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Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Ness Vs. Unassuming Local Guy

Video games. I've spent countless hours over the years playing Super Nintendo games, saving up for an N64 with my brothers (money kept in an old plastic container), staring at the tiny dot matrix screens on original Game Boys, and, more recently, borrowing time at my brother's computer to play PC games. But I'd be lying if I said I liked all games equally. My first video game love was Earthbound, and it will always hold a very special place in my heart.

Earthbound is, to put it lightly, weird. The main character is a little kid, the locations are varied (mole caverns, small town in the grips of an insane cult that worships the colour blue, land before time -ish area featuring gigantic dinosaurs), and the enemies are hilarious. You fight things like "Big Pile of Puke," a "Manly Fish," and "Cute Li'l UFO." Your weapons can include frying pans and baseball bats.  The goal of the game is to stop an evil alien from taking over the world.

The first diary I ever kept included painfully detailed accounts of playing Earthbound - there's a page where I list what areas there are (this is directly before a one-page story written from the perspective of an anthropomorphic dolphin), and I wrote almost daily about where I was in the game and what was happening. Clearly something about this game really clicked with 11-year-old me, but I've also really enjoyed all the times I've re-played it. I recommend it to anyone who's interested in RPGs.

And the music is great - last year I, along with the Bath Haus Klezmer Band, tried covering this song. Enjoy!

2 comments:

  1. I've never played Earthbound, and I'm trying to think of what my first video game love would be and not coming up with much. I think there's a good chance that it was Mario Kart for the SNES, but our only console until about 99 or 00 was an Atari 2600 and I hit some of those games pretty hard, too.

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  2. Oh man! So you've had a really retro (for lack of a better word) introduction to games. I wish I could say the same - I think I might've played on a Commodore 64 once or twice at my great aunt's, but I have little experience with most consoles before SNES.

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