EarthBound

If you've never played EarthBound I don't strongly recommend reading this. Not because I spoil anything, I don't. I just don't think you would want to read it.

My opinion on EarthBound, had I played it at a younger age, would have been dismissive, arrogant, and Art School-esque. Today I'm humbled to feel like I've only just grown old enough to learn what dreamy fears flex beneath the surface of EarthBound's Saturday morning cartoon color.

EarthBound, released as Mother 2: Gīgu no Gyakushū in Japan, is a roleplaying video game about nurturing a child who rescues a funny world from the deepest heart of cynicism. You play as the child, Ness, as he travels from town to town, then country to country, surface of the Earth to depths, and finally from present to past. Along the way his psychic powers develop, his destined friends join him at his side, he collects fragments of a melody, and he upsets more and more of Giygas's plan. Giygas, I think, is an alien who came to Earth in ancient times. Or maybe he's been a part of the cycle of the world the entire time. Either way, he's the bad guy. More or less. Although the game makes it clear in small and large ways: the true evil in the world is the same as ours: the ugliness of individuals who live without love.

Giygas is described by his most loyal follower as unable to think or control himself. Beyond coherency. This loyal follower, Ness's next door neighbor, does not suffer his own true defeat in the end, he weasels out of it. He is a pest. He lives without love.

EarthBound plays like a Dragon Quest, in ways both precisely the same and spiritually similar. EarthBound feels like an extraordinary piece of free-spirited, train car graffiti to Dragon Quest's precise, orthodoxical, Sistine Chapel ceiling. Both fine works of art, both created by patient, loving, craftspersons, but crucially different. When Dragon Quest solemnly addresses the player in pseudo-Old English dialog, spoken by a King in a Castle, EarthBound asks you your favorite food and then turns around to declare "Would'ja look at that? I've got some Tacos right here!"

I should say, in this essay, as in the mind of many many video game players the world over "Dragon Quest represents both itself and the Idea Of A Role-Playing Game. Other games have referenced either directly or obliquely, the Idea Of A Role-Playing Game by gesturing towards Dragon Quest or a Dragon Quest. (See Moon: Remix RPG Adventure, et cetera.)

Like all the best video games, everything about EarthBound crystallizes around a simple, but expansive, core premise. In the case of this game let's call it the Primary Joke: What would happen if Dragon Quest took place in the modern world? Almost every detail in the story and the gameplay acts as the punchline to this joke.

For instance, in Dragon Quest, we use swords, bows, and magic wands to battle Dungeons & Dragons-type monsters, whereas, in EarthBound, well, there's one sword but it's mostly about the baseball bats, frying pans, and rayguns for battling wild animals, robots, and aliens. In Dragon Quest, when a party member dies we drag their coffin to a priest who brings them back to life, in EarthBound, we are followed by a cheerful ghost of our friend until we visit a hospital to pick them up and continue our journey. Our Heroes in Dragon Quest cast all kinds of spells both on and off the battlefield, in EarthBound, your characters develop psychic powers and brilliant gadgets. To travel quickly from one place to another in Dragon Quest we cast a spell or take a ride on the back of a dragon or flying carpet, in EarthBound, Ness and his friends take the bus.


And yet, we still save the day. We enter a new town to learn about what troubles plague it and we solve the problem, usually by fighting small monsters while traveling through a dungeon to face a boss. We buy stronger and more effective weapons and armor then we equip it and sell off the old stuff all right there in the merchant's dialog. We return home at the end for a heartfelt congratulations and a warm, sentimental, credits sequence.

So, OK, Dragon Quest. That's what we're building on. Or responding to. And, like all good artwork created as a response, joke, extension, we eventually reach somewhere completely new. A place we could only get to by diligently staying true to our premise and true to ourselves.

For example, EarthBound asked me the hero's name, and then, ten to twelve hours later, it asked me for mine. Then later, it double-checked that my name, the Player's Real Name, was correct. "Are you sure the player is called Joshua?" This, like the favorite food, becomes significant. I won't say how. I won't say either whether I more or less guessed how it'd be used and when. I will say it was extremely effective when it did.

Something else unique to EarthBound rather than pulled from Dragon Quest is the HP gauge timing system. In Dragon Quest your character's each have a certain amount of hit points which is reduced when they take damage from a monster. This mathematical subtraction happens as instantly as it would in any calculator: you start with thirty points and you have nineteen after a slime attacks you for eleven. However, in a battle in EarthBound your character's HP is displayed on a graphic resembling the time on a "Flip Clock"-style alarm clock. Where each number is printed on little flaps that turn over as the minutes and hours change. When Ness or one of his friends take damage the numbers begin a flipping animation, counting down. Crucially, you may still act during that time. If you heal a character while the numbers are still animating, still flipping, they will immediately start flipping upwards again. Healing your character, or finishing the battle, before the flipping finishes and the HP just stops where it's at. This means a simple healing item can avert certain death if taken fast enough. Interestingly, this isn't the case for enemy combatants in EarthBound, meaning the HP Flip mechanic is a rule in the Player's favor. This, to me, feels very deliberate on the part of the game's maker, and representative of what EarthBound is All About.

It might seem to the outside observer that the primary feeling that was poured into EarthBound is one of nostalgia, pining for the lost golden country of childhood, and maybe there is some of that there. Maybe it's there by necessity to demonstrate the true heart of the EarthBound. However, the primary feeling that was poured into EarthBound is a dogged insistence that innocence and joy are worth protecting and preserving within ourselves no matter what. No matter how old we grow or how ugly a face the world shows us.

It also hit me how much I miss my grandmother, my adoptive mother.

Another one of those things like the HP Flip system which feels intrinsic to EarthBound's personality is the Homesick Status. According to "Guide and Walkthrough (SNES) by mbrocket" on the EarthBound page on Gamefaqs.com, Homesick is a Status Effect which can only impact Ness and causes his to occasionally waste a turn in battle. The guide reads, "This status effect occurs rarely but randomly. Call or talk to Ness's mom to cure homesickness. Regularly calling Ness's mom doesn't prevent homesickness." My grandmother died fifty days ago today and I have wished hard every day since that I could call her. I did not get to attend her funeral.

The short version of this story is that she adopted me as a baby and I was happily raised by her and my grandfather until I was eight when my biological mother sued her for custody. She took me from that stable home with two guardians to a place where she was never around (she worked multiple jobs) and I was neglected and sometimes physically and emotionally abused by either her, my older siblings, or her occasional boyfriends. This ruined my life and impacted me and my development in every imaginable way. The best she could ever manage was "I want you here, but…" I, her prize for fighting and beating her mother, was a constant disappointment to her. My biological mother failed in almost every way to parent me properly and after a few years grew tired of having a traumatized and unpredictable child in the house so she sent me away to live at a children's home. The children's home was a deeply isolated and heavily religious compound which emphasized gender roles, manual labor, and an obsession with authority. I lived without love. I got out in 2006 shortly before I turned sixteen. Unfortunately for me, and everyone around me, I did not start seriously receiving therapy until I was 30.

My grandmother, even the last time I saw her, unfailingly loved me. Unfailingly told me she was proud of me. Unfailingly made me feel like I mattered. She was in and out of lucidity, laying in the same big old chair my grandfather laid in before he died twenty years ago exactly, the last time I saw her. She rose briefly, out of her confusion to tell me she was so proud of me, so happy for me. She asked about my boyfriend, someone the rest of my family more or less pretends doesn't exist. I told her he was nearby. She said "I was looking at baby pictures of you a few days ago. I miss that little boy but I'm so proud of how you grew up."

I've heard so many stories from people who didn't get to say proper goodbyes and I won't bore you with some long winded rant about how thankful I am that I got one.

Another long story I won't divulge here is about how the hostilities my family harbored to me for being gay, which was the lynchpin of this drama, but honestly it's just another brick in the wall of the crime I've committed by existing differently than they'd prefer. Suffice to say I would be going somewhere squarely unsafe for my well being if I attended that funeral. So, I stayed home. I stayed home and stayed Homesick. And I have wasted a lot of turns since that day.

EarthBound was published for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in North America on June 5, 1995. It can now most easily be found on the "Nintendo Switch Online" service or, obviously for free on any internet-connected device capable of running a Super Nintendo emulator. The version I played which inspired this rumination was MaternalBound Redux, a romhack which claims to make the English version of the game as consistent as possible to the Japanese version. I played a hack made by fans purely because I was curious about it.

Mother 3 is also on the "Dredge List" and I'm all the more eager to start it. But, I'm going to wait. Not forever.