Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 69: EarthBound

Episode Date: July 4, 2016

The SNES RPG EarthBound might be considered a true cult classic, but its rise from critical flop to beloved masterpiece didn't happen overnight. On this episode of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Ray Barnholt, Michael Grimm, and Andrew Goldfarb as the crew tries to pin down what makes this Japanese take on Boomer-friendly Americana so special. OK desu ka? Be sure to visit our blog at Retronauts.com, and check out our partner site, USgamer, for more great stuff. And if you'd like to send a few bucks our way, head on over to our Patreon page!

This week on Retronauts, we dine on fuzzy pickles and trout yogurt. Hello, everybody. This is your host, Bob Mackie for a brand new episode of Retronauts. And today's topic is Earthbound. Finally, I've been biting my time, but after three years of doing this podcast independently, it's time to talk about Earthbound. And I have a great group. Let's talk about who's here today. First, across the table for me, first time guest on Retronauts. Andrew Goldfarb. Hello, Andrew. Andrew, where do you come from? I'm currently at IGN. IGN. And Andrew's a lot like me in that he started in games journalism, then he left for a publisher, and then he came crawling back. I don't know if you're anything

like me. I was like, I'm better at this other thing. So I just want to do this again, you know. else is here today? Michael Grimm. And it's Michael's first time on the podcast. And Michael, where my people know you from? I'm generally on a laser time podcast every now. Okay. And do you have a workplace you might want to mention, or is that top secret? Uh, work at Wikia. Okay, cool. Tenly Grimm is a former one-upper. That's true. He was, I guess, I'm guessing an intern. I was, yeah. Newsie intern preview. I'm guessing, well, were interns paid back then, or were they not paid? Funny story. Do I owe you money? I believe I work for six months and did not get paid during that time, but then because payroll was messed up,

so I got six months of pay at the end of six months. That sounds like games journalism. It's pretty great. I didn't get paid for five weeks when I started at one-up, and that's kind of normal. Who else is here while we're phone people under the bus today? It's Ray Barnholz. And Ray, we know who you are. Anything, anything in the works right now, anything we need to know about?

No. But you still sell scroll magazine, which is great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. Everyone reads scroll, scroll.org. Again, today we're talking about Earthbound, and it's another one of those retronauts where we're returning to an old topic. The last time we talked about Earthbound was in 2009, and the circumstances behind that episode did not make for a great episode. Yes, Ray, I'm judging an episode I was not on, but you were on.

I was on it. I don't remember. Actually, I re-listened to it. It is the episode that happened right after there were massive, massive layoffs at one-up. Okay. Maybe 60% of the company was gotten right out of them. Yeah, exactly. Those were dark days for everyone, and you can kind of tell based on the lack of enthusiasm.

I don't blame anyone for being unenthusiastic after watching all their friends leave and wondering what's going to happen to me next. But this is independent. No one's getting fired after this, so don't worry. No one was fired before this, so we're going to talk about a great game. And what I want to talk about really is maybe you're an outsider. It's possible you've never played Earthbound. That's cool. But people are just nuts about this game.

I mean, the cult status is what elevated it to what it is today, which I think is kind of universal. beloved. It was this weird little oddball underdog, but now I think people understand like, oh, no, this is really great, and we were kind of weird, and maybe we didn't know quite what it was at the time. So, before we get started, I do like to talk about the origins of the subject at hand. So I did an episode about the first game, Mother, and I should mention Earthbound in Japan is called Mother, and Earthbound, the S&ES one we got, is actually Mother 2. So that might clear up some things you might be confused about if we keep saying Mother, and you're like, what are they talking about? So the first Mother,

game came out for the Famicom in 1989, and like I said, I did an entire episode about this for Retronauts Micro about a year ago. I don't want to talk about it too much here because I covered it in about 12 minutes, but essentially it is sort of like a dry run for Earthbound. Have you guys played Earthbound

Zero, Earthbound beginnings, or Mother? There are many names for this, but it is available on the WiiU virtual console. Bafflingly. Bafflingly, yes. Nintendo did translate it. They held onto that translation and they released it was like 24 years later, I guess. I've said my piece about it.

Do you guys have any thoughts about the first mother game? It definitely does feel like a rough draft for Earthbound. I mean, I've never finished it, but I've played through the first couple towns, and it's like even Nintendo's design, obviously, inspired what Nespa came, and you can kind of see it in everybody. But it lacks the heart, I feel like, is my experience with it. It definitely has, like, a little bit of the kind of general thematic similarities you would expect. But I don't know.

For me, it just doesn't grip me. Yeah, it has a lot of the same. music. A lot of the same ideas. Earthbound or Mother 2 does feel like a remake compared to what came before. Michael, did you have any thoughts about this? I only really played around up on an emulator. But not, didn't get very far. No. I don't blame you. It's a, uh, the main problem with the game is just random encounters. And I played it maybe in late 90s or whatever, whenever that first leaked fan translation came out. Actually, the leaked Nintendo translation came out in the late 90s and I played through it. And I went back to it. I was like, I can't be that bad.

And like every three steps, random battle, every three steps. It is so. wearying it wears you down, Ray. Have you played any of any of this at all? Yeah, you know, I was on top of Earthbound because I was so hyped for the original game when it first showed up in like Nintendo Power when they were going to release it, they had like two screenshots in Nintendo Power

and it's like, oh, this is called Earthbound and this is going to come out and it's kind of like a modern day RPG and I was like, holy shit. And then that didn't come out for like four years. Was that supposed to come out in maybe 91? Yeah, yeah. And it already looked pretty primitive even by 1989 standards. Michael, sorry, do you have something else you wanted to say?

Oh, I just want to say. I think it says a lot that people are so passionate about this game, and nobody really seems to care about it. Exactly. I did play the translation. I did kind of enjoy it. I mean, I think you do need a more open mind if you go back to it from Earthbound. You really do.

I think it is sort of one of those difficult RPGs like Dragon Quest 2 that is a little hard to get into and a little punishing, but it still is fun. And I recommend you buy this online just to show Nintendo. We like mother games. We want you to bring us more. and then download an emulator in a ROM and play with the easy patch. It's called the Easy Ring, Look It Up.

It cuts down enemy encounters. It gives you more experience, more health. It makes the game, it lets you see the content and gives you a more, I guess, modern-day adjusted RPG. I have been meaning to try that. Me too, yeah. I think it's the only tolerable way to play through Mother One. If you want to know more about this game, please listen to that episode I recorded about it a year ago. It's just called Earthbound Beginnings.

You can find it on her feet. So I do want to talk about the people. behind Earthbound because Earthbound is kind of the singular brainchild of a writer I can't even pin him down to one profession he's sort of like an every man he's a renaissance man his name is Shigasato Itoy

born in 1948 and he's a celebrity in the Japanese sense of the word like you see these people on talk shows in Japan and on like Iron Chef style shows and it's just like they just seem to be everywhere and they seem to be doing everything and I'm not sure if that kind of celebrity is still a thing in Japan has the internet

has the internet interfered with that in any way? I'm wondering if culture moves... No, no. It's made it worse, right? Okay. They've never let go of that. So the funny thing is, and it might not be something that we think about that often in America. Maybe it's even rare in Japan, but he's mainly known for his copywriting skills, and that's

where he got his start, really. And that would be like, oh, he's the guy who wrote, I'm loving it, or this buds for you. Like, those kind of catchphrases are what he is responsible for. Unfortunately, they don't translate very well. It's usually like three words or something like, how are these connected? I guess this is enigmatic if you're Japanese and you can understand this based in the context in which it's presented. But I do have his mother two tagline, and that is adults, children, and even older sisters. That is the mother two tagline, and that requires explanation.

Based on an interview I read, he was worried even in the early 90s that gaming was becoming something only nerds would enjoy. Like only people that go to gaming conventions and play games alone, he's like, no, I don't. I remember when Mother came out, my older sister liked it. I want the older sisters of the world to play a game. And I'm like, wow, this guy, like, was really forward thinking for, you know, a 20, 20-year-old quote, 22-year-old quote. So he had a lot. He was really ambitious with the idea behind Mother. He wanted to be a game for everyone.

And basically, Satara Yuwato took this idea to heart. That was Nintendo's former president, RIP. He wanted Nintendo to become the company again. That's what happened with the Wii. He's like, this is going to appeal to everyone. So essentially, the Wii sort of came from a, Itoi's philosophy. If you hate the Wii, then you might hate him, but please don't, because he's pretty cool.

And basically how this came about, this pairing, is Shigasato Ito, Ito, came to Nintendo for the initial pitch for the game Mother. I guess he was doing copywriting for Nintendo, writing their catchphrases, writing their slogans and stuff like that. Miamoto, Shigeria Miyamoto, I don't need to explain who that is, of course. He liked the idea, but he was skeptical. This was an era in which lots of celebrities were just sticking their faces on crappy games. So he's like, Miyamoto was like, if you're going to work on this game, you're going to

to work on the game. So he would bring him like text adventure documents, like study this, study how to make a game. And Etoy did not even use a computer at the time. So essentially he wrote all of the dialogue from Mother and Mother 2 by telling an assistant the dialogue who would then transcribe it. And based on her reaction, he would decide whether or not to keep it. So even this late in the game, he did not know how to use a computer, but he was still designing a video game.

Maybe not the whole RPG nuts and bolts of it, but actually like what you're doing, where you're going, who you're talking to every... Every word of dialogue is written by a toy in this game. And that's rare to have a writer come in and be the sole driving force of a game. I can't think of anything else. Can anyone else think of any other? I mean, there are game writers. There are guys and ladies who write games.

That's what they do. And that's all they do. But I can't think of like, oh, we got a writer. And he's going to be the guy behind our game. Not to that scale, I think. Because no one, well, I mean, no one really has the presence of Miyamoto for one thing. Like, nobody can really. nobody's really been coached

from Miyamoto in that sense yeah plus when that wasn't already an employee and when it happens in modern times it's like you're like oh like David S. Goyer's writing the black ops campaign that's right yeah that's like has nothing to do with anything exactly and I don't think he's a real writer anyways burn well Clyde Barker wrote all those Tom Clancy games

Tom Clancy's blood harvest Operation Skull Lord I don't know yeah everything's so rigid yeah out of Nintendo so yeah we don't see like the Stephen King game. We don't see the, let me think. I read a lot of books. I'm drawing a blank.

All the authors are like are dead, so we don't see a lot of authors jumping into the world of games and making their own vision. So a few other people behind Earthbound, some of the more unsung people, we have Akihiko Mira, I did it. He is the

director of the actual game game of Earthbound. The RPG mechanics, the actual guts of the game. Etoe is formerly listed as director. I think Maria is listed as like game planner or head planner, whatever weird Japanese title they use for something like that. He's not the most story director, but he does appear to have gone on to have worked for the successor to Ape. Ape is the developer for Earthbound, and that became Creatures Incorporated.

If you want to know what that is, listen to our Pokemon episode. It's one of the many tentacles of the Pokemon Octopus that's strangling the world. Other games he's worked on include Pokemon Trading Card Game, Pokemon Coliseum, Pokemon, XD. Again, I think everyone who worked at Ape eventually just worked on Pokemon games. So there is a Pokemon connection from Earthbound. Yeah, and some of those are the good RPG spin-offs, too. Exactly. The Training Guard game was kind of good.

I like that first one. I did like that first one. And we have some great musicians on this game, and we're going to have an entire side discussion about the music with clips and all kinds of good stuff, so stay tuned for that. But we have Hirookazu, Hipp Tanaka, of course. We talk a lot about him on this show. He, of course, wrote music for great Nintendo games like Metroid, Kid Icarus, Dr. Mario, Super Mario Lans. He joined Nintendo in 1980, and I believe he is, is he president of Creatures Nick now?

God, I keep forgetting. But he is part of the whole Pokemon machine now, I think. I'm pretty sure he is. And he is kind of one of the two guys responsible for just the great, great earthbound soundtrack, along with Kei-Sizuki, who is basically a Japanese rocker, who doesn't do a lot of game soundtracks. I believe he did some movie soundtracks like Tokyo Godfathers, which is a great movie. But he's mainly known for his work in the Japanese. band The Moonriders.

And I think that's what makes Earthbound soundtrack so unique because we have a video game music guy, but who does a lot of other stuff? And we have a rock and roll guy just coming in and making this kind of sound we haven't heard before. These don't sound like SNES instruments. They don't sound like any other game on the SNES. In fact, we're going to learn why. It involved a lot of stealing.

But it was honest stealing, of course. And just talking about there's so much stuff. And I want you guys to jump in with your thoughts on this because I feel like I'm monologuing here, but Earthbound has a crazy and tortured development history. Every one of these games does. Maybe Mother 1 doesn't as much, I'm not sure,

but it's a much simpler game. Anyways, this game had a five-year development cycle. Crazy. So this and, like, Bioshock Infinite are on the same scale in terms of just taking forever to release. And I'm sure this game was almost canceled as well. Any toy claims the graphics

took the entire production cycle because apparently that I'm not sure if you could call it isometric, but it is the overhead from a certain tilted angle. I'm sure it's like diametric or whatever. Someone will correct me if I say isometric because I know it's not. I sure don't know.

But apparently that caused a lot of problems in production, just getting everything to line up, giving the characters to look like convincing moving across these landscapes and things like that. And this game started off as an 8 megabit game, but eventually blossom to three times that size 24 megabits. and that's because the soundtrack eventually took up that 8 megabits that the game was going to be in the first place, thanks to all the sampling and everything else they wanted to cram to this game.

That makes a lot of sense. It's kind of a miracle that this game released, but I think it's because Miyamoto believed so strongly in Itoi and his work and what this game could be and maybe how it could be better than Mother, because apparently Miyamoto did, I think Mother was the first RPG he finished. He's not a big RPG gamer, and he was like, I had to use the debug menu to finish it. And Mother 2 was the second RPG he finished, I believe. And I read an interview with him.

We all need the easy ring. Yeah, exactly. Even Miyamoto did. And apparently he liked Mother 2, and he was like, oh, it's surprising how you can tell stories with text and pictures and stuff like that. Because he's not really a storyteller. Yeah. But he was like, oh, the battles are still boring. It's just a still image.

Like, these aren't very interesting. But he still likes the game and likes the writing and stuff like that. But I think it's funny that even Miyamoto was just like, I don't like RPGs that much. Sorry, guys. He's like, I don't like cut scenes and narrative in games. He said he was impressed him was when Everdread is found dead later in the game Spoilers. I think he dies for good in that game, right?

He never comes back. I don't think he does. Like, Miyamoto was impressed by like the middle-aged women being startled by it, just like the little sprites jumping. He was like, oh, that's so cool. So just the little touches are what tickled Miyamoto about Mother 2. And, of course, Mother 2 is mainly known for the most part, I think, for the trippy battle backgrounds. known in Japan I think

they were called video drugs or video relaxants I guess it's like video tranquilizers because it's this soothing repetitive image with patterns that are rolling by I think I've heard that before this could be true I'm pretty sure it is but these were just the work of one guy

and that's all he did over the course of two years was come up with these crazy backgrounds it looked like something that came out of the demo scene from the old PC days like look at all these cool things I can do with like cheap technology I mean that is what really stood out to me in this game like oh man

it's so cool like all these like weird like ripples and patterns and even all of your spells are these weird trippy designs and patterns flying around there's still no really RPG that even tries that I mean everything else back then was just like it's still set again it's still screen I love the idea that they hired

this guy to sit in a room and just make totally normal backgrounds and then it just reeked of pot in there and he was like got it did something kind of weird what's he doing in there yeah I don't think they smoke a lot of pot in Japan it smells like a skunk is in there all the time They do shrooms. That is true.

And we're going to talk about all the psychedelia, psychedelia. I don't know how to say that word, but it's all wrapped up in 60s boomer stuff. So we'll talk more about that soon. But Etoy at first wanted Mother 2 to take place in outer space but decided against it. And the reason why Earthbound, it all takes place kind of to scale. Like the town is not this icon you jump into and then it expands into like something you walk through. He did not like the iconography of RPGs. He wanted it to just all be to scale, all be represented as you're walking through.

And I think that really makes the game and the journey feel bigger because it's like, I've got to take a bus to another town. I have to go through this tunnel. It does feel like you're taking a big journey as a child, even going from town to town. Like the fact that you get caught in a traffic jam and can't go to the next town. Exactly, yeah. All the mundanity is great. And I'm glad he decided to make it all to scale.

I love RPGs that and very few do. Like Dragon Quest 8 does that. But there are still like loading screens. Sorry, right. Yeah, no, I remember that point is, like, one of the things I brought up a lot with Final Fantasy 10. It's like, no, there's no real world map. You just walk to the next place. Is that something that you didn't like or something that you did like?

No, no, I liked it. No, I'm just, I'm saying you brought that up. Okay, yeah. We don't need a world map. I kind of miss them in some cases, though. So Mother's Two battle, sorry, Mother 2's battle system, which we know is the odometer that, you know, rolls backwards and forwards depending on what's happening in the battle. It was originally going to be a Pachinko machine where the Lodon.

Little tiny balls would represent your remaining health. They tried to get this to work, but it just took up so much of the screen, and they were trying to move around so many sprites at once that they were like, we need another way to do this. But I think the Pachinko thing is too Japanese for a game that really feels like it's trying to portray non-Japanese stuff. Like, I don't think there's a representation of Japan in Mother, or Mother 2. Yeah, I don't think so.

It's just very much devoted to, like, what's happening outside of Japan? Yeah, it's very Americana, which is ironic for. someone who had never been to America. Yeah, exactly. And I like how, we'll talk about this later, but I like how this is just like the post-war Japanese children being informed about America through media, through music, like their view of America from like a Japan that's being rebuilt. That's what I think a lot of mother comes from.

And of course, you know, Itoi, born in 48, born not long after the war ended, not not long after Hiroshima was bombed. So he was living in that world. And Satoro Iwada, again, RIP, he was Earthbound's main programmer. He entered the production in the fifth year. Bring it in the ringer. Exactly.

And he said, if we do this the way you're doing it, it's going to take two more years. If we do this the way I want to do it, it'll take six months. It actually took him a year. It took him six months to reprogram everything from scratch. And then it took another six years to iron out all the bugs. But all the parts were there for him to work with. All the graphics were there, all the information about how battles work and things like that. But it took him to basically get the game working, get the game out the door after five years of production.

And a lot happened between 1989 and 1984 in terms of video games. It's crazy. I mean, you guys are familiar with, like, just how Iwada was just helicoptered in and dropped off, like, the nemesis and Resident Evil to, like, just fix problems. It's amazing. Like, after he died, we learned so much about him that was kind of there. But after he died, there was a reason to collect this and to see. celebrate him as a human being. So, yeah, just really interesting. Were you guys aware of all these production difficulties with Earthbound? Had you had you any idea that it was, I mean,

it doesn't look like a complicated game on the surface at all. I mean, in fact, it was bashed at the time, like, this is too simple. These graphics are ugly. I remember that was a lot of the reception at the time when it came out was, yeah, this doesn't look that good. Yeah. And I mean, technically, maybe you're right, but you're wrong from a design point because it looks great. Right. Pretty wrong. It's aged incredibly well. So now we're going to talk about the actual game. We're going to talk about the actual game. We talked about who made it and the behind-the-scenes stuff.

I want to talk about Earthbound, and I'm sure you guys will have a lot more opportunities to jump in and talk about what you love about the game. So this game was released in Japan, I believe, in August of 94. It released here in America in June 5th, 95. I got it an opening day. It was much later in June, I remember. But, again, it was like whenever the ship shows up, whenever the truck shows up, whenever the plane lands in your part of the country, that's when your game comes out. There were no universal rollouts. When I reserved this game, it was basically they wrote my name on a Post-it note.

and stuck up behind the counter with my phone number. There was no ticketing system even in the mid-90s. Dave's Game Hut was close. And Earthbound kind of rubbed a lot of people. Sorry, Earthbound rubbed a lot of people the wrong way because of its marketing campaign. This was the era of, like, kids cartoons today might be a little better, but our cartoons were a lot grosser. I mean, this is the era of Renan Stimpy and Rocko's Modern Life and all the gross-out cartoons.

and Nintendo was really embracing that kind of attitude, and their marketing campaign was essentially, in quotes, this game stinks. And all the magazines of that era for a few months would have these inserts with the enemies. There was like Mondo Mole and Master Belch, and you would scratch them. It would smell like feed or puke or whatever.

I don't know. It just smelled like chemicals for the most part, but it made sure... There was a pizza one. That was okay. Oh, was the pizza one part of the ad? I think so. Okay.

That might have been the only good one. but the way magazines were put in bags back then, and I think they might still be now, but just like you would open the bag would be like opening like a sarin gas bomb and all these horrible fumes would come out, like, oh my God. I don't remember that.

Yeah, I remember that. I mean, I wasn't turned off by it. I'm like, this is fine, but I was interested in this game to begin with. Did you guys encounter these stinky ads when you were reading magazines back then? What did you think of it? I mean, I don't know if you were like on the earthbound train

as early as I was. Does this get you interested in the game Or did you know about the game? It was weird because I was aware of it Like I remember all those ads I remember smelling them And being weirded out by them But I didn't play the game for years after that

Like I didn't play it until a few years After it was out Because I just didn't buy that many games So it was this And that one was in a big box And just like weirded out my parents Because it looked expensive I think Yeah

So it was funny How many games are in that box, son Exactly But it's just funny because I remember I do vividly remember I had one of those tacked to my wall because I thought it was so funny that I'd opened a magazine. There was a thing that smelled like mustard or whatever it was.

That was just so bizarre. How about you, Grimm? Like, this is a good chance to talk about where we met Earthbound for the first time, how we encountered it, what we thought about it. What about you? I got it shortly after it came out. I think we had to go on sale or something. But it's funny because you mentioned, you know,

the sort of gimmick advertising, and this is like the era of like peak pootrification, where it's like everything was bad and tough and cool. They did make the characters slightly older-looking. from the Japanese to the American version. They're like, Ness's hat gets turned around backwards. They don't put sunglasses on him or they don't give them a skateboard,

but everyone is slightly older looking in the American version. He has ripped muscles in the American version. It's like American Kirby. What's that? American version, what are you talking about? Of Mother 2. No, I mean, like in the ads. I'm talking about the clay models are different

between the Japanese mother 2 and the American mother 2. Not the actual graphics in the game, but how they're represented in the guide and in promotional material and stuff like that. I was just trying to think about. Oh, sorry, Grim, continue. He's just got a little more

definition as abs. He's benching, you know. But I was just one of those games, and I think, you know, I think the idea of it being a modern day game was such a huge selling point to me as a kid. Because I was playing like seventh saga and stuff at the time and everything was just like fantasy, fantasy, or sci-fi

and chrono-trigger's case, and that was basically your two options. You pick sci-fi or you picked fantasy. And then this other game was like, hey, it takes place the modern day and you're a regular kid and you hit stuff with a baseball bat. And I was like, that sounds awesome. It's about time. I can't do that now. I'll get in trouble. The idea of relating to a character was so foreign to me.

I played that game and I was like, oh, like, I'm used to being, like, the kid in a green hat and holding a sword and having a shield and, like, the idea of, like, walking through a town and going to an arcade, like, totally, I didn't even, it had never even occurred to me that a video game could do that. Same here. Yeah. Me too. How about you, Ray?

Like, where did you hear about Earthbound? How early did you play it? Like, were you excited about it initially? I don't, I may have said this in 2009 or something, but I'm, it's okay. I'm going to be, I got the game for my birthday, because my birthday's in June. But then, uh, my mom accidentally. got me Earthworm Jim from Toys R Us, even though I already had that. So I, and I found this out by sneaking a peek in the car when she got the game before it was all wrapped and stuff.

And I had to tell her that. So thank God, this mistake was corrected. And I got Earthbound just as intended. Was this early, like around release? Oh, yeah, totally. Yeah. I mean, my birthday was like a few weeks later. Cool.

But yeah. the ads did not really, it didn't occur to me when I saw them that this was a bad way to go. Yeah. But now it's like, geez, what are you doing? Like, Nintendo is, they had such a classically bad time

marketing RPGs, and it's so ridiculous. They did, really, and I think they had a lot of Sega envy at the time. They're like, Sega, I mean, they eventually won that console war with DocuCon Country, but they were trying to be like, we want to be in your face like Sega, but it was so tone-deaf. Like Sega was being rowdy with their rowdy games

Even Sonic was a cute thing But he was kind of like edgy But with Yoshi's Island The cutest, fuzziest, most colorful game ever The commercial was a guy eating until he explodes Yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead All that play allowed stuff was a great idea Up until these cute games started rolling in

It's like, oh yeah Now we have to make an ad where Kirby's in a police lineup And he has stubble on him We need to rostify Kirby by about 10% Even the Final Fantasy 3 slash 6 ad the American ad, is a mob killing people, like you're coming into his office to audition, yeah. And he's a gangster voice, mug, yeah. He's a big cigar-chomping, like, gang boss.

And so, yeah, that totally ruined Earthbound Central, basically. Yeah, for sure. And as for me, please fast forward, I've told, this is like Earthbound story number 457 for me. But basically, I'll repeat myself because some of you are new to the show. But this is the one thing I can kind of be a hipster about, as can maybe, like, 100,000 other people. because I was, okay, so Nintendo Power was propaganda, of course, but their RPG watch, it was it called RPG Watch or Epic Center? Thank you. They did two months of Earthbound coverage going over everything, and it's like you said, Grim, the modern dayness of it really was like making me super excited. Like, oh my gosh, I love RPGs, but I'm also a 12-year-old kid going on 13, like this main character. I want to go on an adventure. I'm a white suburbanite like this kid. Like, it appealed to me in every way. It was total, like, wish fulfillment, even though it was a game made for, you know, little Japanese kids.

And actually, not little Japanese kids, but, like, Japanese families. And older sisters. And older sisters, too. But as a little white kid, I was like, oh, man, I want to go on a fun adventure. So I did reserve this game in the crude old way reserve games, the Post-it Note system, of course. And I remember, in 1995, I got it opening day, opening, whatever, opening night of Earthbound. I paid $72.99. I remember that number.

That took, like, about five weeks of mowing lawns to do that. And I don't know, accounting for inflation is probably like $100 now or something like that. But, I mean, cartridge games were expensive. But I remember that first night, our family had like an above ground swimming pool. And I was just playing earthbound, earthbound, earthbound. And they're like, do you want to come out and swim with us? I'm like, no. So I just like slam the door and I cranked the AC because I had one of those window AC units.

And then I played until I got to the town of Threed. And it was one of those moments where I was like, I could keep playing this game and not sleep. But I'm like, I'm going to go to bed. I want to savor this. It was the first time I felt like I actually. appreciated a game enough to not play it. It's like, I want to stop playing. I want to think about this.

I think it was like the first time I became like a true, like true nerd. And from then, from then, it was hopeless. Thank you, Earthbound. So you had the reverse of Bart Simpson situation, where you're just writing Mill Earthbound on the camera. Exactly. And I was truly the Queen of Summer. So Earthbound has a very Dragon Quest style setup.

It's not surprising given that's what it's kind of based on. in terms of how it plays. This great nebulous evil. I'm going to say Gygus. It could be Gygus. It's worse in Japanese. I've never heard anyone say it out loud definitively. Is it like Gieg?

Who the hell no. Yeah. Anyway, Gygis is like the American transliteration of whatever it was in Japanese. So please don't correct me. There's no right way to say it. Just like there's no right way to say anything in Zelda because no one ever speaks in those games.

I get corrections about that, by the way. So a great nebulous evil is attacking, This just gives Etoid an excuse to come up with different scenarios that are almost unrelated. Just like with the idea like these things are being corrupted or this thing has gone wrong or there are zombies here, it's a really great way to sort of write like an improvisational sketch comedy game it feels like every setting is a new sketch in a way. Like that has nothing to do with what came before. You're still getting one of eight sounds for your soundstone which you need to destroy Gigis. But again, everything is similar related. In one scenario, you are fighting the street gang and then fighting the cops, and this is pre-occupy Wall Street.

So, what is Earthbound teaching our children? But it's one of the enemies, overzealous cop. Yes, exactly. Oh, boy. Yes. That's something that maybe gives a little too much commentary these days. So, yeah, and... Oh, go ahead, Ray.

I think that's an important point, because, you know, this game was so inspired by, like, American movies and stuff like that. And you have that sort of story progression, which is sort of like a road movie in a way. I'm trying to think... Well, it's like a good... Stand by Me, right? Yeah, but the most of Japan is obsessed with standby me. It's also thinking of like, you know, like playing trains and automobiles, that sort of thing, where it's just, you know, you're moving into, or something similar like that,

where you're moving into these different funny situations. They'll do the whole movie. Why the center point is this kind of, I don't know, milk-toes character. Yeah, I mean, there is a destination, but it's not as important as what happens, and that's my advice for all of you kids growing up. It's not the destination. It's the journey. There you go.

That's bullshit. I don't think of that at all. So, again, the story is not important. How I view this game, and you guys are welcome to agree or disagree, but I think it's a celebration of the things these boomer, baby boomer creators loved growing up, mostly Western things. So again, it is post-war Japan, Japan figuring itself out again, Western things coming over,

them coming to terms with, you know, becoming something different and becoming more open and things like that. And we have so many things in this game that are just celebrations of the things like in terms of how old we are, I assume all of our parents like, too. Like, John Lennon, the name mother comes from the song, Mother by John Lennon, has nothing to do with... By dancing. Oh, by dancing, that too, yeah. Oh, no, yeah.

Apparently, Etoe just liked him singing Mother. It was very powerful. He liked how that sounded. So I was like, let's name the game Mother. And the first mother had a very, like, weird holiday theme to it, where a town was called Mother's Day, the snow town was called Christmas. One town was called Youngstown, which is my town.

I don't know why they did that. but I appreciated it. And, like, do you guys agree with me about that? Just, like, the celebration of what these baby boomers, like, their youth culture, these guys were now in their 30s and 40s and just remembering what they liked as young adults. See, it's interesting. I never really thought of it like that. I mean, it makes sense when you say it.

I just thought of it. In my case, it was just, I don't know, Japanese people are obsessed with America the same way we're obsessed with Japan. They're kind of, you know, fetishize it. Are they? Maribus? How would you say? Ameribus, yeah. I only watch a hard target subbed.

Yeah, I mean, that's actually exactly how I've always thought of it. It was almost like this, like, the ultimate example of, like, what they would think of as this ideal American youth. And it's like this interesting, like, you go in a journey and it's almost that stream of consciousness and nature of the game almost doesn't matter. But it's like each town you go to is like very idyllic. And like by the time you leave especially, like by the time you've taken care of the zombie problem in three, like you've created like the perfect town. and everyone's happy. Pretty much, yeah. I do see that a lot, too, especially with, I don't know,

like, there's a common theme in Nintendo games where it's just, like, making people happy as the underlying goal. And it is great, and Earthbound does reward you with dialogue, really. I mean, this is a game where you want to talk to everybody, even if most of what they say is nothing to do with what you'll be doing, you'll hear, like, a funny judge or a dry absurdist commentary on something. Which is perfect for a guy who's, like, a copywriter,

that's writing, like, one-line zingers and taglines and stuff. Like, this person just needs to say two things. I can see E. Toy just pacing back and forth in chain smoking and just like, have this guy talk about Dung Beetles. And the guy, the assistant's just like typing. Yeah, it's very good. Yes. Yeah, especially in Magic Ant when you're talking to all the bosses you've destroyed in the past. Oh, yeah. It's like so dark. They're just like, oh, like you kind of ended what I was doing and now I'm just bored. That is a really trippy part of the game. Yeah, so. Yeah, the flip side of that. This is one of the few games. Like, I'm so bored with RPG dialogue these days. That's why I love Dark Souls and won't shut up about it.

But even going back to Earthbound, it's like, no, I have to talk to everybody in town after every event and see what that. they have to say, and I remember all these funny jokes. And it's a very dry sense of humor. It's not like boom, bang, bang, punchline. It's just like just sort of reminds me of like an old Zucker movie, like police squad or naked gun, rather, where it's just like these very, people saying absurd things

very matter-of-factly in these strange situations. So I really like the kind of humor. And this is something that maybe only I noticed, but it's a very steep in 70s and 60s drug culture, which sort of, maybe these creators didn't have the context for those kind of references, but

was in these things they were celebrating, like the music and the art and the literature. And I think the general trippiness of Earthbound, the psychedelic backgrounds, were the product of that drug culture. Maybe the creators of Earthbound didn't care about the actual drugs, but they just like what the drugs fueled, this crazy art and these weird trippy ideas. It is very retro hippie. Yeah, yeah. You do beat up hippies in this game.

Any Trump fans out there, you might want to play Earthbound. So, and again, another thing is that Peanuts, I think, is the real inspiration for how this game looks. Like, I cannot think of a more timeless post-war American thing than the comic strip Peanuts. Just the way the characters look, the way the world is portrayed. I mean, there are adults in Earthbound. They were not killed like they were in the Peanverse. That's just my theory. He doesn't have to be yours. I assume they have some kind of children of the corn scenario. But, yeah, like, there's a very pig pen style character you'll meet. He's one of the random townspeople. He pops up a few times, and he's got the dust cloud

and everything. So I think it's very cute. I don't know if you guys have any thoughts on the peanutsness of the game. But it ties very much into post-war pop culture, these pop-cultural touchstones for people who grew up post-World War II were born into the world after the war. That makes sense. I mean, Snoopy is one of those American characters that became deified in Japan.

That's true, yeah. And there are a lot of Snoopy games in Japan. Yeah. But as we were saying, why I think all of us really latched on to Earthbound, and it's still rare today, and we had an episode about this topic, it's a modern-day RPG.

And what I don't like about modern-day RPGs, is when they half-assed it. It's like, oh, it's a modern-day thing. Here's a sword. You know, like, oh, it's a modern-day thing. Fight a goblin. Like, no, no. Even if these things are just text,

like, they just typed in baseball bat instead of sword. Right. What if the goblin is a shift manager of your best buy? Exactly. Exactly. Even if they just, even if they're just text, but everything has like an RPG corollary, like a medieval corollary.

So instead of having like a bank, like, run by some Dragon Questy guy, you have ATM machines. You have to use an ATM card. You get an allowance by fighting monsters. Just like in the modern world, your dad is gone. No, that's not true for everybody. But calling your dad saves the game. So you're using a phone instead of, you know, talking to a priest,

you're using a phone to call your mom, to call your dad, to get pizza delivered, to call to get things picked up by Scargo Express, which I was typing this out today, and I'm like, did I just get the Scargo Express joke? Is this the first time? It's like, oh, I get it because it's a snail and they're not fast. And they're faster than mock pizza. That's true.

Mock pizza. I mean, even little things, like, homesickness is a status ailment. That's so, like, I love, just little tiny touches just make this game so perfect. I love the homesickness thing so much, but it is also, they stop doing it, like, halfway through the game, but, like, it pops up unexpectedly, like, Ness doesn't feel like fighting now. It's like, I have to walk home, I have to either walk home or, like, use the phone and call my mom. But if you go home, you get, like, special dialogue. She's like, oh, you look so sad. It reminds me a Pokemon someone who did that, too, because your mom is in your house in Palatown or whatever, and it's like, you can always just go back and say hi to Mom.

you still have no dad in that game too. And I think, I mean, again, the no dad thing, it's a joke in the game because during the credits, every character gets their own, like, little credits. Like, they have the sprite and the name under them, and, like, Ness's dad is the ringing phone. And I think this is just the salary man lifestyle that became, like, commonplace in Japan after the war. And I think Etoe's dad was always gone. And I think that is what the current generation is sort of rebellion against in a way. I'm reading a lot about, like, Japanese youth are no longer, you know,

you know, they don't want these kind of entrenched cultural ideas anymore, like the salary man, like working yourself to death and things like that. Really? That's not fun? They don't want to? You get to smoke a lot of cigarettes, I guess. And drink a lot, but, you know. Maybe that's why the battles are going to be Pichinko. Yes. But you also get to feel no love, and some people want that.

So, again, no fanciful modes of transport. Okay, okay, you do get a UFO eventually, but you travel by bus. You travel by bike, which, again, comes in the Pokemon games. It's like, it's very mundane. This game is all about depicting the mundane, but in this way you could never wrangle with it in your child life. Like, I can't actually, I was such a sheltered suburban kid. Like, getting on a bus was a scary idea from like, where's the bus going? I don't know.

But, like, I could imagine myself, like, walking around, like, just exploring neighborhoods and, like, finding things and, like, meeting friends. And it just, that's what appealed the most to me because I could project myself onto these characters. And I feel like it hit me at the exact right. time. I was the exact right age. I was the ages of the characters and they came from the same suburban kind of world that I did. I don't know if you guys kind of grew up in the suburbs as well as I did or like I did or is that true or no? Yeah, for me. Suburbs, yeah. I grew up in the mountains, but I was, you know, I played this game and it's like, oh, the church across the street. Maybe a magic bee would be down there. I can start my adventure. He never showed up. Not so much for me.

Yeah. But I did appreciate it. Yeah. I grew up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh and actually there was weirdly an arcade like kind of in the middle of a small town that looked terrifyingly like the arcade where you fight Frank to the point where I was like oh this is weirdly my life did you go to the back and fight the gang leader

yeah and I beat up some guy and turned out didn't work out very well pulled a burger out of the trash he came to his senses though so that's what's important I don't know. So I want to talk about the battle system. We talked about it briefly, but it's very Dragon Questy, but it's gussied up a bit.

We have an odometer for every character that sort of dials back and dials forward, depending on what's happening. So let's say an enemy delivers a fatal attack. The screen starts shaking. That character is going to die. But if you can get to that character before their health ticks down to zero, you can save their lives. By hitting them with the hot log. Exactly.

It's just like shoving food in their manner. It's like really stressful too because it's like in that moment you have to calculate like, okay, am I going to go offense and try and beat the enemy before the counter goes down? Or should I try healing? But if I'm going to try healing, like what order is this character going to act in? So I have to like factor in speed. Like I always get super stressed out in that moment. It's a tiny, it's a tiny little dose of real time to this turn-based battle system that I love a lot.

And you're right. You have these choices you need to make. Not all the time, but it still is like that tiny bit of stress. Like, oh, I have to act now, which does not happen in a lot of turn-based RPGs. And the other thing this game does, and this should have been, like, law for RPGs after Earthbound, that is you win battles automatically if you're strong enough. And that is amazing. It saves you so much time, lets you grind easier.

It takes out the middleman of grinding. It's great. And another thing I love is the fact that enemies run away from you on the map when you're too strong. So the greatest thing in our Earthbound, I think, the most fulfilling thing is, like, I've killed the boss of this dungeon. I'm leaving the dungeon. Everything is running from me. I'm just going to destroy all of them and get even more experience. Like, it is so fulfilling.

And I don't know why no other RPG has done this. It baffles me. Like, this was 1994 in Japan. No one is doing this. If they are, I totally missed it. But, like, every time it doesn't happen in an RPG, I'm like, I have to fight, I have to fight all these level one slimes and I'm level 50. Yep.

Leave me alone. Yeah. What I like is the fact that you can just, you know, you run up behind them and you get more of a sneak attack on them. Am I right, right? That's true. Yeah, if you run up behind them, you get the green swirl. And if they get you, you get the red swirl and the... Yeah, so because of that, like, I still do that instinctively with any other RPG that has non-random battles.

Like, I'll play Dragon Quest 8 and just try and sneak up on them from behind all the time, even though that's not really... You know what, I think... I'm trying to do that, too. I'm just like, no, this has to work, right? This will help me in some way. And maybe it does in some games, but have you guys been disappointed in other RPG just because, like, this idea is there? Why is no one else using it? It's not copyrighted.

There's no patent on this good idea. It just makes so much sense. I'm sorry, I'm talking for everybody. Let me know what you think about this idea. I mean, I totally agree. I'm excited about Earth, but if you couldn't tell. I find myself in RPGs doing the same thing. I'm, like, annoyed when I'm level, like, 75, revisiting a dungeon,

fighting level one enemies. And it's weird because, like, I traditionally don't like first-person battle systems. Like, I want to see my character a lot of the time, but I feel like in this game, it works really well because of the odometer, I think. Like the fact that you're not seeing sprites for your characters, but you do have sort of this representation of, of what's happening. I think for me,

the weird thing with the kind of the overworld stuff is I'm also surprised people haven't taken just the easy visual cue of green, red, or just kind of the standard blue. Because even just in terms of

coming up behind enemies, like there are a couple like persona does that a little bit where you get like the first strike if you come up behind them. Yeah, that's the other game. I do it instinctively. But it's just really nice getting that

like, oh, this green's green. I did it. Like whereas in other games you have to wait until the battle actually begins. Yeah, I think that the whole red green kind of metaphor is, does fit with the modernness of the game.

It's like a stoplight. Those are colors you know from this modern world. And it's an odometer on the battle screen. It's a road movie. Yes, exactly. And it would have been so much worse with Pachinko. I'm glad they didn't make that decision. Is Pichino, like, is that a playable game where, like, you can influence what happens?

I think you can actually adjust when the balls are fed into the machine. Isn't that correct? Yeah, you can modify the force of, you know, how many, how the ball is being shot out. But, like, after that, you don't have much control. Just watching it make its path and hoping it lands wherever it's supposed to. I've only played it in the Yakuza games and I still don't get it. Like, okay, why is there a slot machine happening now? Like, I don't get this.

It's funny, like, not to get too far ahead, but you can tell that he liked that idea because of the rhythm-based stuff you see in Mother 3 later. He clearly liked having some degree of influence on what's happening. And I think this is a huge step over Mother 1, not just because of that odometer, but because you also get those great visuals and we'll talk about music soon, but you get so much music in these battles. That's another thing that I think all RPG should do I think Tails is a pretty good job

The Tales of Series at least has like four or five battle songs that change but Earthbound has I don't know maybe like 20, 24 different battle themes depending on the kind of enemy depending on where you are in the game you're never going to hear the same battle theme too much and it's like they recognize these common RPG problems so early but no one else is

like I can't stand when an RPG a 60 RRP like Bravely Default for instance they have the battle theme and they have the boss theme and maybe the final battle theme it's like no I want more music. You can take the other music away and give me more battle themes. I'm going to be spending half of the game in battle. It's also sound effects. The funny thing with Earthbound is you can blindfold me and I know exactly what's happening in those battles because you know the distinctive when you get a smash hit or you know like when there's a mortal damage or

anything like that. You can identify what's happening so easily. And they're very satisfying sound effects like the like when you get a like a brutal hit and just all the different noises the enemies make too. Like each of their attacks is like a distinct sound effect. That even if you're not seeing animation, you can kind of imagine what's happening or, like, what they're doing. Even items. You're trance by the Winamp visualizer in the picture. Exactly. It really whips the llama's ass, apparently.

So we'll be back after this commercial break and talking about all of the great music in Earthbound. Thank you. Thank you. I'm gonna' I'm gonnae'n't I'm gonna'n't I'm gonna'n't I'm gonna'n't

Hey, we're back, folks. And before we start talking about the music as a whole, I think Ray had something to talk about in terms of the battle music. Yeah, yeah, no. I just want to say that it was funny how that, all that battle music is not very exciting. It's all kind of, has this tone of, oh, I got to fight now. And even, like we were saying also, the sound effects are all like that way. Like, even the encounter sound effects is like, oh, boy. Yeah, there's some fun, there's some fun battle music. I like the, I like the new age retro hippie music. I like, I like that whatever Johnny Be Good, rip off they have. I like the rambling evil mushroom, a little ditty. There's some fun and catch. music. A lot of it is just like made to make you feel an easy like just ominous and like sound effects and just kind of like repeating samples and things like that.

Really like weird time signatures and something too just like that. There's that one that goes like do do do do do boop. Yeah. That was a beautiful rendition I sure you guys know exactly what I'm talking about. I think I know what you mean like it feels like the song stops and then it starts again like out of nowhere like whoa what was that? Like I think it's when you're fighting robot enemies or whatever but I do want to talk about the music and we should talk about

maybe one of the reasons why Earthbound didn't come out again until 2013 is because this game, we'll talk about how good the music is, and that should be self-evident based on how much we've been gushing about it. But a lot of this music came from sampling, heavy, heavy sampling. And I guess the way the S&E sound chip works is that are all of the instruments samples, in terms of... I don't think so. I thought there was like a library of...

I'm the super expert. Okay, I assumed there was a library of samples, but then you could also build your own, you know, you can also build them into the game itself. But this game... I mean, I can say the Super Anast is better with that sort of digital sampling. They could not do this on the Genesis. As much as we make fun of the Genesis,

they could not have done this on the Genesis. But this game relied entirely on samples to build its unique soundscape. Again, nothing sounds like this on the Super Nintendo. Even when it's not dipping into 60s music and 70s music, even when it's creating its own thing, it's like, I've never heard these instruments before on a Super Nintendo.

Like, it's crazy. So these composers, uh, sorry, a Hiptonaka and K. Suzuki, they borrowed a lot from existing songs. So I'm going to play a few clips for you guys. These are all online. I'll link to this article. It's from Earthbound Central, I think Clyde Manilin's old

Earthbound website, but he's listed like, here are all the ways that Earthbound in some ways, subtly, in some ways explicitly steals. Steals, no, samples from old music. And maybe, I know Grimm's a big music head, as they call them. That's correct, yeah. Maybe he can tell us about

sampling and stuff after we listen to a few. I'm just curious as to you what the legality is. what the loopholes are and stuff like that. So first we have Moonside's music. We're going to hear a little bit of this and just to hear what it sounds like. So that's essentially Moonside's music. There's not a lot of it.

It's kind of just a very short loop. And here is the Rick O'Kasick's song. Keep on Laughing, the intro to this song. So as you can see, they were not very shy about like, oh, I like this. I like how this sounds. This would be good for this level of this game. This would be good for this scene of this game. And there are a few more that are pretty interesting.

We also have the Jackie's Cafe in Moonstown. side, and I'm pretty sure these things are in the public domain, but they are still in this song. I'm not sure what legality is, but they're present in the song. So this is the Jackie's Cafe song. It's very unearthly. It's very weird and drunk. So even if you're not thinking about sampling, you probably picked out a few of what was happening. One is incredibly, incredibly obvious, and that's this song.

We should all know it as true and honest Americans. Yes, that's our, wait. The national anthem. There we go. So that is just that song isolated. I don't think you can get in trouble for ripping off the national anthem. But, and then another song is mixed into that. So Jackie's Cafe is meant to evoke a very, like, old, old American-y, like, kind of feeling.

And that's why this song's included as well. So if you're not a thousand years old, this is the theme to our gang. That's the Howl Roach series of shorts. They're also syndicated as The Little Rascals. I assume they have not been on TV in, like, 30 years. Yeah. But, Michael, can you talk about, uh, What sampling, the legality of sampling is and things like that?

He has a guy who just passed the bar. I'm really qualified to talk about. Are you a musical lawyer? Did that mean a lawyer who sings? I represent BMG. But no, I mean, I think historically the last album that got away with not having to clear any samples was Paul's Boutique. I forget what year that came out. I think that was 1989.

89. Yeah. So this came out significantly after that. So I'm not sure. I mean, I understand that, you know, you have to clear a sample of a song, obviously, and you pay the artist to do that. But I'm almost certain this is caught up in the video game world of Rickokossack has no idea what a Super Nintendo is or Kaiji Suzuki is. It's weird, though, because I don't know the actual specifics of how long this was held up because of that. Because I know that's like the kind of urban story or whatever, or urban legend, that, you know, this is why this game, you know, took so long to get ported to Wii or whatever it is.

Yeah, I mean, I don't think we'll ever know. because, I mean, there's Beetle stuff in there and I'll play one of these samples soon, but I don't know what kind of backroom negotiations had to take place in order to get this happening

or again, if it was like, these people will never know. Paul McCartney's not checking the Wii U shop, like, at home, you know? Like, they didn't know about Earthbound 20 years ago, they're not going to know now. Yeah, I do think it was just like, hey, so it's like, okay, let's just do this and not

say anything, just make our fans happy. Yeah. So I forgot what I was going to say, but what I want to talk about now is just like you he stole basically uh he's like a prometheus he stole the fire from the gods and by that i mean he stole beetles music which is you were not supposed to do that the beatles music was the most precious when they when they put it on iTunes in 2009 that like you can finally have the Beatles music i was like well i click the torn and i got it all in five minutes so

screw you beetles you've got your money but um ringo so this is the sergeant pepper's lonely heart's club band reprise reprise how do you say that i don't know reprise uh and this is what it sounds like on the album. One, two, three, five. And if you played Earthbound, this should sound all very, very familiar. So here is the Earthbound version of it. So that is the Earthbound song called Megaton Walk, and that is the Dungeon Man theme, when he's your party member for about, like, two minutes.

in the game. But again, it is I don't think they were considering it ballsy to do this. I think they're just like, we like this song, we want to have something that sounds like this in the game, but I consider this incredibly balzy just in terms of just like how protective the Beatles were of their music and still are. It's like if you want to license a Beatles track, you need

to pay out the nose. You need like a half a million dollars if you want the original track in your show or movie. I feel like if this ever would like come up like legally, they would just do the vanilla ice defense where he's like, their song goes da-da-da-da-da-da. My song goes da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. I almost wonder if they just didn't think about it, right?

Like, I wonder if it's just a bunch of guys in Japan in a room who were like, oh, this sounds cool, and it just kind of got pushed through. I mean, HIPTanaka is, like, number one, I'm sure, Beatles fan in the all of video game industry, basically. Especially, you know, the Japanese love them for sure. And I think Hiptonaka was just a guy who absorbed all sorts of music. And that's why really he's so much, I think, much more interesting than Koji Kondo or somebody. because he just expanded, you know, the breadth of everything he did. Yeah.

So, of course he's going to pluck from the Beatles. Yeah. And Suzuki as well. And just like Hannah Barbera cartoons, I think the history of early video games is built on plagiarism. Like Terminator and Robocop and all those movies that just became video games without permission. Like Hideo Kojimo would not have a career, if not for plagiarism, that nobody brings up. They just think it's cute. But, I mean, if these are all actionable things, I assume if a movie studio wanted to be,

like, okay, we need to get money for Metal Gear. You stole a lot from us, like, what characters look like. And over time, they've changed what the characters look like to, you know, okay, he can't be Richard Crenna anymore. He's got to be this new character. A Solid Snake can't be Kyle Reese. I think he's designed to look like.

I mean, it is not, and I don't think it was insidious. I don't think it was like, yes, let's rip it off this idea. It was like excitable creators who have a different idea of IP and a different idea of what the sharing of ideas means, because we're all industrial, and sorry, all American capitalists, industrialist, individualists, but maybe they have a different philosophy

in terms of art and commerce and things like that. That's just my opinion. I know nothing about the Japanese or their culture. Plus, you know, these guys are all whacked out on goofballs. Yes, exactly. That's so true. And I have one more clip I want to play. Again, stealing from the best, stealing from the Beatles. This is the intro to all you need is love. The French national anthem, of course. And this is the earthbound song called Cross Over Time and Space. So it essentially just slowed down that part of the French National Anthem and put it on repeat for one of the creepier, more otherworldly background songs.

And I think it's funny that they could have stolen that French National Anthem from anything. It's public domain, but it's like, no, we're going to take it from the Beatles. No. Just like how it's already loaded. Exactly. Yeah, it's already in there. These modern mixing boards have like a dial on it and it changes

the speed and there's a notch on it that's legal just below it. Oh, that's awesome. I need one of those. Again, in like the naming screen for Earthbound it's great. It's all this like weird like clips and static and sound effects but it uses the Liberty Bell March which is a suza piece. It is public domain.

He's old as hell. He's dead. He can't sue you. He's old as hell. Yes. But it uses the Monty Python version. A clip from a Monty Python episode so you can hear the audience. It's like they They took the most possibly litigious versions of these public domain songs for use in their game. But I do want to talk about, that's not the most important thing about this music. It's cool that they built this music from existing sources, but it's great music.

And I've talked a lot about this. Can you guys talk about what your favorite songs are or how you feel about the Earthbound soundtrack? Andrew, please. I love the Runaway 5. It's like watching that performance, it's not like you can cancel. Speaking of plagiarism, they remind you of. Anybody? Okay, blues brothers, except, okay, they're not, they're the blues quintet or, yeah, yeah, I mean, they're not brothers and they're related.

It's legal, please, please, sorry. No, I just, I love with them and then eventually with Venus. Like, it's not like you can skip those scenes or anything. Like, you were forced to watch that performance. I think that's so funny because, like, the game's drawing attention to how great that music is. And even though a lot of it is very heavily lifting from other things, I think, I don't know, I think it's so fun and it gives personality to that, to that world and to, that game in a way that I, again, don't think I got from anything else in the 90s. Michael, how about you? How do you feel about the soundtrack as a whole?

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely, I think after I sort of got over the G-Wiz, a modern-day game, like, RPG, like, that was the other thing when I was a kid that just really, and even now, even more so now, to be honest, like, the soundtrack is, it's absolutely amazing. And, like, the way the music is done, as you mentioned, you know, by traditional composers or, you know, people who do regular music, it's kind of a thing to it where it's like you listen to a lot of game music and it just sounds like tick, tick, tick, tit, tit, tit, but it's like,

it's tracked out in a way where you can just sort of like look at it and like, you know, garage band or whatever. And like, yeah, that's the music and this, but like, there's kind of a lushness to it where it connects together like a song and like regular music. And the way it's not afraid to play around with like really weird time signatures, super kind of psychedelic-y-sounding stuff. And it uses it so well to, like, inspire its mood.

Yeah, and I agree. It's not afraid to be dissonant. It's not afraid to be to not be catchy. It's more concerned with like what kind of feeling will this evoke. I don't care if you're not going to remember this song. Like the intro to the game where you turn on your S&S, it's just all static and then just you see the UFOs

attacking a gas station, this electric guitar starts wailing until it turns into all this distorted nonsense, and then the earthbound thing comes on the screen with this much more clear theme. But yeah, like you said, that guitar thing is grating. It's hard to listen to. I mean, it's cool to hear the shredding, of course, but that theme is much

catchier, it's much more soothing, it's much more like, ah, I want to play this game now. And there's so much of like that little touch thing that we, you know, we sort of mentioned about earlier, like, again, that's the desert part where you're kind of stuck in the traffic jam. Like, that song starts with, like, the sound of, like, radio feedback of somebody, like, going through, like, a radio dial. And it's such a great, like, little touch. That's what I mean?

And it's a very tinny sound, too. Just, like, it's, like, you can barely hear this radio off in the distance somewhere. It sounds like Morris Code, and then it's, like, you're just in this desert and there's all these, like, radio frequencies that are getting caught up. That's a great, yeah. It's, like, what is that? I think it's, like, diagetic sound. It's meant to sound like it's coming from, like, a source within the world rather than just, like, like, it's just like music we're playing for you, you know.

Ray, how do you feel about the music of Earthbound? Well, you know, it's funny that some of my favorite tracks are the ones that are lifted from the Beatles. It speaks how good the Beatles were. Yeah, I mean, I think also, like, this game might have, like, informed my appreciation of, like, electronic, ambient and experimental music, honestly. Because, like, I think this is, like, a revelation that's coming to me, like, 20 years later. Yeah. But, like, I do love the more ambient stuff.

like some of the battle themes and those ones that we just played and especially like the lab music from Doctor And Donuts Lab Yeah Like that's like That's good to sleep music

Honestly Yeah I like I like I like again the Beatles ripoffs We didn't play all of the Beatles ripoffs There's a ton of them I'll put a link to the ones We listen to Yeah

Other ones like So here's the thing is that I What I love about mother I mean excuse me What I don't love about Mother 2 I like about Mother 1 Which is the more pep

The peppier songs Wait what you don't like about Mother 2 Is what you like about Mother 1 Right Like the pepier songs in Mother 2 I don't think shine as much to me as much as the popier sort of rockier stuff in the first game that were sort of also in a way

there's some sort of remixes in the sequel as well but like the first game was definitely more 8 bit chip tuning meant to be a bit more poppier It was meant to be like really it was like really catchy and they made that great vocal album I say great that just okay I don't know if it is great but I find it just the cheesiest bit of cheese in the cheese world.

It's great. It's so good as bad. Yeah, like this young female singer just belting out about friendship to orchestrated versions of NES songs. It's amazing. Right. And I put clips of that in that episode that I mentioned earlier, so please listen to it. But, yeah, I think I kind of like the earthbound version of those songs a lot better, Ray, of the mother one. Like, be in friends, I believe, is the song you hear in Ness's house, right?

Yeah, exactly. But it is a very, like, it's meant to be nostalgic. Like, hey, remember five years ago? And I never played mother, but I still kind of get goosebumps. I get that warm feeling of being home when you go to Newton's house. Like, I want to hear this song. I want to hear, like, it's very soothing. It does evoke the feeling of, like, safety and, you know, family and things like that.

I think that's true of a lot of the best songs in the game do that, right? Like, whether you're familiar with the Beatles or anything, like, those songs still achieve a mood that I think is clear to what it's going for. And even, like, you mentioned the Johnny Be Good song. Like, that song's perfect for a battle song. Yeah, it's great. And you don't hear it 90 times in a row, like when you hear it, it works, and it kind of gets you excited in that moment. You always see it with the most American enemies, like the hippies, like the taxi cabs, the scalding cups of coffee, the electric guitars. The music is used very effectively because they know where to put it.

I mean, you do get some cheesy stuff like the, like there's a, wait, sorry, there's the, there's the Egyptian-ish song. I'm not a huge fan of. It's a little too on those like, nah, nah, nah, nah, no. It's like a step away from that. But they still have fun with it. It's sort of like a musical version of punch out. They try to address, like, the ethnicity with their own kind of weird touch. So I can appreciate that.

So as we've decided So as we've decided, the music is fantastic, please listen to it on wherever you can. I'm sure you can buy it somewhere, but I think it's good outside of the game. It's very, I write to the earthbound music, I read to it, it's just very soothing, and it could be connected to my nostalgia part of my brain, but it's very interesting to listen to, and we were talking earlier, we'd never really experienced the soundtrack and stereo until the recent re-releases and just hearing the channel separation, including, like, even sound effects and the way the PSI spells move from the right to the left or left to the right or come in from the sides and hit the front. It's just so cool. Like, I just love how they were thinking about just stereo sound in an era where not everyone had a stereo TV, at least not me. Yeah, and you mentioned the instruments earlier, but you really appreciate each and every sound when you hear it that way.

Oh, for sure, yeah. You appreciate that certain things start halfway through and you're like, oh, that's why it sounds like that. Yeah. So we talked a lot about the music. I do want to talk about the game itself because you're probably like, well, what is it? I mean, it is just an RPG. You do go to eight parts of the world, get your eight things, talk to people, buy your items, equip them and stuff like that in the modern context. And generally, I think this is my opinion.

I want to see if you guys agree. I think Earthbound has a generally very much better first half. I do like the lack of abilities that make your journeys seem more significant. Like, I have to walk everywhere. I've got to take the bus to towns. Every town is big. But I feel that as the game stretches on, what you can do in the areas you visit gets more and more constricted. Like the towns get smaller.

It's more just like town right to the dungeon, less like, you know, finding your way through. And that stuff is still fun. there's still fun stuff to do, but I like the art of, like, I want to buy a hamburger with ketchup, you know, to get me more hit points. But after 10 hours, you're just like, I'm just going to heal myself with the healing spell. Like, all of the fun stuff sort of becomes irrelevant around the halfway point of the game. When you have a whole party with all these abilities and the places you explore aren't as big or as varied. How do you guys feel about that idea? I still like the game.

I mean, I still think it's a great game, but I feel like it kind of, it gets a little less fun in that second half. First of all, how dare you? Oh, my God. Put your glove back on, Michael, please. No, I think that's a pretty accurate criticism. Like, the deep darkness and, like, sort of the stuff towards the-in-was-it, the dinosaur place? Yeah. I do like how they change the perspective where you are, like, maybe five pixels.

That is very cool. And you kind of look like Nintendo, honestly. Yeah, a little bit. But, yeah, those parts are not as fun. I hate the swamp. The swamp sucks. Yeah, I mean, I think part of it is that the beginning of the game is actually kind of hard, like especially leading up to, like, before you get PSI Rocket.

And finally, those first, like, eight levels can be kind of hard. Like, I know a lot of people who die to the skate punks early on, whereas I feel like towards the end of the game, there's not a ton of challenge left. Like, I mean, you have to keep, like, Paula has lower defense. You have to keep her alive with less HP and things like that. But Ness gets really, really strong. Yeah. And you have all the PSI abilities.

After you beat Magic Cant, they level you up like a thousand times in a symbolic way, but also in a literal way. It's like, you're a better person, but now you've gained 12 levels. Yep. It's great. And you mentioned, Andrew, we didn't, we totally forgot to mention this, but the personalization of Earthbound is very important. It's like you name your favorite thing. It has to be weed or pizza. I'm just kidding. Or boners, whatever. It's the only thing with six letters you could use. And then you name your favorite food. You name all your friends. And you name your pet. I mean, naming your friends and your pet, naming your party members, in other words, that was a normal thing in RPGs. But naming your favorite food and paper thing, which would come up in diet. dialogue and things like that. It was a tiny touch, but it was cool. It was still, like, the plugging in the whole Madlips thing.

We're going to draw from this bank of words and just stick it in there. But it still felt like, oh, this is my adventure. They're talking about... Well, they also literally ask for the player name at a couple points, too, which is even weir. Yes, and that's something that Hideo Kojima would steal from Metal Gear Solid, too, because you put in your name in the beginning of that game, you're like, I don't know why. And then at the end of the game, Ryan looks at his dog tags.

He's like, you're the player. Oh, my God. But it's like, I did that in Earthbound that decade ago, Kojima. You can't fool me. Yes. Did you chime in on the whole, like, how do you feel about Earthbound in terms of, like, the flow of the game? Do you feel like the second half is weaker? I'm not sure, exactly.

I don't really have a problem with the second half. I didn't, I never really liked all the mazes, all the things that were kind of dungeon-like. I think there were maybe one few, too many of those. I was kind of on board with that kind of thinking for a bit, but I was playing maybe three or four hours of it this week just to, you know, come to terms with it and think about it. terms of, you know, the discussion we're having. And I was doing the desert maze level, the desert dungeon. I was like, I was getting a little tired of going in circles, but then I got to the exit mouse, which is this fun little thing they put in some dungeons.

Like, you're probably tired of this dungeon now. Please, please use one of my children to help you, to help you leave. Please never talk to me and my son again, in other words. And the fact that it came with a guide, you know? Like, I think there's so many people who I know who are playing it now just find it really obtuse and don't know where to go, especially when it comes to saving Paula. And I think the fact that you always could just pull out that player's guy to came with and check. I think the point of the dungeon, too, is like, the game is so colorful and bright and fun,

and then you go into this drab, brown pit under the earth. It's really pronounced. That's true, yeah. It's not as fun to look at. Speaking of dungeons, though, I think it's really fun this game is also like an RPG about RPGs in a way. It's very self-reflective. Like, dungeon man, or I think his name is Brick Road, he's a dungeon designer. In the real world, like he designs real-life dungeons with enemies in them.

And the first dungeon you encounter with him, he's not very sure of himself. He has all these signs put up. He's like, most players go to the left first. And then, like, most players will open this box or whatever. Like, he's testing you out. And by the end of the game, he becomes a dungeon, which is horrifying. It's an existential nightmare. But it's just like, this is my place in life.

I will become a dungeon to fully understand what making a dungeon is like. And I think that's so cool. Just like, there's a game designer in this game. And every time you meet him, he is thinking more about, like, what is the perfect dungeon? And when you go inside of his body, he still has those signs. Yes, exactly. He's got the yellow submarine from the Beatles in his body and things like that. So, yeah, dungeon man's a great idea in this game that I love.

And it's funny when you talk about DNA going on to Pokemon. Pokemon has a building in red and blue you visit where they're like, I'm the game designer, I'm the creature designer, and you're like talking to the dev team as you're climbing. I also have a problem with Pokemon's dungeons. Eighth four shit in already. Ape Incorporated is in Mother 2, Earthbound, and it's in Foreside, but you can't actually go in. It's just like planning for Earthbound 2 is what the sign says outside. I'm sure it's like planning for Mother 3 in the Japanese version.

One thing I did want to point out is the localization for this game is fantastic. It was started by Dan Owson and finished by Marcos Lindblum, who did most of the work on it, and it perfectly captures ETOE's dry absurdity, and I think Nintendo of America knew that communicating his sense of humor was so important to making this game work that they really tried to make this localization matter. There are still typos. There are still weird inconsistencies, but you could not ask for a better localization in 1995, and yes, I'm looking at you working designs. This is much better than what you've done. But that's because instead of just rewriting things arbitrarily or like, my idea is better, they thought really hard, like, what is the best way to translate this

idea into English? And I'm not going to go through all the examples. If you go to the Legends of Localization website, the guy behind it, did a comparison for everything, item names, place names, how jokes were changed. And he's making a book based on that, hopefully, sometime this year. And he did the- Buy that book. Yes, buy that book. I actually interviewed him on an episode of Retronauts Micro. His name is Clyde Mandolin and his wife Heidi Mandolin.

They both do Legends of Localization. But, again, this localization is great. I still think it's fun. It's funny. And do you guys, are you guys on the same page with me in terms of just how this localization works? Not at all. Listen, localization is censorship. That's right, yeah.

That's what I learned. It should have been not pencil eraser. It should have been whatever octopus pun would be in English. That should have been naked in Magic Canada. Exactly, yeah. Ness Ness, I wanted to see that pixelated butt. Pixelated boy, but. I think it's, like, reading interviews with Marcus Lindblum are really fascinating.

And he talks about subtext with, like, Jeff and Tony and things like that where, like, he did want to imply certain things in various parts of the game. That's true, yeah. Have you read more into it than what's on the page. I do, like, E Toi's way of thinking where it's like, Yeah, this character's gay. Yeah, he's gay. Yeah. Whatever.

And, like, in Mother 3, there's Duster, and he's, he has disability. It's like, well, why? It's like, well, all people in the real world have disabilities. Why shouldn't a person in a game have one? I was like, that's really heartwarming and touching. Just like, please be part of my game person I see every day. Not just like, these are all able-bodied white men who will be in my party. It's like, there's a princess.

There's a guy with a limp. There's a kid who's mom. It's like, it's crazy. I love the way he thinks. But Earthbound was reviewed poorly. And this really shows. that please don't get worked up about reviews. That's my general way of thinking.

Reviews are tied to a specific window in time, and they never age well. Yes. But this is horseshit. Yes, this is horseshit, especially, because I love this game so much. And it just broke my heart that every magazine was like, well, this is the era in which games are getting edgy,

games are getting photorealistic. We are choosing our twisted metal players. We're being total badasses. Do I have to play this weird, like, colorful kiddie RPG that looks kind of bland? and plain eh. What are they even doing? This is too silly and weird. It looks like an NES game. Yeah, exactly. Motherfucker, look at it. Yeah. Jesus. I think they're like all this, this game is like from the past games. You're just going to be all

like hardcore photore realistic violence and pit fighting and things like that. And again, a review is tied to the cultural expectations of the moment it was written. So you can go back to reviews from two years ago, but this game has fantastic graphics and it plays great. It's like, well, that game sucked and I hated it. And it's like a three out of ten. So people did not like this game It only took the insane And I mean that in a loving way Because I'm one of these insaniacs

It took the insane cult phenomenon Of the earthbound fandom To bring this game to the light Of the public Of the general public And Andrew you wanted to talk about this You said to make sure you bring this up And what do you think about the earthbound fans?

They seem to be the most well-adjusted Video Game Psychopaths I'm one of these people, so I'm not making fun of them, but they are so devoted to proselytizing and trying to get Nintendo to pay attention to them, which they never have. Nintendo is like never really acknowledge these people, but E. Toy has.

He has. And it's funny how many of them, I mean, you mentioned Clyde, Clyde and Reid founded starrymed.comin. Which is kind of the hub of all these fans in the first online community. Yeah, and that formed a fan gamer after that as well. Exactly. Yep. They were selling that Legends of Localization book, coincidentally enough.

But yeah, I mean, like, it's just such a good group of people who their entire lives are earthbound. I mean, it's like Reed met his wife through Earthbound and Clyde. And I mean, those guys have gone on to make careers out of it. And I think the fandom as a whole, they, you know, really pushed and pushed and pushed. They did petitions for Earthbound 64. They did petitions for now Mother 3. Like, they've pushed so hard for going on 20 years.

And I think it kind of worked. You know, I mean, if nothing else, we have Ness in a few Smash Brothers games. We have multiple North American ways to play Earthbound. legally and for retail price they have made progress and I think it's uh I don't know I don't think anyone saw that coming even five years ago that idea about pushing for so long

but not being like I'm going to stand with a samurai sword outside of Noah until they acknowledge that sort of thing I'm gonna find out where your family lives and I'll tell people if they don't release this game yeah but it's just like it's this firm kind of we just really like this please I'm gonna keep asking it is part of like the warm-hearted

spirit of the games that these people have themselves, I think, in terms of how they address this game, how they try to push it on people. And Ray, weren't you working at One Up when they were sending around that giant Mother 3 binder, like release Mother 3 in the States when that first came out in, like, 2006?

Yeah, yeah, Jeremy got that, and they sent it to him, and so, yeah, you can do that a bit. It has so much, like, fan art and music, and that community is just really creative. I don't know, it's the most devoted community to a game that largely hasn't been relevant for 20 years. Exactly. And again, they were just like, Nintendo won't pay attention to us. We'll make our own earthbound merchandise. It'll be better than anything you could make. I'm not saying they said that I just, I just believe that because all of their products are so much better than what anyone else is making. Well, and that's why it's so weird now going to a GameStop and seeing a Ness Amibo or walk into a Walmart and seeing a Lucas Amibo. Like, the fact that that merchandise exists now is just crazy.

I feel like I should buy every Lucas Amibo I see the store just on general principle. You'll just ask the cashier, do you know who this is? every day Mike, it's Wednesday. Pull out your mother three binder and sit down with it. Yeah, I must say, again, they make our t-shirts

so collusion, but who cares? But the reason that I love fangamer and I have them do our t-shirts, they make great stuff, but I also have always loved them before they were fangamer. I was on starmen.net, back when it was earthbound.net,

and it was, like, other people like this game. Like, I would pass this game around the friends and they would like it, but it seemed like everybody trashed this game in the press, and we put this behind us and like, yeah, it really annoyed me and it made me really hate some game reviewers

but it was before I could write on a message port so that was helpless, I was helpless. There was no Reddit. All I could do was go outside and have a nice day. Yeah, exactly. I just had to forget about my problems. So, there's anything you want to mention before I mentioned the ending

and we maybe have to have like a few minutes about Mother 3? Anything else about this game? Any kind of moments you like the most? Any thing in particular? I still get a little misty eyed every time I see Tessie come out of the water in that theme song plays.

It's just great. It's hardly has anything to do with anything, but it's just like, here comes Tessie. Nice. I still, I love the moment right before you go to Magic Cant when you finally get the eighth melody and it has this weird, like,

a sepia-toned flashback in Ness's house of him in the crib and it's such a sweet moment. I'm getting goosebumps with you just saying these things. That's how I attached I am to this game. Ray, how about you? I like the Runaway 5 bus trip, you know? That's great.

It's like I said. It's like one of those road movie moments. We're like, oh, you're going to hang out with us for a while now. I like how there are a few little visual jokes about how they're bad drivers, too, running over sidewalks and stuff like that. This actually goes to the ending. My favorite moment of the game, there's so many. I've talked about Dungeon

Man and the zombies and stuff like that. My favorite moment, I think, the one that just like really just gives me goosebumps is the ending credit rule when the music hits a crescendo, and then you hear Etoe say, I'll miss you, or I miss you. Like, he already wants you to become back to the world. And it was

like, I didn't even know it was Etoe, just as strange disembodied voice that just pops up in the middle of the song and it's like, wow, that is just very touching and strange. But I do want to talk about the ending, and I feel it's one of those revolutionary RPG things that no one else does. A very few games do, where it's like, the reward

for beating the game is not just to hear a new song, not just to see maybe a little epilogue, but it's like no, go back to every town, talk to every person. They will have something new to say. They will have something new to tell you, including if you go to the drugstore and Annette, you can meet

Rafini the dog, who is possessed by the spirit of the game developer. And he says, please write to Nintendo, care of Rafini the dog, and tell them you want Earthbound 2. And I did that. And actually, I got a form letter back, a very nice one saying, we don't have plans for Earthbound 2 right now. Thanks so much for writing. I think I got like a free sticker or something in the mail for them. But if you wrote into Rafini at the time, you would get at least a form response back, which is very cute. But again, you could everybody had new dialogue.

And it was very rewarding. Like you could talk to Frankie, the first boss who's now working at the burger joint. He's reformed himself. Like, everyone, every ass you kicked is now a reformed ass, basically. And it just blew my mind. Like, wow, I have two more hours of the game to play, essentially, after I beat Giggis. And I guess that's another thing we should mention to. The final battle is kind of stolen from Final Fantasy 4 in which you use this one command a bunch of times to basically end the battle.

But it is very, now that I know about Lovecraft and what that kind of feeling they're trying to evoke is, it is a very Lovecraftian boss. Like, you don't have the power to comprehend what the attack is. Roll for sanity. Exactly, yeah. And we also have Poki, who is the annoying neighbor kid who eventually becomes the great evil sidekick. It's such a weird choice, but I love it. And Pokey does come back in Mother 3, which I want to talk about for a few minutes because I do want a Mother 3 episode once I can get more than a couple people who have actually played it.

Has anyone in the room finished the game except for me? Yeah. Oh, you have Grim. So I've never finished it. Okay. I always, it's funny because on principle, I was like, I'm going to wait till it's localized. And I was like, well, I guess I'll start it. And I was like, well, I'm 10 hours in.

And now I'm like, I'm really. You've had eight years, sir. Please, that's your homework next time. Next time we talk, it's going to be about Mother 3. Yeah, yeah. But, again, Mother 3 is a fantastic game. I think it is in terms of being a video game, not in terms of storytelling or jokes or emotional feelings it will give you.

It is the best video game of the series in terms of how it plays. It's strange to me, though, that it has the most focused story. It is about at town more than it is about any characters. And it is a very, like, Kurt Vonnegut slash Haya Miyazaki story about, the corrupting power of capitalism versus nature in which it's a very it's very on the nose this is not me reading into it with my english degrees it is super on the nose and sometimes a little bit of an annoying way but it's just like what happens when a gift a gift currency society or maybe a barter currency economy what happens when we introduce money capitalism television and it destroys them it is it is a very depressing game because as this town becomes quote unquote more civilized more Or maybe even more Western, everyone loses their soul. Everyone just becomes a greedy capitalist. Yep.

And it's like... It's a much angrier, sadder game. It is. Yeah, I think it's... I wish I knew the name of the Japanese novel. It's based on a very dark dystopian Japanese novel. Like, you toy read it and he was like, this is great. I think it's Hungarian.

Oh, Hungarian. I actually read it like two months ago. Oh, wow. Yeah. So the notebook, the proof and the third lie. It's like three novellas. Yeah. Agata Christoph, I think it's a new.

Is it, I assume it's much darker than Mother Three. Uh, yes. It's much, it's kind of hard. to read at times, but... Wow. Yeah. Mother 3 is full of tragedy. It is...

But again, it's full of beautiful moments, too, and the battle system is great. And I feel like many things... I'm saying this as a former and failed academic. Many things can be viewed through a Marxist lens, like, Animal Crossing. You can make your jokes about that, how it's like... It shows you how capitalism is, like, kind of cruel. But this game is a Marxist RPG. It takes a very Marxist perspective, which is something like...

When I played this game, I was like, I was not expecting this at all, this message. but I like, this is the only thing I play that does this. It's very strange. Yeah. Technology versus nature and everything there too, where it's just, it's completely unambivalent about how it feels about those things. Yeah, even the logo is like made of wood with like steel corrupting the logo.

Yeah, like they're incompatible. Like there are two materials that are, I think that's why he said that's why that was in the logo. But yeah, and then like, you know, pokey comes back and he runs a megalopolis and it's filled with sad, depressing, horrible people. Yes. A fascist pigman state. And you're just like, there it is.

It's a fantastic game, and I don't know when this episode will be coming out. Hopefully Nintendo is now desperate enough to actually want to release it in some capacity. When they release one, I mean, that was, they have to. I totally agree. I think we'll see it. It's also that weird thing where, like, God, when you talk about the development history of Mother 2, Mother 3 is just as fascinating in the saga of Earthbound 64, and where those discs are now is like the white whale of stories I want to tell.

For sure, yeah. And it could have even been an S&S game at some point. I heard it started development on the S&S, then moved. to the 64 disk drive, and then finally it became a Game Boy, advanced game. But the funny thing is, if you look at screenshots from the N64 version, the dialogue is the same. It's telling the same

story, but with different parts. And you can recognize, like, obviously, Flint is there. You recognize areas, and the roller coaster and stuff, or the Minecraft. Yeah. Ray, have you, I mean, what do you think about the other three? I haven't heard much from you about this game. Are you interested in it, or...

Yes, I am interested. Okay, I'm interested in this. I've not really played it much, though. Oh, I totally recommend it, Ray. I'm waiting for all those rumors to come true, and we'll just be able to buy it for $10. It has to be the year. I hope so.

I mean, this could be the Wii U's one game this fall, maybe. That's the Earthbound fans reprise right there. It has to be this year. Please tell me it's this year. And again, we talked about Fam Gamer, and they're great. And I played through this game as soon as it was released, the fan translation in October of 2008. That's right.

And I've been holding off on playing it again until I know it's going to be coming out for Wii U because I do want to play it and buy it. But they released a strategy guide. that looks just like the Mother 2 slash Earthbound strategy guide in the same style, it's a travelogue they made clay models for almost

every character and enemy That was the first thing I ever bought from Fan Gamer and like it came with like a little hand drawing and everything And I was like that's great Mine came with a I got the Franklin badge because I pre-ordered it Yeah so I saw the Franklin badge on my keychain Never been struck by lightning folks

So I haven't been able to test it out But yeah if you want to play Mother 3 Definitely head over to fangamer dot net And get that guide Bob where do I collect the fangamer trick? Not on the air Not on the air, please No, I mean, you don't need a guide

To play the game In fact, the guide wasn't finished until like four months after the fan translation came out But it is like a great companion piece that really like lets you in on the World and the characters and things like that Because the game is about the How a town changes and there's like 20 characters in the town

And every time you revisit the town Something new is happening. Somebody has done something terrible. The old people are shoved further back into the closet. It's a very depressing. interesting game, but I recommend you play it because I think the tagline is like you'll cry, like this game will make you cry.

And her older sister. Yes, and she'll cry too. The skitter in the room. But in a sad way. Yeah, exactly. It's like an onion. So can we recommend, this goes without saying,

but can we recommend this to people who maybe have never played it ever before? I mean, it is an older style of game, but I think just the sheer variety of the things you're doing can help you rise above some of those lower. or grindier moments. Ray, you sound like you're mulling it over.

What do you think? No, yeah, it's kind of a loaded question for me. I'm not entirely sure. I think. I can't remove myself from being the kid excited about Earthbound like 23 years ago. It's hard to say. Yeah, and I'm trying to.

I don't really know what to put. I think, yeah, like you said, it's kind of grindy. And maybe some people go back to it might not like that and get sick of it. But it's in the canon. and it's part of that. It's one of those top super NES RPGs. It's like it's going to be up there with quantum trigger and everything else.

And I think it's one of those things you shouldn't miss. Yeah, even if you're unsure, I think it's worth it just to see, like, why does everybody care, you know? Right, just to figure it out, at least for, like, novelty sake. Yeah, exactly. And like we've touched on, like, yeah, there have been some modern-day-ish RPGs out there, but it's usually, like, you know, Magami Tense type stuff, or it's still like... You still have a sword. Yeah, yeah.

You're not fighting cops and hippies and cars and fire hydrants. You're fighting just demons. Jack Frost again. He's back. And yeah, now it's like, you know, every third JRPA comes out of set in Tokyo. It's like, oh, yeah. Yeah, you like the Shibuya 109 building? Here you go again.

It's like I'm there. Yeah. So, like, yeah, I think there's something a little bit fresher and see where it actually came from, that sort of style and approach. I think, yeah, it's worth going back to it. What do you think, Andrew, should... Do you recommend this game to people today? Maybe someone who's never played an older JRP or anything like this?

It's weird because I, since the Wii release and now more recently, the 3DS release, that's literally what I've been doing, is trying to tell my friends, like, hey, that game I never shut up about. You can finally play it. And it's kind of anecdotally, it's really interesting that, like, one in every five people, like, sees it through and loves it. But it is definitely kind of an uphill battle. Yeah, that's true.

tell there's like the people who can't get past Frank and then the people who won't get past Paula and then the people who get right up, they're about to get poo and then they stop and then there are the people who finish it and it is definitely I think it's accessible in terms of yeah the setting and everyone can understand what's going on but yeah

it is definitely a product of its time. It's a little grindier but I think Ray nailed it in that if you're interested in that era like if you're talking about Final Fantasy 6 if you're talking about Chrono Trigger you should be talking about earthbound I think it's definitely one of those big players from the S&S era.

Michael, what do you think about recommending Earthbound to people? I think it's tough. My suggestion would be buy it and then maybe watch a let's play. It's a game where you can probably cut out some of the combat. That's the ethical way to do things. Right, right. Yeah, I think if you're one of those people, and there are some people out there who are like that, it's like, no, I got to play the first one before I play the second one.

You don't have to play the first one. Yeah. That's something you may be, again, buy the game, watch a let's play or buy the game, and then do what I did and get the emulated version with the easy patch. And I would even say not even just you don't have to, don't. You should start with Mother 2. If you're that curious, don't play it at all, jump to Mother 2. Maybe go back to Mother 1 if you want to see like, oh, these were all these songs came from.

And this is where, you know, this happened. I think Mother 1 is kind of like the Wes Anderson short film that became the full movie. Oh, is that bottle rocket? Yeah, yeah. Cool. That's a great analogy. We can end with that. Thank you, Ray.

That was very synced. You're welcome. So all of our promo info for the show is part of the commercial break. Thanks for listening to it because I know you did. But you can find me on the internet as Bob Servo. I also write for Something Awful and U.S.Gamer. Go to something awful.com, usgamer.net. And check out my other podcast, Talking Simpsons.

It's the Lasertime Podcast Network's chronological exploration of the Simpsons. We should be towards the end or middle of season three by this point. It's a great, fantastic show. I'm so proud of it. Please check it out. Lasertime Podcast.com. Everybody else, Ray, where can we find you? Oh, gee.

Well, yeah, I don't have much else to promote, really, except my other podcast called No More Whoppers. I talk with my friend Alex on that. He lives in Japan, so we talk about Japan and stuff, but we mostly just get mad at each other. It's a fun kind of anger, right? It's productive. No More Whoppers at Tumblr.com.

Cool. Michael, where can we find you? Do you have anything you want to do public-facing? I don't know if you have a website or anything. Not really. You don't have our disease. Not much of a self-promoter. I don't know.

At pseudo bread on Twitter is really where I spend most of my time. You make some funny tweets. That's a big accolating. I need more affirmation than. just strangers reading my tweets. I need strangers reading everything I do. I have problems. Andrew. I'm Garfap on Twitter, and you can find me on IGN.

I'm on our PlayStation podcast, podcast Beyond, and then I'm usually just unboxing JRPGs in videos and talking about them in articles. Please don't unobox on Earthbound, though. Yeah, I'm going to bring down the value precipitously. We'll be back with a brand new episode of Retronauts Micro next week. See you later.

I'm gonnae. I'm gonna'n't I'm gonna'n't I'm gonna'n'n't I'm not going to be able to be. I'm going to be. I don't know. I'm going to be able to be.

I'm sorry. I don't know. I'm going to be able to I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to Thank you.