EarthBoundX

November 29th, 2008 | EarthBound, Fan Games

I just realized that it’s almost been a decade since I wrote my old EarthBoundX game. In late 1998, I had just gotten a book about DirectX game programming and wanted to make something simple to learn the ropes. Eventually I decided to do an Arkanoid/Breakout-style game, but I wanted it to be something more exciting. So eventually I decided to give it an EarthBound theme.

Before long, I had the game working well, and had even written a simple scripting language to make enemies act certain ways. But the most time-consuming thing was making the background graphics, since back in those days, you had to take screenshots in an emulator, then sort of tape them together in a paint program. So I decided I’d ask two big EB fans I often heard about – reid and EBounding – for help.

This is what lead everything to happen, and soon after reid and I went on to get EarthBound.Net really started. And that’s how Starmen.Net came to be: this crappy game I made in 1998.

If you haven’t played it, give it a try. You can also download custom levels and make your own if you’re crazy enough. Though it’s just a crappy, simple game, I’m strangely still amazed at how much better it turned out than most of my previous games did in terms of complexity and graphics.