I’d like to share more screens I took but didn’t include in the OP, along with my thoughts on them:
Magicant was probably the toughest area in the game for me. In hindsight, it was also one of the coolest. Meeting dream versions of your mother, Tracy, Pokey, Master Belch and others, and exploring the short but surreal landscape was fascinating. You’re peering into Ness’ psyche and learning something about yourself in the process.
But you’re deprived of your party members, so it’s quite challenging. I lost all of the Flying Men to the Loaded Dice and their reinforcements. But after a few attempts I powered through and made it to the quicksilver lake with the Krakens, sneaking past them by hugging the outskirts of the lake. Then I finally reached the island and confronted the Mani Mani Statue embodying Ness’ inner evil. The way you “power up” upon vanquishing this evil is immensely satisfying. You really feel like you’re ready to fight Giygas.
Two shots from Dalaam. I interpreted this place as the EarthBound world’s equivalent of Tibet, and it made for a nice change of pace from the sun-bleached tourist trap of Summers. It’s a pleasant aside — the gilded gold palace with marble elephant statues, atop the cloud-wreathed mountain and its winding path through the village full of admiring women, down to the meditation spot (seen here with my whole party in tow).
I thoroughly enjoyed the music here, too.
On the note of the meditation spot, I’d like to highlight (once again) the moment where you’re trying to meditate but a woman keeps interrupting to say you’re needed back at the palace. Each time you go back to the palace, it turns out you’re not needed and you’re told to resume your training. So you return to the meditation spot, only for the woman to reappear and insist you go back to the palace. The game never says it outright, but it’s suggested she’s an agent of Giygas trying to distract you from your destiny. It’s only when you ignore her and do nothing that the spirit of your ancestor appears after what feels like 30 seconds. Rather than doing what you’re told, you do the opposite… which is to do nothing at all, and that’s how you make progress.
You’re then asked to let the spirit do some horrible things to you — surprisingly violent acts that mortified me enough to say “No!” In this case, my gut instinct was to resist... but then I realized I had to allow it in order to make progress. It goes to show how effective the storytelling is that I felt protective of this prince I hardly knew. The game has a way of getting under your skin with its characterization, like when Paula is abducted at the mall and I truly worried for her safety. Of course, it turns out that the spirit dismembering you was all a dream, and the point of the exercise was transcending your earthly self and achieving true enlightenment.
The Lost Underworld was inventive in its own way. I was curious how they would convey the sheer scale of the dinosaurs rumored to live down there… and I was delighted to see the clever way they depicted my party as mere pixels, dwarfed by the sizable sprites of the dinosaurs. The fact you travel so slowly also conveys the sense that your party is traveling vast distances. Simple, but effective — like so many touches in this game!
Seeing the spirit of Poo’s ancestor reminds me how creepy this game can be. Another unsettling moment was seeing your friends in the alien lab under Stonehenge. They’re trapped in tubes, up to their eyeballs in fluids, about to drown. Really sets the stakes before you face the leader of the Starmen in the next room.
And then there’s Brick Road, the dungeon designer who aspired to become a dungeon. He finally gets his wish and becomes Dungeon Man, the almighty walking tower… that easily gets entangled in a palm grove. But what I love is how his human face is now a fixture on the wall of the tower. He likes his new lot in life, but boy is he creepy, haha!
Probably the best part of Dungeon Man was the collection of game design tips on bulletin boards you find throughout his body. From explaining why monsters appear in dungeons, to suggesting that you place useful items at the end of dead ends to reward players who explore off the beaten path, it’s another example of how self-aware EarthBound can be, and how happy it is to be a videogame. The fact that the massive Dungeon Man maintains his own collection of human-sized vehicles is also charming.
Speaking of charming, here are more examples of EarthBound’s playful sense of humor — from a scatological acronym, to a pro sunbather who tans his palms! Also, while I mentioned them in the OP, I wanted to share screens of a bodyguard’s not-so-subtle threat, and the elevator operator who thinks you’re staring at her butt. The people at the Monotoli Building made me chuckle with their standoffish behavior. EarthBound is certainly a side of Nintendo we don’t see too often!
Magicant was probably the toughest area in the game for me. In hindsight, it was also one of the coolest. Meeting dream versions of your mother, Tracy, Pokey, Master Belch and others, and exploring the short but surreal landscape was fascinating. You’re peering into Ness’ psyche and learning something about yourself in the process.
But you’re deprived of your party members, so it’s quite challenging. I lost all of the Flying Men to the Loaded Dice and their reinforcements. But after a few attempts I powered through and made it to the quicksilver lake with the Krakens, sneaking past them by hugging the outskirts of the lake. Then I finally reached the island and confronted the Mani Mani Statue embodying Ness’ inner evil. The way you “power up” upon vanquishing this evil is immensely satisfying. You really feel like you’re ready to fight Giygas.
Two shots from Dalaam. I interpreted this place as the EarthBound world’s equivalent of Tibet, and it made for a nice change of pace from the sun-bleached tourist trap of Summers. It’s a pleasant aside — the gilded gold palace with marble elephant statues, atop the cloud-wreathed mountain and its winding path through the village full of admiring women, down to the meditation spot (seen here with my whole party in tow).
I thoroughly enjoyed the music here, too.
On the note of the meditation spot, I’d like to highlight (once again) the moment where you’re trying to meditate but a woman keeps interrupting to say you’re needed back at the palace. Each time you go back to the palace, it turns out you’re not needed and you’re told to resume your training. So you return to the meditation spot, only for the woman to reappear and insist you go back to the palace. The game never says it outright, but it’s suggested she’s an agent of Giygas trying to distract you from your destiny. It’s only when you ignore her and do nothing that the spirit of your ancestor appears after what feels like 30 seconds. Rather than doing what you’re told, you do the opposite… which is to do nothing at all, and that’s how you make progress.
You’re then asked to let the spirit do some horrible things to you — surprisingly violent acts that mortified me enough to say “No!” In this case, my gut instinct was to resist... but then I realized I had to allow it in order to make progress. It goes to show how effective the storytelling is that I felt protective of this prince I hardly knew. The game has a way of getting under your skin with its characterization, like when Paula is abducted at the mall and I truly worried for her safety. Of course, it turns out that the spirit dismembering you was all a dream, and the point of the exercise was transcending your earthly self and achieving true enlightenment.
The Lost Underworld was inventive in its own way. I was curious how they would convey the sheer scale of the dinosaurs rumored to live down there… and I was delighted to see the clever way they depicted my party as mere pixels, dwarfed by the sizable sprites of the dinosaurs. The fact you travel so slowly also conveys the sense that your party is traveling vast distances. Simple, but effective — like so many touches in this game!
Seeing the spirit of Poo’s ancestor reminds me how creepy this game can be. Another unsettling moment was seeing your friends in the alien lab under Stonehenge. They’re trapped in tubes, up to their eyeballs in fluids, about to drown. Really sets the stakes before you face the leader of the Starmen in the next room.
And then there’s Brick Road, the dungeon designer who aspired to become a dungeon. He finally gets his wish and becomes Dungeon Man, the almighty walking tower… that easily gets entangled in a palm grove. But what I love is how his human face is now a fixture on the wall of the tower. He likes his new lot in life, but boy is he creepy, haha!
Probably the best part of Dungeon Man was the collection of game design tips on bulletin boards you find throughout his body. From explaining why monsters appear in dungeons, to suggesting that you place useful items at the end of dead ends to reward players who explore off the beaten path, it’s another example of how self-aware EarthBound can be, and how happy it is to be a videogame. The fact that the massive Dungeon Man maintains his own collection of human-sized vehicles is also charming.
Speaking of charming, here are more examples of EarthBound’s playful sense of humor — from a scatological acronym, to a pro sunbather who tans his palms! Also, while I mentioned them in the OP, I wanted to share screens of a bodyguard’s not-so-subtle threat, and the elevator operator who thinks you’re staring at her butt. The people at the Monotoli Building made me chuckle with their standoffish behavior. EarthBound is certainly a side of Nintendo we don’t see too often!
