How joining the EarthBound cult comes at a pretty high price
EarthBound (1995)
EarthBound (1995)
The Super Nintendo was strong on so many fronts: side-scrolling platformers, puzzle games, tournament fighters, action-adventures… but of course, if you lived in Europe you were deprived. Not just deprived of culture, and superb daytime television - Europeans had to get used to such things.
No, for a long time in the 90s (that’s last century, for any zoomers reading this), European console gamers had to do without a whole lot of RPGs, especially if you were a Nintendo kiddie. SNES players around the world got the chance to play story-driven games like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy, Super Mario RPG, Lufia and Breath of Fire. Here in the UK and Ireland, we had Mortal Kombat and Super Tennis to keep us occupied.
So what, we probably said. Medieval monsters and swords and magic, so what? Menus and numbers and stats. Who needs all that, when you can use Sub-Zero to rip your opponents spine out of their body?
But 90s RPGs weren’t all maths homework, you know. And nor were they all ripoffs of Dungeons and Dragons. How about a role-playing game with bent town mayors, attacks from the works of Salvador Dali, many references to the Beatles, devices used specifically to get rid of steel pencil statues, baseball bats and Yo-Yos being used as weapons against big piles of puke, and sunstroke and homesickness being employed as negative status ailments?
What about an RPG where your protagonist forages hamburgers out of trashcans, and actual bathrooms get used by NPCs? Where critical hits are known as SMAAAASH attacks, with a beautifully satisfying sound effect? Where kooky secondary characters can call you up, and inform you of crucial updates on a special one-way phone that only receives calls?
Even from the very beginning of this game, when you’re asked to enter the name of your favourite food and favourite thing, when you notice the ATM Card in your inventory, when your faithful dog speaks to you and comes with you to a meteor site before taking fright and running back home, you realise that EarthBound is a very different game to anything you’ve ever played.
I first heard of EarthBound when Ness turned out to be the 12th and final character in Super Smash Bros for N64. In marked comparison to most of the other cast, he looked conspicuously normal. Bland, even. The question had to be asked: how come I never played that Nintendo game as a kid?
It turns out that EarthBound was a game that came out in the twilight years of the SNES in the USA and Japan. It received a huge marketing campaign from Nintendo to give it a jump start, with lots of advertisement and merchandise drummed up for it – even the game itself came packaged in a large, very eye-catching box.
There was no manual, either; instead, the game came with a massive strategy guide included, one that told you all you needed to know about the game, perhaps Nintendo’s way of helping the gamer through this strange new type of game.
But even with all this aid, sales of the game were pretty disappointing. It probably didn’t help that they used “This Game Stinks!” as the advertisement slogan, and went for gross-out 90s humour. Here I am, bemoaning my being an unenlightened European. But a huge majority of American gamers also missed this game at the time of its release.
A large box and strategy guide, eh? That’s right, and if you’re a collector who wants to buy this mother complete, you can prepare to have the guts sucked from your wallet. Fully boxed copies are only becoming rarer, and you can expect to pay over a thousand dollars for one. If you’re just after the cartridge, that’ll probably still run you over 300 bucks.
That’s too much money for me, naturally; I’m so impoverished that I’m forced to sleep under a duvet of NES cartridges to keep warm at night. Make no mistake though, this game has now become a religion of sorts, and Internet popularity from rabid fans spread the game’s influence every day of the week, and still to this day.
Many people now hold EarthBound up as a quirky icon of retro gaming, something bursting with nerd cred. Of course, the deadly sin for retro collectors is to assume that expensive games are automatically top notch. Say you had half your paycheck ready to drop on just the cartridge of EarthBound. Could this quaint lump of grey plastic really change your life?
Well, let’s see what the game’s really about. We’ve all witnessed ragtag bunches of swordsmen and mages go up against some evil magician or dragonlord in medieval RPGs. But the protagonist of EarthBound is a boy of about 13, living in what’s taken to be American suburbia. What kind of plot could they possibly rustle up for him and his similarly-aged eventual party members?
Why, intergalactic aliens, of course. Young Ness learns of Giygas, the universal cosmic destroyer, and how this evil entity has doomed humanity to eternal darkness. Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter like eternal darkness, you know what I mean?
Legends tell of three boys and a girl whose destiny it is to destroy Giygas – Ness, Paula, Jeff and Poo (quiet down the back, please). In order to do this, Ness must first fully understand his magical PSI powers.
And to do that, he’s got to travel to eight Sanctuary locations around the world of Eagleland and record short melodies onto a doodad called the Sound Stone. What follows is a crazy adventure of all kinds of small-time villains, where Giygas’ influence over the people of Eagleland becomes far-reaching and you’re not sure who to trust.
Time for a spiel on the battle system. Your typical screen-whooshing random encounters are gone, which is definitely a plus point. Aren’t random encounters such a poor idea? Here, you can see the enemy on the overworld map before the battle begins.
But you also have to watch where you’re going: get caught from behind, and the enemy will hit you with a surprise attack. Sneak up on them however, and you surprise them – or you may even defeat them without battling, if your level’s high enough. Now that’s a lot more like it.
EarthBound does need a bit of a grind at certain times (most notably at the beginning) to make sure your level and stats are high enough. And sometimes Lady Luck dictates that a battle will go badly wrong on you, necessitating frequent saves – but that’s no problem, it’s something RPG players are well used to. It’s quite reminiscent of Dragon Quest, the series it most emulates.
This is a meaty enough adventure as well, probably about 25-30 hours, and seeking out all of the wonderfully entertaining dialogue adds longevity. The game does lack in sidequests though, being rather linear, but that’s nothing unusual for the time.
And it’s true also that EarthBound’s rather simple graphics have copped some flak. Take Chrono Trigger, released only a few months later, and the difference in aesthetics is chalk and cheese, even for 1995. If you’re looking for graphical marvels, then you’re certainly in the wrong place here.
But why can’t EarthBound trade on its own style? The game does have its own tricks, even if people seem determined to overlook them. The sprites aren’t hugely expressive, but there’s a wide variety of them to cater to this game’s kooky cast of characters. One of the game’s most unique facets, though, and something that still looks impressive, is the psychedelic backgrounds of the ingame battles.
Of EarthBound’s many shining lights, one of its very brightest is the soundtrack. It’s one of those quirky soundtracks that wouldn’t really bear an awful lot of listening outside of the game. A lot of it isn’t catchy by itself. But it suits the game’s unique atmosphere perfectly while you’re playing, and there’s nothing quite like it.
There’s tons of tracks, too: at least ten distinct battle themes; unique themes for each of the towns and cities; a few different cave themes; and various other situational themes. Most of the tunes are whimsical and upbeat, with a few tense tracks and eerie themes towards the end, as the game’s happy mood takes a dive into terror.
Given its unsuccessful initial release, and its surge in popularity over the last, God, 20 years, it’s easy to romanticise EarthBound somewhat. In doing so, you run the risk of glossing over EarthBound’s slight faults. That’s understandable – after all, it has a uniqueness that most other games don’t match. Even its eventual sequel, Mother 3, didn’t manage to match EarthBound, in my view.
But, as it’s always been, you’ve got to take each game on its merits. EarthBound has a compelling setup, an immersive soundtrack, and I’m well prepared to give it a pass on its graphics. The battle system isn’t particularly complex, which can be good or bad depending on your view.
On the negative side, the difficulty ramps up quite a bit at the end of the game. The plot is sometimes disjointed, although the terrific characters and great dialogue make up for that. But it’s easy to overlook the parts of EarthBound where its legs become a little tired.
And rightly so, because this is a game that everyone should check out at least once, if even just because it’s alternative. One could never accuse this game of being generic. I couldn’t say that EarthBound has enough to be called a top-tier RPG, worthy of a place alongside the genre’s greatest. But it makes for a damn good second-string player.
8 May 2026