Earthbound, Personality, and Game Design

This guy makes great videos. I’ve seen everything on his channel and the game theorist channel.

Tomato! Excellent point! I feel that so many reviewers, or folk oustide of the EarthBound community refer to the game as “quirky” or “charming”. To me the word quirky sounds like a cop-out to actually describing the game as full, moving, and intense. Actually, there is very little about the game that is “quirky.” It plays like a very emotionally charged novel, with many funny, scary, strange, and sad moments.

I once saw a Anime on YouTube called ‘Earthbound the Movie’. I don’t know if it’s real but Ness looked really cool. Jeff looked a bit stupid but the rest of the characters were good.

EarthBound isn’t ‘quirky’ – it’s very, VERY atmospheric, which is why we all like it. We like the feel of adventure, the ‘smiles and tears’ if you will. From childhood-like Onett to warm Twoson to creepy Threed: the game is diverse in all of those atmospheric aspects.

This is why the game has a special place in my heart.

Where in the game is 6:25?? I don’t remember that place at all.

Happy Happy Village, I believe – the one pink house in town

Just remember people, the reason Twoson is called “Twoson” is because it wasn’t first…lololololol

It’s colorful and had a weird not-2d-but-also-not-2.5d perspective. Dialogue was witty and fun. Characters lacked real personality, but the npcs and attitude of the game really made it shine. Basically, it is quirky because of the tendas, going inside your mind to fight your inner demons, going back through time as a robot, talking to pink genitalish genius blobby homer simpson things enslaved by a puddle of barf, zombie paper. Those are quirks. Not personality.

yay game theory. D&S

Satoru iwata for supreme ruler of the everything!

I agree 100% about the personality thing. I’ve enjoyed “quirky” RPGs since Earthbound. Some I’ll return to again and again. However, Earthbound is clearly written from the mind of one very specific quirky fellow who put a lot more than quirk into the game.

Just as it was a mistake for Nintendo of America to market Earthbound as “gross out humor” back in the 90’s, it still doesn’t quite get the mark to say that Earthbound is “a quirky game”. It’s more accurate, in that saying the Earth is a perfect sphere is more accurate than saying it is flat, but not QUITE there (Earth isn’t a perfect sphere).

“You don’t mess with Mother fans.”
Amen.

Yeah! EarthBoundnerd199X is right! 🙂

I had no idea that you could actually enter that house.

I agree people who haven’t played Earthbound are monsters.