Jeremy Gallen's Game Reviews

An EarthBound Space Case

During the 16-bit era, I began to develop a keen interest in RPGs given my experience with the original Dragon Quest (then called Dragon Warrior in North America) and Breath of Fire on the Super NES. In the mid-1990s, my brothers and I saved up for EarthBound, which had come bundled with a player’s guide, of which I, at least, have decent memories. I would later discover it was actually the second entry of the Mother series, with the first entry, later titled EarthBound Beginnings, not making its way to American shores until decades after its initial planned aborted release. The second entry would eventually see a port to modern Nintendo systems like the 3DS, and I decided to give it another shot. Does it still hold up?

EarthBound opens with a meteor falling on a hilltop in the town of Onett, which protagonist Ness and his neighbor Pokey investigate. A fly from the future named Buzz-Buzz informs Ness that it is his destiny to stop an evil alien force named Giygas from consuming the world and must collect eight melodies from eight Sanctuaries in a Sound Stone to start. A young girl named Paula, a genius named Jeff, and the martial artist Poo join Ness on his journey, making many bizarre encounters across the fictitious Eagleland along the way.

The narrative is lighthearted, with the contemporary setting (at least in the 1990s) having been a nice break from the JRPG norm, with countless quirky characters encountered during Ness’ journey. Some of the humor is decent, and there are some unexpected twists, with even a few of the minor characters getting good screentime. However, there are occasional tried elements like a dystopian future, the illusion of choice at times with yes/no dialogue decisions, and some padding like the Sky Runner flying sequences you have to view a few times. Finally, the photographer sporadically dropping from the sky to photograph your party just to show an album during the ending credits repeatedly stops the game in its tracks. Overall, the plot is above average, but not too much so.

The 1990s wasn't a great decade for RPG translations, and while that for EarthBound has some positive qualities, it has most issues prevalent in game localizations of the time. For instance, there are tons of lines that could have been better worded like "The brave local hero named Ness who broke up the Sharks has left Onett," segments like "I, Pokey" and "You, Paula," and back then, there were idiot translators who thought people still said "Yahoo!" Regardless, many portions were rendered well in English like a Yes/No question "The Beatles song ___terday," characters named Mr. Spoon and Mr. Fork, and humor like "Neglected class shipping." Even so, more polish could have been put into the localization.

An example of the game's inconsistent translation quality.

That aside, EarthBound is at heart a traditional turn-based RPG like its predecessor but features significant changes like a different encounter system. Individual enemies now appear on fields in towns, in dungeons, and everywhere in between. Upon noticing Ness and his party, they charge towards him to attempt to make contact, with the way they do so indicating how an encounter will begin. If Ness and the enemy are facing one another, a standard blue swirl will appear for a few second; if the enemy catches his party from behind, the swirl will be red; and if Ness catches the foe off guard, the swirl will be green.

Blue indicates that the battle will begin normally, red indicates that the enemy will get a surprise round of commands against Ness and his party, and green denotes that the player will have a surprise round against the foes. During said swirl, other enemies visible in the area of contact will attempt to mob Ness, which indicates how many adversaries the following battle will have. In an original twist at the time, if Ness' party is powerful enough, a "thwack" will occur, instantly killing the enemies and resulting in a swift victory, still earning him and his allies the same experience and rewards as if they had encountered the adversaries standardly.

As with most other turn-based Japanese RPGs of the time, EarthBound takes players to a separate screen for combat against the encountered enemies. Ness and his allies have several options, including attacking with their current weapons, defending to reduce damage, using PP-consuming PSI abilities (basically, magic), using consumable or reusable items (the latter mostly in Jeff's case), or attempting to run away, which in standard JRPG fashion doesn't always work. Jeff can spy on enemies to determine their weaknesses, which is always useful, and Paula has a Pray skill that has random effects but is only really useful against the latter part of the final boss battles (hint, hint).

After the player has inputted commands for all characters, they and the enemy exchange their actions in an order supposedly dependent upon speed, but this is very rarely consistent, and unintended events like wasting healing on low-HP characters only for foes to kill them before they get said life recovery are commonly prevalent. Another major issue I had throughout the game aside from this was the maddening degree of button mashing to scroll through the battle dialogue since it doesn't advance automatically, and while there is an auto-battle mode, its pace is far more glacial.

McDonald's mascot Grimace really let himself go after his glory days.

One interesting innovation in the game's time was the rolling HP system, where whenever a character receives damage, their numerical health rolls down one point at a time. This is primarily critical in cases when enemies execute attacks that can potentially kill characters, but in these instances, the player can possibly execute healing on them to save them from death. Furthermore, if their downward-rolling HP hasn't reached zero when a battle ends (and some enemies blow up and inflict damage on one or more characters when killed), characters are saved from death.

This does have caveats, however, like the lack of an in-game pause despite the rolling HP occurring in real-time. While the 3DS Virtual Console does have a built-in pause feature, players will need the memorize the menu locations of spells and have quick navigation reflexes if they want to save doomed characters from death. Moreover, when enemies use spells and abilities that affect multiple characters, they slowly do so one at a time, which can really feel unfair. Despite this, the general pace of combat is fast, with victory resulting in living characters acquiring experience for occasional level-ups, maybe an item drop.

The incapacitation of all characters results in defeat and the chance afterward to recover at the last save point, in which case only Ness will be alive (although if he was diamondized before, the ally who was alive last will be the sole survivor), and players will need to visit the nearest hospital to get everyone back up and running. If Ness is the one who survives, he starts with zero PP, in which case the party will have to stay at a hotel to get fully recovered in addition to the hospital visit. This can create some early-game hell, and in one particular area towards the end where a save point is inconveniently located in the middle of an enemy-infested area, some needless annoyance.

Unlike other RPGs, EarthBound does not give money rewarded after combat directly to the player, but rather to ATMs worldwide, with Ness able to withdraw money from them to spend it on goods like better equipment and consumables. All money in ATMs mercifully remains safe after player defeat, although that they are holding is reduced by half, akin to the Dragon Quest games. Regardless, players will at most times want to have at least some cash on hand to pay for things like payphones to record progress (although regular hotel phones don't cost anything) and fees for using Paula's delivery service (accessed via phone as well), useful for storing items and recovering them later.

When you wish upon this star, you'll encounter a boss.

The game mechanics sport some other quirks, for better or worse. Among the better ones is that when resting at hotels, Jeff can repair broken items in his inventory (always indicated, luckily, by the word "Broken") to make them into reusable tools, some of which can be really handy like one that can neutralize enemy shields and another that can deal decent fixed damage to one enemy and adjacent foes on the same row. Among the more irritating ones is that Ness can become homesick if he hasn't called his mother over the phone for a long time, which can creep up unexpectedly and make him miss turns in battle.

The battle system generally works well, given the decent pace of combat and positives like the instant victory system when your characters are powerful enough, although the degree of button mashing, which one would typically affiliate with action RPGs, can be nothing short of maddening (just to scroll through the battle text), alongside other issues like the lopsided character growth towards the end of the game. For instance, Ness essentially becomes a tank, while Paula, for instance, remains in the 200-HP range even at high levels during the endgame, and the rolling HP system requires quick reflexes. Regardless, the game mechanics more or less serve their purpose.

Unfortunately, despite innate 3DS Virtual Console features like being able to record a single save state at any moment and reload it when desired, EarthBound is far from the epitope of user-friendliness. While the text speed is adjustable, the menus aren't cumbersome, maps are available for towns, and players can pay at Hint Shops to get clues on how to advance the main narrative, the sequel still retains many interface elements that would in future generations of RPGs become largely antiquated. These include the endless dialogues and confirmations when shopping, inventory management when far away from being able to call the Escargo Express and space becomes finite, no in-game measure of playtime, and no descriptions for spell effects when in battle (with players only able to view them in the status menus outside combat). Overall, interaction could have been better.

While the game soundtrack sounds generally off-key, most of the music is enjoyable, starting with the title screen theme and transition to the opening credits. The town themes are good as well, among the strongest being those for Summers and Fourside (the latter of which has a beautiful remix during the ending sequence). Many of the battle themes are catchy and fitting as well, such as the first resemblant of "Tequila" by the Champs and the techno music when encountering alien or robot adversaries. However, there some weird battle themes like “Battle Against An Unsettling Opponent” (which somewhat resembles the Pink Panther's theme) and "Battle Against a Mobile Opponent" (which I found really irritating to the point where I muted the volume). A few other pieces sound like nothing but noise as well, but otherwise, the aurals serve their purpose well and generally fits the game.

We all live in a non-union equivalent yellowish submarine

While EarthBound allegedly took five years the develop, one wouldn't notice it by looking at the visuals, which didn’t exactly push the Super NES's graphical capabilities to their maximums. Granted, they do have plenty of positive aspects such as the bright, vibrant colors, that the player's character sprites can face eight directions, the pretty environments, and the oblique projection of said environs. However, the battle graphics are fairly lazy, consisting of inanimate enemies against trippy psychedelic backgrounds, but the spell animations from Ness' party are fairly decent. Other issues include the graphical slowdown when dozens of sprites populate the screen and endless enemy reskins, but otherwise, the graphics do have a kind of charm (and some places such as the neon Moonside are especially gorgeous) and do their job decently.

As there is no in-game clock and I couldn't motivate myself to track playtime myself, I can't really say how long a playthrough will last someone, but I can easily say that the full experience is neither too short nor too long. Given the dearth of sidequests and postgame content as well, lasting appeal is severely lacking.

On the whole, EarthBound is an improvement over its predecessor, given its evolved combat (especially the superb encounter system that even shames most of those in future RPGs with visible encounters like the first two Grandia games), the lighthearted narrative, the mostly-enjoyable music, and the charming visuals. However, its battles frequently feel lopsided (with the endless button mashing to scroll through combat dialogue hardly helping), the usability is typical of those of 1990s JRPGs, the translation quality is incredibly inconsistent, and there’s a deep deficit of replay value. Despite its positives, the game is far from bucket list-worthy (especially among those who are not Nintendo fans) but may be worth at least one glance from Switch Online members, if nothing more.

This review is based on a playthrough of a digital copy purchased by and downloaded to the user's Nintendo 3DS.