The Best Game Ever Created. Ever.
I'm going to assume you're reading this review simply because you have played the game, loved it, and want to hear other people gushing about it because you have no one else to talk to about how great it is. Your family doesn't understand what made you spend the last 80 hours holed up in your basement, but that's not important. You just finished the greatest game ever made. Ever.
If by some cruel twist of fate you have not had the opportunity to play this game, you owe it to yourself and to the game to find it and play it. You won't regret it. Seriously, stop reading this and go get it. Get it anywhere, and play it.
For everyone else:
Earthbound is a game that came out to much fanfare, but very little commercial success in the US. The characters are non-standard at best, and the storyline is bizarre. The game's quirky sense of humor can initially be difficult to understand and could be off-putting. The graphics facially look very simple, and the music and sound effects are strange sounding. The game is essentially a Japanese interpretation of American pop culture, so everything at once feels familiar and awkward. At a time when JRPGs were flourishing on the SNES, Earthbound completely went against the fantasy-grain.
These things sound negative, but after playing the game they somehow are not. This is truly a case of a sum being greater than its parts. About halfway through the game, you suddenly realize you have put 40 hours into this thing called Earthbound, and that you are having more fun than you have ever had playing a video game in your life.
Earthbound seems so simple and unassuming, but the memorable characters combine with all the game's quirks to make one of the best video-gaming experiences in existence, even today.
It is sinful that Nintendo refuses to forgive its fans for their initially cold reaction to Earthbound. The western world is consistently denied an opportunity to play Earthbound, or to receive anything in the way of Earthbound remakes or sequels. But no matter how hard Nintendo makes it, you simply must find a way to play this game. Every gamer who calls him or herself a gamer has to experience this oft-forgotten, oft-ignored game, if only so they too can say that they have played the best game ever made.
