unpreparedness is part of the story, as are moments of confusion and frustration, all while none of the characters seem overly sympathetic to your situation.

While it's not uncommon for RPGs to lead the gamer by the nose, Earthbound has the audacity to rub it in your face. Some characters will give the most unsubtle hints in game history, and one goes so far as to sell them. Other characters openly mock the fact that you're just playing a game, and at one point, the game asks for "your" name. A photographer will also fall from the sky at random and interrupt the game completely in order to take your picture. At other points, the game openly mocks Nintendo of America's content policies by having characters, clearly holding a pint of beer in their hands, talk about "cappuccinos" and hanging out in a sleazy "cafe."

The music was a genuine highlight of this game. While not quite the lush, grand orchestra of it's contemporaries, it does a fine job of evoking the kinds of feelings that the game requires. Sometimes, at more unsettling moments in the game, the music will go so far into the abstract that it barely registers as anything more than noise. Other highlights include the desert music, which sounds like AM radio picking up multiple weak signals at the same time, and the music that plays in Onett.

Perhaps the best example of music enhancing the mood is the rather upbeat tune that plays while Ness rides his bike. It's simply filled with a kind of youthful vigour that would normally accompany a kid riding his bike, and is cut short as soon as Paula joins your party, as it's rude to make other people walk while you ride. Parts of the music from the original Mother will also show up here and there.

Overall, Earthbound really is nothing short of genius. It's combination of top notch gameplay with amazing storytelling would make for a great game at any rate, but this game went the extra mile. By creating the world of a kid's game, then filling it with very serious, grown up issues, Eathbound really makes the gamer feel the Heroes' burden, and the attention to emotional content around every corner just pulls you in. Of course, not all gamers really feel the emotion of the game. If you're one of those gamers, then there's a good chance you won't like anything about this game. if, however, you're one of the gamer who does, this game game will have the power to change your perception of what a video game can be.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 12/04/07

Game Release: Earthbound (US, 06/01/95)