Shifty1897
Member
https://www.nintendolife.com/features/best-of-2024-the-trauma-of-giygas-and-growing-up-in-earthbound
A pivotal moment in my childhood was fighting Giygas right before my bedtime and losing. The whimsical game that had me fighting off stray dogs, burping piles of vomit, and New Age Retro Hippies for 40 hours certainly hinted at an underlying evil behind the scenes, but nothing truly prepares you for the game's hard right turn into psychological horror with the final boss.
Giygas has no physical form; it has no rational thought anymore, as it has been driven mad by its own power. During the final battle, it not only attacks you, but it also spends turns attacking itself. It screams your main character's name, and rants about how sad it is one moment, then feels happy the next. Giygas is so eldritch, you can't even comprehend how it's attacking, you can only see the results of those attacks as your party members lose huge amounts of health, succumb to status effects and sometimes instantly die. My party of children were underleveled and unprepared, and were quickly wiped out as the swirling vortex of red and black meant to represent Giygas scrolled across my 13 inch CRT TV screen.
The interaction was too much for my 10 year old brain to handle. I was pretty sheltered as a child and had very little experience at this point with horror as a genre of entertainment. I laid in bed, trying to understand the sheer magnitude of what the game implied with its final boss, an embodiment of evil the likes of which I had never considered before. I stayed up all night, afraid of my inability to comprehend what I had witnessed, but I knew I couldn't share my thoughts or worries with my parents, as they already were looking for excuses to reduce or eliminate my access to video games.
I lied and told them I didn't know why I couldn't sleep all night.
But I knew.
A pivotal moment in my childhood was fighting Giygas right before my bedtime and losing. The whimsical game that had me fighting off stray dogs, burping piles of vomit, and New Age Retro Hippies for 40 hours certainly hinted at an underlying evil behind the scenes, but nothing truly prepares you for the game's hard right turn into psychological horror with the final boss.
Giygas has no physical form; it has no rational thought anymore, as it has been driven mad by its own power. During the final battle, it not only attacks you, but it also spends turns attacking itself. It screams your main character's name, and rants about how sad it is one moment, then feels happy the next. Giygas is so eldritch, you can't even comprehend how it's attacking, you can only see the results of those attacks as your party members lose huge amounts of health, succumb to status effects and sometimes instantly die. My party of children were underleveled and unprepared, and were quickly wiped out as the swirling vortex of red and black meant to represent Giygas scrolled across my 13 inch CRT TV screen.
The interaction was too much for my 10 year old brain to handle. I was pretty sheltered as a child and had very little experience at this point with horror as a genre of entertainment. I laid in bed, trying to understand the sheer magnitude of what the game implied with its final boss, an embodiment of evil the likes of which I had never considered before. I stayed up all night, afraid of my inability to comprehend what I had witnessed, but I knew I couldn't share my thoughts or worries with my parents, as they already were looking for excuses to reduce or eliminate my access to video games.
I lied and told them I didn't know why I couldn't sleep all night.
But I knew.
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