Just some random thoughts on EarthBound.
There might not be any better example of the juvenile video game than EarthBound, a roll playing video game published by Nintendo and directed by Shigesato Itoi. Yet EarthBound is not as popular as Pokemon, Mario or other Nintendo titles, its main character Ness come in all Nintendo Smash Brother Series. (It is commonly said that Ness has been getting weaker and weaker as the series goes on.) When you introduce the game to someone you might go like "you know that little kid with a baseball bat from Smash Bros."
But you cannot ignore the fact that plenty of fans are still out there enchanted by the game. A marvelous, heartwarming and soft kind of atmosphere that embraces the whole world view of EarthBound is just indescribable in words. It's not like a game that overwhelmingly blows your mind, it's more of a game that you gradually start to realize that it is something different and very unique as you walk through. While playing this game, at almost every corner of the road, you are to encounter with something witty. (For example, even billboards are full of humors for one that says "I won't say anything to you adults, but I would stress to you young kids, don't play for more than two hours. Anything excessive is no good. Parents Opposing Obsession Plan".)
You can say that these little tiny elements are what we call EarthBoundness. Once you get into this world, you don't feel that this game is old or anything, though it was developed more than 15 years ago, but find it very vivid and lively.
"Magical realism views of childhood" is right there.
All the setting and the inhabitants in the game are seemingly lovely, peaceful and compelling enough to make you believe in this world that is undoubtedly pure........... until the very moment when you notice this slight level of darkness that floats the suffer of the story line.
I say that a spice of realism is added more or less to the lines that makes the game much more modern (in contrast with typical RPGs that take place in a world of sword and magic in the middle ages) and unconventional. That iconoclastic kind of design fits just right in to the game. If you distill essence of the game, that leaves those stimulating and unique things that make this game being totally different from any other kinds.
From Ness's point of view.
Adventure is always exiting as hell. You start off as a kid with a baseball hat, right after a beetle from the future tells you that you're the chosen one of four who saves the Earth with PSI power. Ness, the kid, heads off to the downtown in search for information that the beetle left which is to collect all the melodies that scattered to the four corners of the Earth. He strolls around the police office, hamburger shop, game arcade, city hall and cape, just like you do in real world. Through some conversations he makes with citizens, you realize that they don't take you as a hero or anything. You even get scolded for not going to school. Fair enough, at the age of 13, you're supposed to be in a some sort of school right? That just happens, that's how it is in here. Along the journey, Ness would be joined by three other children: a girl with blue eyes and a red ribbon on her head, a scientist child prodigy, a martial arts master apparently from Asia. As if it was meant to be so, all the children are dramatically drawn each other to come along. After that, his adventure is not anymore his own. He has friends to count on. You know how precious that is, when you have friends in a situation where you fare forth on a journey. Imagine that it's like a childhood adventure.
Why you must play it.
Many have said about Earthbound, for one its cult following (including me) are notorious in a way.
They tend to get lost when it comes to Earthbound. So it's quite understandable that why some people are keeping a distance from it, knowing that insanity. True that psychedelic kind of backgrounds in combat mode and lovely like 60's-America based fields are just co-existing in the game which might seem to be not sorted out very well.
But still, just like a good picture book you pick up for your own at a bookstore, you would see this wonderfully-twisted game is somehow in order and very heart-oriented. You'd find a beautiful principle in it.
This is my recommendation.
There might not be any better example of the juvenile video game than EarthBound, a roll playing video game published by Nintendo and directed by Shigesato Itoi. Yet EarthBound is not as popular as Pokemon, Mario or other Nintendo titles, its main character Ness come in all Nintendo Smash Brother Series. (It is commonly said that Ness has been getting weaker and weaker as the series goes on.) When you introduce the game to someone you might go like "you know that little kid with a baseball bat from Smash Bros."
But you cannot ignore the fact that plenty of fans are still out there enchanted by the game. A marvelous, heartwarming and soft kind of atmosphere that embraces the whole world view of EarthBound is just indescribable in words. It's not like a game that overwhelmingly blows your mind, it's more of a game that you gradually start to realize that it is something different and very unique as you walk through. While playing this game, at almost every corner of the road, you are to encounter with something witty. (For example, even billboards are full of humors for one that says "I won't say anything to you adults, but I would stress to you young kids, don't play for more than two hours. Anything excessive is no good. Parents Opposing Obsession Plan".)
You can say that these little tiny elements are what we call EarthBoundness. Once you get into this world, you don't feel that this game is old or anything, though it was developed more than 15 years ago, but find it very vivid and lively.
"Magical realism views of childhood" is right there.
All the setting and the inhabitants in the game are seemingly lovely, peaceful and compelling enough to make you believe in this world that is undoubtedly pure........... until the very moment when you notice this slight level of darkness that floats the suffer of the story line.
I say that a spice of realism is added more or less to the lines that makes the game much more modern (in contrast with typical RPGs that take place in a world of sword and magic in the middle ages) and unconventional. That iconoclastic kind of design fits just right in to the game. If you distill essence of the game, that leaves those stimulating and unique things that make this game being totally different from any other kinds.
From Ness's point of view.
Adventure is always exiting as hell. You start off as a kid with a baseball hat, right after a beetle from the future tells you that you're the chosen one of four who saves the Earth with PSI power. Ness, the kid, heads off to the downtown in search for information that the beetle left which is to collect all the melodies that scattered to the four corners of the Earth. He strolls around the police office, hamburger shop, game arcade, city hall and cape, just like you do in real world. Through some conversations he makes with citizens, you realize that they don't take you as a hero or anything. You even get scolded for not going to school. Fair enough, at the age of 13, you're supposed to be in a some sort of school right? That just happens, that's how it is in here. Along the journey, Ness would be joined by three other children: a girl with blue eyes and a red ribbon on her head, a scientist child prodigy, a martial arts master apparently from Asia. As if it was meant to be so, all the children are dramatically drawn each other to come along. After that, his adventure is not anymore his own. He has friends to count on. You know how precious that is, when you have friends in a situation where you fare forth on a journey. Imagine that it's like a childhood adventure.
Why you must play it.
Many have said about Earthbound, for one its cult following (including me) are notorious in a way.
They tend to get lost when it comes to Earthbound. So it's quite understandable that why some people are keeping a distance from it, knowing that insanity. True that psychedelic kind of backgrounds in combat mode and lovely like 60's-America based fields are just co-existing in the game which might seem to be not sorted out very well.
But still, just like a good picture book you pick up for your own at a bookstore, you would see this wonderfully-twisted game is somehow in order and very heart-oriented. You'd find a beautiful principle in it.
This is my recommendation.
