If you’ve talked with me about video games for any length of time, I’ve probably mentioned that Shigesato Itoi’s EarthBound, released as Mother 2 in Japan, is my favourite of them all. Which doesn’t really make much sense, if you know my feelings towards the JRPG genre as a whole. While the world-building and feel can be amazing, I’ve often found many games in the genre to suffer from uninspired turn-based combat, grating character writing and confusing objectives. EarthBound stands apart.
And as we can now celebrate three decades of this game’s existence, I thought I’d take a look back and analyse why this game was a nuclear bomb of creativity and passion, and how it’s never been surpassed since.
You play as a young boy named Ness, woken from his sleep by a meteorite crashing on top of a hill. You go out to explore with your obnoxious neighbour Pokey and your loyal dog King – after your mother insists you change out of your pajamas. There, you meet a powerful flying insect named ‘Buzz Buzz’, who informs Ness that he must save the world by visiting eight sanctuaries and record their melodies, to defeat the evil Giygas. About 10 minutes later, Buzz Buzz is swatted down and killed by Pokey’s mother, who mistakes him for a dung beetle. Welcome to EarthBound.
What makes EarthBound so special is its ability to take something that everyone can relate to and just squeeze every ounce of imagination and innovation out of it until it blurs the line between realism and fantasy. While enemies in other RPGs might be wyverns and mages, in EarthBound they’re rabid dogs, crazed street signs, and warped vinyl records. Your first major hurdle is dealing with some skating punks who have taken over the local arcade, led by a mafioso boss who attacks you with a tank named ‘Frankeystein Mark II’.
When you play the game for a couple hours, your (fictional) dad calls you on the phone and suggests you take a break. It’s hard not to see glimpses of people you know – or even yourself – in these characters.
Speaking of the characters, I truly believe that this game has the greatest and most charming cast of characters in any video game, ever. If you’re driven to speak to every single random NPC just because you want to hear what they’ve got to say, that is the mark of a game with fantastically sharp and clever writing. A name I don’t see often when discussing EarthBound is Marcus Lindblom, who had the Herculean task of translating every single line of dialogue from Japanese to English, all the while adapting its meaning and tone to an American audience. He succeeded handily.
Nowhere can the game’s characterisation strengths be better seen than the main four party members – Ness, Paula, Jeff and Poo (yes, really). All four of these characters, while coming from vastly different background, are inextricably tied together by the thread of childlike innocence, inspired by elements and memories of Itoi’s own childhood. None of them start off as conquering heroes, they have to become that way, and you, the player, experience their journey both as a spectator and as an active participant.
My favourite moment in the whole game is Poo’s establishing scene. Poo is the crown prince of a region named Dalaam, and must undergo special ‘Mu’ training, which requires one to sit at the top of a hill and completely clear their mind. As a player, you climb to the top of the hill, and wait.
A messenger comes by, telling you that your master needs you and to stop your training at once. Any first time player obviously gets back up, walks back to the palace, and then gets berated by the master and told to go back to training. So they go back, and ignore the messenger. And then the sky goes black.
A spirit floats down from the top of the screen. He tells you he will take your legs and your arms. Your health points drop to zero. He takes your ears, and the game mutes itself. He takes your eyes, and the screen turns pitch black. Only the flickering light of a text box tells you that the spirit will take your mind. Everything disappears from the screen, for what feels like an eternity…
And then it all comes back, and it’s business as usual. A truly cinematic, chilling scene in an era where a lot of games were struggling with the most basic story beats, and a masterful use of in-game mechanics to not only establish the character’s helplessness, but link it to the player’s psyche too. This type of player-character bond threads all throughout the game, and is key in its success all the way from the first moments up until Giygas, the final boss, which literally calls on the player themself to help the in-game characters to win.
Even the game’s combat system puts a fresh coat of paint on what can sometimes feel generic and tiresome in other games. Unlike most JRPGs, such as Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior, damage in EarthBound doesn’t decrease your HP instantly. Health is measured using a rolling odometer system which ticks down when damage is taken. This allows a quick and smart player to take advantage, using an item or casting PSI Lifeup to save a friend who would otherwise be doomed. Little intricacies like this add so much character and make the game so much more fun to play than its contemporaries, or even many modern RPGs.
A special mention must also be given to the soundtrack, composed by Keiichi Suzuki, Hirokazu Tanaka, Hiroshi Kanazu, and Toshiyuki Ueno. It is by far one of the most technically impressive and ground-breaking pieces of work ever composed for a video game. EarthBound was one of the first games to use samples from non-VG music, and as such has an extremely eclectic sound palette which completely reworks its source material. The fact they managed to twist the relaxing harmonies of the Beach Boys’ ‘Deirdre’ into the hellscape nightmare of ‘The Place’ is nothing short of stunning, and the presence of beautiful original compositions such as ‘Eight Melodies’ and ‘Smiles and Tears’ shows how multitalented the composing quartet was.
Thirty years later, EarthBound has burrowed its way into the lexicon of game design, and inspired many games in the indie scene, most notably Toby Fox’s 2015 game Undertale. It features a silent protagonist who wears a striped shirt, subverts conventional RPG tropes, and features quirky dialogue reminiscent of EarthBound at every turn. Other games like Austin Jorgensen’s Lisa: The Painful and Omocat’s OMORI also bear heavy influence, and even other official Nintendo games like the Mario and Luigi RPG series have elements that seem to have been taken from the game’s playbook.
Yet, despite this industry-wide influence, no game has ever truly replicated EarthBound’s magic. Perhaps it’s because the game is so deeply personal, a reflection of Itoi’s unique perspective on childhood, family, and love, shown through a backdrop of suburban America and reflected through a Japanese lens. Nobody else could have thought up these ideas, or translated them to a vide0 game format, but everyone can relate to them.
Despite its brilliance, EarthBound initially struggled to find its audience, especially in North America. Its out-of-the-box humour and suburban aesthetic made it a hard sell in a market dominated by the fantastical appeal of games like Final Fantasy. Nintendo’s marketing leaned heavily into the game’s quirk, with a campaign centred on the slogan ‘This game stinks’, alongside scratch-and-sniff cards in magazines. While creative, this unconventional approach failed to create commercial success, and the game ultimately saw no official European release. Ironically, what made it polarizing then is exactly what makes it beloved today – itt was decades ahead of the curve.
For a game that wasn’t initially a commercial success, EarthBound has a legacy supported by an incredibly passionate fanbase. This passion was on full display when Mother 3, the critically acclaimed sequel to EarthBound, was never officially localized by Nintendo for Western audiences. The EarthBound fansite starmen.net refused to accept this, and echoing the collaborative spirit of the game, a dozen hardcore users spent two years translating and modifying game files to create a version that completely localised the game’s dialogue to English. When fans are willing to pour years of effort into making a game accessible to others, it speaks volumes about the enduring love that many have for the series.
Games like this only come once every few decades, or maybe only even once in a lifetime. Some games have character, some have personality. EarthBound is the only game I have ever played that feels like it has a soul – a soul that reminds me, year after year, that video games can capture emotions in ways books, music, and films simply can’t. EarthBound is a magnificent reflection of the best of the human spirit, and just as I’m talking about it now, it’ll be reflected on in 300 or 3000 years’ time.
