May 13, 2007 ... Article by Listener Chase
After being mentioned in the last podcast, I thought it was time to write a guest article for everyone about largely forgotten or unknown series: the Mother trilogy (Also known as Earthbound outside of Japan). Since the only game available in English to the public right now is the SNES incarnation of the series, known widely as Earthbound, I’m going to do my best to leave spoilers out of that part of the article. However, since the first Mother game only came out on the NES in Japan, and the English version never made it beyond the final beta stages into release (the SNES more or less killed it… more on that later), and because Mother 3 will likely not see an English release any time soon, I won’t hold back on revealing interesting or amusing details on those games.
I first came across Earthbound when I was a mere 11 years old. After having my interest caught by some previews in Nintendo Power, I saved up enough money to buy the game. This was in an age when an SNES game could sell for 70 dollars and you believed it was worth every penny. The first thing I noticed about the box was that it was HUGE, and it actually contained its own player’s guide. This was a rare marketing move at the time, and it was basically only done because it was nearing the end of the SNES’s lifespan. The player’s guide was actually about as fun as the game itself, and among a series of interesting articles there was also a page of bizarre scratch and sniff cards. Smells available included the reek of a giant mushroom creature, the sulfurous stench of a burning hellhound, a monkey with his banana, a giant mole, the scent of the game’s hero, a mystery smell that, if memory serves me, was probably the smell of the belch of a hideous vomit-creature… but I promised no spoilers on the game. (If you don’t believe me, the player’s guide can be found online at http://www.scribd.com/doc/8476/Earthbound-Nintendo-Players-Guide , and the scratch and sniff card are on page 131).
The game itself was wonderful, to a level that I would still say ranks it roughly the same as Final Fantasy 6. First, you get to name all your characters, your dog, your favorite food, and your favorite thing. The “magic” system in the game is known as PSI, which is basically extreme mental powers, and the main character’s most powerful attack became named after your favorite thing. The battle system itself was extremely unique. The HP and PP (PSI Points) are on a series of what are basically slot machine “rolling counters.” Any time you get attacked or healed the slots roll down or up to reach the new total number. If you have enough HP and can get a heal in before you hit 0 you can essentially save yourself from dying (and you DO die in this game… if you die you basically become a ghost who follows the party around). Let’s say you do receive a fatal hit, then you still have a chance to pull yourself together and stand back up at 1 hp, due to a stat known as “Guts.”
I can’t leave out comments on the enemies either. Most games have animals you can attack, but how many games do you know where you can fight Skate Punks, Crooked Cops, Cranky Ladies, Li’l UFOs, Unassuming Local Guys, New Age Retro Hippies, Worthless Protoplasms, Slimy Little Piles, Putrid Moldy Men, Urban Zombies, Scalding Coffee, Dali’s Clocks, Even Slimier Little Piles… well you get the idea. There are so many bizarre enemies in this game, with different battle music and sounds for different battles, that it makes each monster a pretty unique experience. Oh, and I never even mentioned how to engage in battles: You have to touch an enemy to start a battle, and the way you and the enemy are facing determines whether or not it is a normal fight, a pre-emptive attack, or you have been ambushed. As you get stronger you can skip normal and pre-emptive fights against smaller monsters altogether, because they either start to run away from you, or if you are strong enough the battle becomes an instant victory, with you receiving any treasures and experience owed to you.
Other random bits of greatness in this game? Concerts, an extremely wide range of scenery that set the mood very well, many many useful items… so many you won’t know where to hold them all, lots of good humor, a decent mix of challenge and leveling up (it is possible to beat some harder bosses by using strategy rather than high levels), character development, LOTS of secrets, good transportation systems, oh, and did I forget to mention the complexity of the story?
Before I can go on to talk about Mother 3 (the sequal to Earthbound/Mother 2), I need to first talk a little bit about the first Mother game, for the NES, and then do a short summary of Earthbound itself to set the stage for the final game in the series. Mother, sometimes known as Earthbound Zero in the US, starred Ninten, a quiet little fellow who gets woken up one night by a poltergeist possessing various objects in the house and scaring the crap out of his family. After dealing with the disturbance (because his dad is always some distant and unknowable place that always has a telephone nearby), he sets with a Plastic Baseball Bat and his Great Grandfather’s Diary on what ends up being an adventure to save the world. You see, Ninten’s Great Grandparents disappeared one day something like 80 years before. It turns out they were abducted by aliens. Why? I don’t know, I have yet to play all the way through the game. Part of this abduction appears to have involved the couple being put in the position to raise an infant alien named Gigyas… whose job, in turn, is to watch over the couple? Anyways, Gigyas develops a mother-child connect with Ninten’s Great Grandmother, and appears to have developed some humanoid feelings as a result. Ninten’s Grandfather, on the other hand steals the secrets of PSI from Gigyas and escapes back to earth, leaving his wife there with the aliens. Gigyas gets pissed off and swears revenge for being betrayed. In the 80 years it takes Gigyas to get ready for revenge, Ninten’s grandfather passes on the secrets of PSI through the following generations, which in turn results in Ninten being essentially super-powered with mental strength. To summarize what I know about the rest of the game, Ninten gets some similarly gifted friends, they all get together, fight through the forces of the invading alien army led by Gigyas, confront Gigyas, and in the final battle Ninten sings a song passed down from his Great Grandmother, which causes Gigyas’ emotions to return. This in turn makes Gigyas freak out and run away, swearing revenge for another day.
Then we come to Earthbound. Another EXTREMELY similar boy (down to the outfit and red baseball cap) named Ness (you’ve seen him in Smash Brothers games) wakes up in the middle of the night after a meteor crashes into the earth nearby, waking up everyone in the whole town. After gathering up his dog, the annoying neighbor boy Pokey (REMEMBER THAT NAME!) to go find out what happened and where Pokey’s little brother Pickey disappeared to. After arriving at the meteor a hole in space-time opens up and a bee-like creature named Buzz-buzz comes out and tells Ness he is one of four children destined to save the world, because if they fail then the future Buzz-buzz has come from will happen and everyone is screwed. Pokey gets freaked out and swears that he will never be one of those kids because he is a coward. Shortly afterwards a Starman Junior, aka a lesser alien from the future, appears to kill Ness and Buzz-buzz. Starman is killed, you take Pokey and Pickey back home, and then Buzz-buzz dies (I won’t ruin it for you and tell you how).
Thus ends the introduction to a huge story. I won’t tell you what happens with Gigyas this time around, but I will tell you that Pokey runs away, joins an evil cult (essentially started by aliens… but extremely indirectly), craps a lot (you find his droppings in various parts of the world), makes rich and powerful friends, and becomes capable of time travel. During all this you travel the world, endure what could be considered various kind of drug-induced hallucinations, and piece together a nifty little tune that makes you a better person in general.
After Earthbound there was trouble. Not in-game trouble, but trouble on a developmental scale. Earthbound64 was originally going to be one of the hottest games ever for the N64DD. If you have no idea what that is, you are missing out on the biggest piece of video game history since the Virtual Boy (sarcasm!). The story for the game was apparently written in its entirety, and a lot of progress on the world and graphics were made. In the end, however, the N64DD was a failure so bad it never made it out of Japan, and Earthbound64 was cancelled… never to be heard of again?