#earthbound spoilers

[2cypress]

the cave that forgot time

(also happy anniversary earthbound!!)

[maskedteatime]

ambassador of love and bearer of grief

title has got to be up there with my corniest attempts at being poetic and profound

i was kind of surprised at how little time it took to make this honestly

[prokopetz]

why do you think earthbound was THE progenitor of so many inde rpgs? was it just that it was an rpg that did something new with its setting published by a big name?

(With reference to this post here.)

The big-name marketing engine and where it happens to be situated in time is certainly a big part of it, but something that's easy to overlook about EarthBound if you're not familiar with the timeline of console generations is that EarthBound is so frequently name-checked by weird meta retro games because EarthBound is, itself, a weird meta retro game – one of the very first of its kind.

It's funny to think of a Super Nintendo game from 1994 as "retro" from the perspective of 2022 – isn't that just what games were like back then? The thing is: no, they weren't. Most Super Nintendo RPGs did not look like EarthBound.

A big part of EarthBound's aesthetic boils down to juxtaposing current gen flash and spectacle (understanding that "current gen" means "for 1994") with deliberately shitty graphics and audio, and mechanics that are janky and counterintuitive in a calculated way to create a very specific experience.

This is apparent in everything from the old school pick-a-verb menu interface that you literally never have to use because the game also has a context-sensitive action button, to the soundtrack's whiplash-inducing transitions between NES-style bleeps and FM synth (wait for it at about 0:53), to the American localisation's script being a blatant spoof of the frequently genuinely terrible translations of the game's NES predecessors.

Plus, the weird meta stuff that modern retro RPGs are known for? EarthBound already has that. It's famous for being one of the first console RPGs where diegetically acknowledging the human player as a separate entity from the player character is an explicit plot point. It even has a clever sleight of hand where it asks the player to fill out a fake consumer survey partway through the game so that it can drop your real name into dialogue later on, prefiguring the way that later games would lift information from your Steam profile to similar effect.

Bascally, EarthBound is a big inspiration for a lot of deliberately janky, insufferably meta retro nostalgia RPGs because that's literally the kind of game that it is.

[felis-rach]

(Translation: "Dude so what if I destroyed your life, talk to me")

[ninjartistic]

The Almighty Idiot

(I love drawing Giegue/Giygas)

[the-everlasting-ash]

Spankety Spankety Spankety!

[thealmightyven]

THANKS Y’ALL FOR 300 FOLLOWERS! 🎉 Sorry for the delay, here’s my Draw This in Your Style Challenge! I’ve always wanted to draw this scene, so I thought it would be a fun DTIYS.

If you make an entry, please tag me in it so I can like and reblog! Feel free to mix it up in any way you want! This challenge will be ongoing through the next month, though feel free to make one later if you want. You can also use the tag “#Vens DTIYS” for your submissions.

🥂 Love you, Mother fandom! Stay fresh!

[humancork]

okay spoilers for mother 3 and on porky

wow oh wow do i have feelings on porky. i love the way hes characterized in mother 3 to be so. tortured and horrid. he was trapped in an endless expanse of time and space for who knows how long after pledging to lay down his life for the embodiment of evil and destruction, and he couldnt go home, he missed his mom and his brother so much and he just said fuck it i guess im evil now, i guess i will never be the hero ness was, and he idolized that shit, he locked nesses old yoyo in a case, he recreated scenes from the adventure to be shown to everyone in the city, he had all the power and material in the world and he spent most of it on telling others to be nice to him cause he just wanted to be like ness, and he knew he couldnt be and it haunted him. he knew he had to be evil for what he did and what he was doing, and what i gathered from his fight is that he really did not care about consequences anymore, he just wanted it to be over. god what an excellent villain

[zkitty8]

local almighty idiot won’t stop hitting themself

[windmills123]

GIYGAS!!!!!!!!

[ms-foobles]

The more I think about Pokey's motivations and character development the more profoundly sad and disappointed I am for him.

When even the omniscient narrator calls him "the worst kid in the neighborhood," and his parents are the way they are, it feels like he wasn't given much of a chance to begin with.

When you're fighting against him and Giygas, and he says "Well isn't it terrifying? I'm terrified too," I can only read those lines and imagine his lip quivering.

[maskedteatime]

self destruction

giygas is such a fascinating situation. imagine being so overwhelmed that your physical form dissolves

[zoteboateveryday]

Drawing Zote every day until we get Zoteboat: day 87

Zotegas

[swimming-guy]

OK I started Earthbound earlier this week and I'm pretty far through (I just got past moonside) but I FUCKING LOVE THIS GAME!!!!!!!!! ITS SO GOOD!!!!!! JEFF IS THE BEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and the bit where he leaves Tony? HEARTBREAKING. MY HEART SHATTERED. IM IN PIECES.

[video-game-kids-tournament]

MEET YOUR CONTESTANTS!

EarthBound spoilers under the cut!

Name: Ness

Age: 12

Gender + Pronouns: Male, 12

Video Game: EarthBound

Backstory: “he was fighting moles with a bat and slowly moved up to fighting cosmic horrors with his friends (and a bat)”

• “A fairy from outer space charged him with stopping an ancient evil, despite the fact that he's ten and his only weapon is a bat. He went on to fight cultists and zombies become psychic, and travel through time in a robot body. Also he shows up in Smash sometimes.”

• “He is a 13 year old boy gifted with special psychic powers, and became the hero of his country, Eagleland.”

Why should they win the tournament?: “i liked him”

• “Earthbound is one of the most bizarre games Nintendo ever put out and Ness is the main character. He beats up cops with a baseball bat. He bails the Blues Brothers out of an abusive contract. He learns telepathy and eats hamburgers out of the trash. The secret to defeating the ancient evil is his childhood nostalgia even though, as stated, he is thirteen. Sometimes mushrooms grow out of his head. None of this really seems to shock or surprise him and when the game ends he just goes back to normal.”

• “PK BEAM”

[pollydot]

fuckin umm. Moonside moment

Please someone talk to me about moonside..