EarthBound

In a time where Grand Theft Auto is one of the biggest brands on the planet, the idea of a non-American developer making a game depicting a skewed approximation of America is nothing crazy. However Nintendo, Ape, and HAL Laboratory put out a product like EarthBound years ahead of this curve that was equally as re-inventive to it's genre that lives as a cult classic that stands out like nothing else. And outside from the other games in the as known in Japan Mother series - of until recently dubious availability in the West for the first, and still M.I.A. in the case of the third - there really isn't anything for people who love this to gravitate towards. With a quirky sense of humour and a bizarre aesthetic of Americana, EarthBound stands a brilliant beacon of creativity, even when some of it's ideas haven't aged the most gracefully.

The fantasy and hard sci-fi tropes of traditional RPGs are eschewed for a setting of 'modern day' (i.e. early 1990s) Eagleland, a facsimile of middle America ranging from the small town of Onett to the large skyscrapers of Fourside. Even without this setting, EarthBound reads like a coming of age journey for the young protagonist Ness. From small beginnings to fulfilling his destiny, Ness leaves home after being told he is part of a quartet of kids that are the only ones who can stop the nebulously defined evil of Giygas. Despite their young age, one of the most amusing aspects of the narrative and dialogue of the game is just how much Ness and co. are the straight man characters to a world that is screwy and just a little bit cracked. Almost everyone you meet is goofy or just plain weird in some way, or they come off in a way that makes them appear more like children the actual kids, even if the kids still have a tendency to get homesick without calling home enough. This perspective, that in the eyes of kids it's everyone else who seems immature, is perhaps EarthBound's greatest strength. That, and the delightfully simple, yet colourful visual style of the world.

The trappings around setting and tone aren't the only things bucking the trend in EarthBound, much of it's core gameplay is inventive while being (mostly) intuitive. The turn-based combat takes place in first person with no kind of ATB system like that made popular in Final Fantasy or other Squaresoft/Enix games, yet it still places an emphasis on speed when it suits you through the way damage and healing are calculated. Each character's health points (HP) and psi points (PP) are listed on a ticker on the bottom of the screen and will start ticking down or up when damage (or restoration) is received; they won't just drop to the new value immediately. This allows you to heal someone when they take mortal damage before their health actually drops to zero if you can act fast enough, which puts an interesting wrinkle into how you manage your characters during tough encounters. The party members themselves feel similar, but are different enough that they each can fill a different role in battle, especially boy-genius Jeff, who uses tools and weapons he repairs to give him a lot of utility in combat.

Defeating weaker enemies by simply walking into them is another fantastic trait that not enough games utilize. The feeling of saving time in a genre as typically lengthy as RPGs is something that can often be overlooked, but it's well appreciated whenever used. Some of the other mechanics EarthBound takes part in, however, are not so hot. There's a "help" command that can tell you what you need to know, but without actively seeking this information out, the game won't really tell you what any item, equipment, or ability will do until you use it, and sometimes memorizing everything doesn't cut it. A short info blurb so I could remember how much HP or PP I'll regain from one item to the next would make things a little less archaic. The act of healing, both from KO as well as status effects, could also stand to feel less tedious, even if it is supposed to be a punishment. When a character is knocked out, they go to the hospital, and you need to go to the nearest hospital and pay for their release before they can be used again. Eventually you'll be able to acquire items and skills that will allow you to revive teammates, but until that time it's quite a chore to remedy this. Same with status effects, as you progress and level up your own healing capabilities will increase, but in the early goings your only option a lot of times is to find a healer (also found at hospitals) to remove them for you.

More than most other games of it's ilk EarthBound has a heavy influence from point and click adventure games where you need to find offbeat and whimsical solutions to impediments in the world before you can move forward. Finding books on overcoming being shy to help get information from little gremlins, finding ways to scare up money to free a traveling band from their contract so we could use their bus (the band being a Blues Brothers reference that amused me to no end), and using flypaper to catch a bunch of zombies are only a few examples of the sometimes madcap puzzles that need solving. This often meant negotiating with the limited space of the fairly dated inventory system, but this is balanced against how much you'll need items in combat pretty well to not be too much a problem. There's a system in place to pick up or drop off items you don't need at that moment but might need again from almost anywhere in the world, so it's rarely too much trouble to actually manage your inventory.

There's something very addictive about EarthBound in the same way there can be with a good novel, that desire to keep playing to see what comes next. I found myself more and more consumed by the game as I went through it with a need to see how it ends. The bare bones story may not be revolutionary, but everything around it that gives the game it's actual character is so fun and unique that if it all clicks for you, it's quite a gripping ride. It's not perfect, and some of it's systems have not gotten better with time, but EarthBound handily deserves the revered status it found for itself decades later.