30 For 30: EarthBound

I turn 30 on February 18th. I want to celebrate this, and get myself back into writing, by spending a few weeks rambling about the 30 things that have meant the most to me over the years. These will be from music, movies, books, videogames, and maybe even art and other things for good measure. I feel like my life has been much more about the things I've experienced than it has the people I've known or the places I've traveled to, and these 30 things have helped to make my 30 years more than worth all the innumerable bad things. Expect heartfelt over-sharing and overly analytical explanations galore! Today we consider cult classic EarthBound, released in 1995 for the SNES.

Discovering that some obscure thing you love is also treasured by many others is one of the best and worst aspects of the Internet. Had it never come around, you might have lived your entire life without meeting anyone else who, for example, loves legendary bad movies like The Room or Troll 2. Now, though, you can find entire communities of people who have similar insanities. This is one of the best aspects of the Internet because you no longer have to be some kind of outcast wishing you knew someone else who thinks it's funny to shout “you're tearing me apart, Lisa!” However, this is also one of the worst aspects of the Internet because your singular experience with something is no longer so singular, so unique. It's like finding out that your significant other is just one of many clones of the same person that thousands of other people also have “their” version of to have sex with and cuddle up to at night.


With EarthBound, this “it's a small world, after all” feeling happened twice in my life, once on a macro scale and once in a face-to-face way. The first time was a couple years after my family got AOL, which was also around the time I gave the game a second chance and fell for it—but we'll get to that later. The important thing here is that stumbling on Starmen.net while trying to find more information about EarthBound was akin to thinking you were a pretty big fan of Kit Kat bars only to travel to Japan and see how far people can really take their Kit Kat fandom. Starmen.net was one of the first major fansites I can remember which wasn't run by elitist assholes or by people who can't properly design a website and spell correctly. It was thanks to Starmen.net that I found out EarthBound was known in Japan as Mother 2, an exciting revelation which meant there was at least one more game in the series. Far more important, though, was participating in their yearly Fanfests, in which you play up to a certain point of the game per day and can try your hand at various challenges (like getting the items that certain enemies only drop 1 out of 128 times). It was an annual celebration of love that never seemed repetitive or obligatory like, you know, Valentine's Day.

The second time the EarthBound world shrank for me was in meeting someone else who also grew up obsessing over it. I worked with this person for a few years and I'd like to think we both decided to become friends, at least initially, purely on the basis of our mutual affection for EarthBound. I vividly remember waking up after one of his parties, scrawling “Thanks for a great time, EarthBound for life!” on the dry erase board on the fridge, and, while various people on couches and in chairs continued to sleep, I quietly slipped out the back door to walk to my car on a Summer morning that seemed more sunny and beautiful than any had in years. Shortly thereafter he let me borrow a GBA SP with some kind of blackmarket game cart that had, among many other gems, a translated ROM of Mother 3 on it.

This image is not a link, but it is an endorsement

Now, while I would like to lament how Mother 1 and Mother 3 never came out here, and crow about how Nintendo of America has continually shat on EarthBound fans for years, that's been done to death other places before. The important thing is the warmth and affection EarthBound continues to inspire in me despite the fact that I haven't replayed it in years. So let's go back to an earlier point I left dangling—that it took giving the game a second chance to fall under its spell.

I'm almost positive I got EarthBound the year it came out but I can't for the life of me tell you why. The advertising campaign in the U.S. was so mishandled that I'm amazed anyone bought it. Even at the tender age of 11 I thought the emphasis on gross-out humor was stupid, with the ads in magazines having slogans like “Warning: use only in a well ventilated area...because this game stinks!” and “Comes with more rude smells than the ol' pull my finger joke.” Since this style of humor barely appears in the game itself, it's hard to tell who Nintendo of America thought they were selling to. It was as if someone mixed up the ad campaign for Boogerman: A Pick And Flick Adventure with EarthBound's and they were too lazy to correct the mistake. There's also the odd choice of advertising a videogame with scratch-n-sniff cards, which is kind of like advertising a movie with slap bracelets. It doesn't really make sense, but it doesn't not make sense. Those clay models were pretty cool, though.

 "Slip the monkey a banana" sounds dirty in any context

The first time I tried playing through the game I couldn't make myself finish it, even with the assistance of the strategy guide that was included inside its absurdly large box. I think my reasons at the time were the same for anyone who doesn't “get” EarthBound now: the graphics and gameplay, which were primitive and unimpressive even for their time. “Primitive” doesn't automatically equate to bad, though I don't think anyone could argue that—judging it from a technical and not an art direction standpoint—EarthBound is nowhere near as good looking as the 2D/sprite art of Chrono Trigger or the (at the time) impressive faux-3D of the Donkey Kong Country series.


As for the gameplay, EarthBound has a lot of interesting ideas that I appreciated even on my aborted first attempt but they're never what hooks anyone on this game and they never add up to something that feels truly deep. I can point to any number of these “interesting ideas”—the rolling slot machine HP meters, the way enemies far below your level run away from you and let you score instant victories if touched, the whole “Jeff will randomly fix broken items in his inventory when you rest at hotels” aspect, and much more—but I would be willing to concede that one man's “interesting idea” is another man's gimmick or novelty. I may love them and they're part of what makes EarthBound such a unique experience, yet they only matter in rare cases or on a superficial level; they don't transform it into a game you play for the mechanics. This is what I mean when I said the gameplay, like the graphics, is unimpressive and primitive to someone who isn't already in love with the game. Moreover, EarthBound doesn't have anything like the Job system, which it changes how you play the entire game because it's another layer put on top of the standard RPG leveling/character building template of “fight guys, get stronger, get better equipment, repeat.” Instead, the game's “interesting ideas” just make what would otherwise be a graduate of the Dragon Quest school of gameplay slightly more engaging and unique.


This feeling of uniqueness is crucial because it is what keeps me coming back to EarthBound after falling in love on that 'second chance' during the Summer of 1998. I can't think of any other game from the 90s that was so self aware and surreal to an almost deconstructionist, post-modern degree. It has the character Brick Road, who makes dungeons that parody and comment on how dungeons worked in RPGs of the time. Then there's the weird 'Fuzzy Pickles' cameraman who shows up during various points of the game to take screenshots, all of which you get to see at the end of the game like it's a photo album of fond memories. Warping the usual opening pre-game segment, in EarthBound you get to name not only the characters but your favorite 'thing' and your favorite food, the latter of which shows up as the dish the main character's Mom feeds you when you go back to his house (leading to some amusing, immature moments if you enter in Sperm or Farts as your favorite food). And I'd be crucified by the EarthBound fanbase if I didn't mention the Mr. Saturns, what with their unique speech patterns and the way their text is in a crazy looking font different from the rest of the game.

Yes, of course that font was exported from the game by fans. Yes, of course I downloaded it as soon as I found out.

The frustration with trying to explain everything that I feel EarthBound has going for it is that I end up writing thousands of words and still have more aspects that would require even more words to gush about. I mean, I haven't even talked about the music or sound effects, which will stay with me until the day I die because they're so memorable and perfectly complement the feel of the rest of the game. If I really wanted to, I could exhaust myself by rambling about every moment and every little thing in EarthBound that makes me geek out. Even now I find myself feeling like someone who is out of breath after excitedly talking non-stop for an hour, wheezing out repeated variations of “wait, don't go yet, I have more to say, just give me a second here!” while standing hunched over with my head down and my hands gripping my thighs.

This is what EarthBound does to you if it clicks with you, if you “get” it like I didn't at first. You end up wanting your affection to spread to everyone else, because you're so sure they'll eventually come around, too. You want your joy to be their joy even if, realistically, it's not going to work for 90% of the world like it does for you. To put it in terms of another cult-like group, it's like how when you become a fan of the Grateful Dead you no longer hear aimless noodling and lame songwriting but instead hear crackling improvisation and classic tunes that blend folk, rock, jazz, and the blues into a truly American synthesis. You want everyone else to make this same transformation, too, until you fail to convert people enough times that you eventually give up and realize it isn't going to happen.






Anyway, this was supposed to be about what the game has meant to me, and the more I think about what my life has been like these past 30 years, the more I'm realizing that EarthBound is one of my cherished right-thing-at-just-the-right-time-of-my-life experiences that helped me understand myself, and even life in general, a little better. As odd as it feels to talk about a videogame so reverently, I also feel like I can never do justice to it regardless of how well I explain the very specific things it means to me. And that's usually a sign of something or someone that has had a profound impact on my life and in shaping what my sensibilities are and how I think about the world. EarthBound was a revelation, unlike anything I had played before. I didn't know there could be games like that and I didn't know I wanted a game like that. I knew I wanted an RPG that was different from things like Chrono Trigger and Ultima VI, but the ways I wanted it to be different I couldn't have put into words until I experienced them in EarthBound.

The only way I can explain it better is with an overlong food analogy. Imagine growing up somehow not knowing about bacon while also always craving it. You can't put a name to your desire because as far as you know it doesn't exist. You like pork chops just fine but you want something that's like them but...different. “Different how?” your friends would ask, and you'd shrug while staring off into the distance and answer, “I dunno...just, different. Not bigger or smaller or with stuffing. Different.” Years later you're on a business trip in some other city, sitting in a restaurant looking at the menu thinking, “I've never had...'back-on' before, but everyone here seems to love it. It sounds like something I might like, I'm into trying new things...Oh, it's pronounced 'bay-kin', huh?”

I guess what I'm saying is, I like EarthBound as much as bacon. Anyway.

If you don't like bac—I mean EarthBound, or you don't “get” it, that's fine. No amount of my words will convert you, just as I could never hope to make anyone love the Grateful Dead. I don't know that people who grew up after EarthBound first came out will give it a chance or fall for it like many of my generation did. All we, the faithful, will ask is that you keep out of our secret clubhouse, the one hidden in the trees in Onett. If you don't get that reference then you'll probably want to just turn off the SNES right now, but not before calling your Dad to save your game.

Mother 3

Any sequel to a work that I hold near and dear to my heart prompts simultaneous feelings of joy and dread. For every sequel that's just as good or even better than the original, there's at least twice as many that are total let downs or lack what made the original great. Since Earthbound, aka Mother 2, was such a huge step forward from Mother 1 in terms of gameplay and story, it was hard to know what to expect from its sequel, which ended up taking more than a decade to come out. I had already conceded that there was no way Mother 3 could make the same kind of deep, lasting impact on me that Earthbound did, since that was a once in a lifetime, 'right game at the right time' confluence of events. It speaks volumes for Mother 3, then, that judged on its own merits and against the RPGs of its original Japanese release date era, it's still a wholly unique and satisfying title.

Mother 3 employs a similar narrative structure to Dragon Quest IV, playing out in chapters that feature different characters in each one until the main party is formed and is relatively stable through the last few. The game's story is surprisingly dark and mature, starting off with an unexpected tragedy that plays out with a sophistication and tact completely unknown to most videogames. The surprisingly expressive 2D sprites and animations help a great deal, though it is kind of odd that the enemies in battles aren't animated. But I digress. In Mother 3, you may still ultimately be going on a quest to save the world, which is hardly novel, but as with Earthbound, it's all the places, people, and events that you encounter along the way which make this game so compelling and unique. What's more, the various callbacks and ties to Earthbound thankfully come off as well done treats for fans and not empty, artificially implemented fan service.

Though Mother 3's story and world are nearly flawless, including some final boss battles that are every bit as memorable and artfully done as Earthbound's, the gameplay does seem a bit unbalanced and dated by today's standards. The rhythm based battle system never clicked with me, but it's not necessary to survive. No, my problem with the gameplay is its strict adherence to jRPG norms. In the early chapters of the game, this works against it because of the way the plot is structured. Controlling only one or two party members at a time, there are many surprisingly difficult spots in the game that end up being far more grindy and luck based than they should. In particular, the chapter where you play as Duster going to an abandoned castle to steal something was frustrating, as you have to use items to heal and you're dependent on his not 100% reliable thief tools to incapacitate or debilitate foes. But in general there's an unbalanced feel to the game, particularly in its boss battles, since some of them are neigh impossible until you've leveled up enough to get the right PSI powers. What's more, the eventual main party of Mother 3 also lacks balance, especially in comparison to Earthbound. Only two members can use PSI powers, so their “spellbooks” are huge and unwieldly to navigate. Meanwhile, one of your party members is a dog, who's only use is to see the weaknesses of enemies as well as having a high speed stat. This 'weakness seeing' ability could easily have been another thief tool of Duster's, so the dog ends up feeling like a generic warrior type. Sure, the dog is cute and fun for story purposes, but as a party member in a RPG he's boring

And that sums up my feelings pretty nicely about Mother 3. I really loved the game, but I loved it in spite of my issues with its gameplay. Like Earthbound, the fact that it's an RPG is almost incidental to its uniqueness and artful story. Speaking of, I'd like to give special mention to the very well done translation, which elevates an already excellent game to 'underground classic' status in my book. This is easily the highest quality fan translation I've ever seen and it so perfectly captures the spirit of the game and the series that it's hard to believe it wasn't official. Anyway, Mother 3's gameplay may be frustrating and unbalanced from time to time, but it's one of those videogames, like Silent Hill 2 or Shadow Of The Colossus, where it's easy to forgive or overlook gameplay or control deficiencies because the world and the narrative contained therein is so refreshing, daring, and memorable. Its subtle themes of anti-capitalism and anti-urbanization may be lost on some, but I doubt anyone can make it through the ending and the things that take place between the family members of the main character, and not be genuinely moved.

5 Poorly Drawn Stars Out Of 5

My Favorite Games: Earthbound

Another new video series? Sure!

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EarthBound

There were a few older games I understood and appreciated more as I got older, but by and large the games of today are much more rife for reinterpretation and revisiting because they are trying to say something or give you more to work with. I mean, the original Mario for NES is still a lot of fun, but unless you're going to get really pretentious and read things into it that the designers never intended, your understanding of it now is still "hey, jumping on stuff is fun!!"

EarthBound, then, is an older game that I understand much better today, now that I've moved beyond "is this entertaining or not??" as my sole determining factor for something being successful or not. As a game, EarthBound is very entertaining and a cult classic: a quirky RPG set in modern day with an odd sense of humor and an absurd, surrealist take on the world. At it's core, though, it's a competent Dragon Quest clone. EarthBound wasn't a huge success in the U.S. when it was release, but now it has a fanatical following that Dragon Quest has never achieved here. How to account for this, when the game is, as I said, a veritable clone of an unpopular-in-the-U.S. RPG series?? Sure, it's unique, but that's not always enough.A lot of the reason the game has been so cherished for so long has to do with all the things you don't think about while playing it. It's only after you're done with the game that you begin to think about what it's trying to do, what it achieves, and what it's about. Other than its sheer uniqueness, the allure of EarthBound is the same as that of the Dragon Quest series: the characters and scenario writing. I absolutely loved Dragon Quest VIII for the PS2 even though it's pretty much built on the same gameplay style from the series' 8 bit days. Like EarthBound, I loved it for the places you go, people you meet, and things you do. To be sure, EarthBound has incredibly interesting locales, from the trippy Moonside to the zombie infested Threed to the mysterious and aptly named Deep Darkness.
At the same time, EarthBound features a memorable set of characters that still inspire love today, most notably the (in)famous Mr. Saturn creatures, who've gone on to be weapons in Nintendo's Smash Brothers series. But let's get back to my three thinking points--to start, what is EarthBound trying to do?? Well, on the surface it's attempting to be a weird RPG that overturns many genre conventions. But beyond that, in actual practice, it's a pretty decent parody of the genre though it's not always explicit about it. In a early area of the game, the player's party has to defeat a group of moles who've hindered a mining operation in a desert. Funnily enough, every mole threatens you pre-battle and promises that it's the third strongest of the group. More brilliantly, the game breaks the fourth wall by requiring you to call your Dad to save the game; Dad is a character you never actually see, but who sometimes calls to remind you it's a good idea to take a break (implicitly, in real life, to take a break from the game) and save your game. The game's excellent translation helps these parodies succeed, thanks not just to faithful-in-spirit-but-not-literal-word-for-word-translating but also to neat tricks like the odd speech pattern and borderline-unreadable-font that the Mr. Saturn talk in.
In the game's most overt commentary on the RPG genre, you meet a character named Brickroad who designs dungeons for a living. His first appearance is right after a simple, rudimentary dungeon, the kind you may have seen in 8 bit RPGs, with only a few paths and dead ends and no possibility of losing your way or dying. Later when you encounter him again, he has become Dungeon Man, a literal living dungeon in a the form of a giant stone humanoid. After entering him, you climb to his top 'floor' in order to interact with him. On the way there are plenty of signs that comment on the dungeon and dungeon design in general, such as what a good dungeon should have. It's all very...meta and post-modern, when you think about it. What EarthBound achieves is to both critique and transcend its own genre. There is an undefinable quality in regards to what the game is about that I'll get to in closing, but its success as 'parody' and 'paragon' deserves further mention. Though it is, at heart, based heavily on the Dragon Warrior gameplay style, it's a bit more advanced in a few ways thanks to its unique-ness. For starters, the modern setting lets the game play fast and loose with convention. In typical Dragon Warrior-style RPGs, you stay in old timey Inns to rest, and you save at seemingly arbitrary locations, like with the Innkeeper or at glowing crystalline savepoints. You also get money from a bank or your characters simply hold unto all the money at all times. In EarthBound, you stay at hotels to rest, which also cleverly have bellhops reading you snippets from local newspapers as an ongoing commentary on the plot. There phones you can call your Dad on in order to save (or to order pizza deliveries, talk to your Mom to cure homesickness, and to access the game's storage system). Finally, there are ATMs in the world that allow you to depost or withdraw money.
EarthBound's gameplay and its battle system specifically are better than the usual Dragon Warrior clones. Instead of instantly being killed by a fatal blow, your characters have slot machine-style rolling meters for their life, perhaps indicating your character, when mortally wounded, is bleeding to death and trying to get off quick, desperate attacks rather than instantly succumbing. Instead of swords, armor, and magic spells, you are armed with baseball bats, frying pans, hats, bottle rockets, and psychic powers. Instead of static backgrounds of the current terrain, you get psychedelic colors and patterns. And finally, instead of the usual grand and dramatic ending, in EarthBound you get to revisit all the areas of the game to hear new dialogue from the characters before simply...going home and going to bed.
This last bit is important, because what EarthBound is about is growing up while still desiring to stay young and a child. Some have noted this interpretation of the game, and the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. Sure, the first set of towns you go to are called Onett, Twoson, Threed, and Fourside as clever wordplay and a simple way to remember which towns you went to in what order, but moreso it makes me think about how, just as games get more difficult as you go, in real life, growing up and getting older means that life becomes more complicated and difficult, too. The desire to stay young is something I read into the game, because there's an underlying feeling of nostalgia and childlike melancholy running through the whole thing that I can't quite explain. Since I replay the game every few years and simultaneously experience this feeling from the game itself as much as I do thinking back to other times I played the game and what age I was, this whole thing becomes a self-fueling loop of nostalgia. The game seems to feel the same way, because during the ending, on top of being able to revisit every place you had been to during the game, you also get to look back via a photo album of snapshots taken by a mysterious photographer during the course of the game. Could this photographer be interpreted as the player's memory of specific moments from a game, which you naturally revisit when you're doing playing?? Perhaps.

That I'm able to get so much from EarthBound this many years later...well, I think it really says a lot about the quality and depth of the game, its world, and its story. What you bring to it is equally as important as the game itself, and the fact that a much younger version of me enjoyed it as much as I do now--with all my interpretations and pretensions--is pretty incredible.

Killer7

Killer7 is definitely a game that I would not consider 'fun', but one that demonstrates the potential of videogames as a storytelling medium. You could tell this story as a movie, manga, novel, etc. but it wouldn't be quite the same narrative as it was in this game. The various tools the game uses--the cell shaded graphics, the inspired/unique sound design (the acoustic guitar strum when items appear; the mechanical voice saying "bullet"), the intentionally awkward controls (at first I hated them, but after awhile they seem very deliberate), the mix of anime and CG cutscenes, the interactions in the 'save rooms' (the TV channel idea is charmingly bizarre)--could never be done in any other medium.
I know people are starting to apply the auteur theory to videogame designers, but this is a case where I feel it truly applies. You couldn't get a game like this out of any designer other than Suda51. As the game is a surreal, complex mess that I'm still trying to unravel after the ending, it reminds me a lot of a David Lynch film, open ended meanings and "leave it up to each viewer/player to decide for themselves" and all. In a similar fashion to how you always get the impression Lynch had a hand in everything in his films from the sound scoring to the camera angles to the production design to the dialogue, you get the sense that Killer7 was entirely Suda's vision brought to life.

This isn't to say that Killer7 is a flawless masterpiece. There's a big difference between an 'art' game and a great 'art' game. Just as I've never seen a movie quite like Lost Highway but don't consider it a great movie, I've never played a game like Killer7 but don't consider it a great game. This raises a whole 'nother side debate of why I play certain games, and what I hope to get out of them. Killer7 is a unique, inspired, and utterly memorable experience (experience being the key word here) but playing it is often a frustrating chore. Even though you effectively can't lose because of the Garcian character, who can instantly revive dead characters by recovering their bodies, Killer7 is still a difficult-for-the-wrong reasons gameplay experience. Enemies that can instantly kill you, or that can get off cheap hits on you because you just came through a door, are something the entire medium needs to leave behind if we want more people to stick with 'art' games like this. I don't mean that such games need to be stupidly easy, but they should at least make getting through the narrative as easy as possible.
As it's a mix of a rail shooter, survival horror, and an adventure game, Killer7 doesn't do any of these pieces particularly well, but as a combined package, it's frequently brilliant. This especially comes to a head with the boss battles, which range from unique spins on the tried and true "expose/shoot the weakpoint" to a High Noon-esque duel with a dove as the timer to a predetermined, fighting game-style tournament that you play but have no direct effect on to a "final" boss fight in which you win by letting all your characters die. Kind of.

All the while, the game is playing with the conventions of the above genres, and videogames as a whole. Just as Earthbound could be taken as a parody of RPGs, Killer7 constantly undermines your idea of what a game can be and what's supposed to happen during a plot. Much as Lost Highway starts off as a mystery about the disappearance of a musician's wife before things quickly take a turn for the surreal, Killer7 starts off about a team of assassins assigned to stop a terrorist group before quickly going off the deep end. It is absolutely post-modern, and skirts dangerously close to being a meta-game at certain points. Though it may not make a whole lot of sense to you, but you'll never forget it. The levels you go through--particularly the school and the Japanese-style mansion/house--have a surreal, dream-like atmosphere that matches the ghostly characters who talk to you with their distorted, robotic voices, creepy monologues out of which you can occasionally catch a intelligible word or two.
If you approach Killer7 like you would any other game, trying to overcome the enemies and power your way through to the end, you're missing the point. Even if it is ostensibly a shooter, it's one of those games--like Silent Hill 2, Earthbound, and Shadow of the Colossus--which you're tempted, indeed encouraged, to think about when you're done playing, and to go back to over the years to catch new details. To take your time with the game, linger in its environments, and puzzle at the complicated story (and backstory) as well as the series of endings, is to fully understand what the game was trying to do. To put it succinctly, Killer7 is a game you don't play, it's a game you experience. It has its flaws (after all, it's one of those titles that the same reasons I give for loving it, other people give for hating it) but as an experience it remains one of the best the medium has to offer.

The Complainer: Virtual Console

Welcome to the first entry of my new column, The Complainer. In this column I will selfishly and egotistically complain about things that are bothering me. Sometimes it will be stuff you find amazingly obvious, amazingly petty, or just amazingly amazing. Let's begin, shall we??

Nintendo is a company that somehow inspires in me great loyalty and a fervent belief in their new consoles before doing their best to squander my devotion. To be fair, this pattern has only emerged during the Nintendo 64 days and onward, but it's something I've fallen for time and again. Nintendo announces a new and innovative product, and I beat my chest (sometimes with both fists in a tribute to Donkey Kong) and offer up my guttural approval...then it comes out, I'm intensely happy with it for a short period of time before the reality sets in. First party games come out too slowly, and third party games are by and large garbage or can be had on other consoles. All of this is excepting their handhelds, which always build incredible software libraries despite, ironically, spotty first party support.

With the Nintendo Wii, this pattern took a new turn. A sharp, dangerously-curvy-on-the-side-of-a-mountain-turn. Not only has third party support all but dried up, Nintendo has irritating elements in place which make their first foray into console online play a frustrating experience. Friend Codes are awful, and Nintendo's continuous, slave-like devotion to their reputation as the "family friendly" console company creates a kind of ultra-safe, ultra-anonymous online experience that defeats the entire purpose of playing online. Sure, you don't get the opposite side of the spectrum (namely, the griefing and casual racism/sexism of Xbox Live) but is it worth it?? There's a happy medium somewhere. Why does every single game need its own Friend Code?? Why can't my console's Wii Code be my Friend Code for everything??

But I digress. What really gets my dander up is their complete failure to make the Virtual Console into what it could have been. Don't get me wrong. I know I can't expect every company to release every old game--especially SquareEnix, who would be more content to remake or repackage their big name releases--but I am totally mystified as to the process Nintendo goes through in deciding what will come out next. Their typically draconian relationship with the press and gaming community at large means that what gets released every Monday is a mystery to everyone. Insofar as part of the purpose of, I dunno, letting the press and others know ahead of time about game releases plays into the symbiotic relationship of publisher and press (we let you know about a game before its release, you help 'advertise' it), why does Nintendo feel it's in their best interest to withhold release schedules?? I honestly have no idea how they decide what is released when, because sometimes they seem to get the idea ("maybe we should release Metroid and Super Metroid around the time Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is coming out for Wii??") but then other times waste the opportunity (maybe there are licensing issues to work out, but the original Smash Brothers for N64 should have been a no-brainer to release near Smash Brothers Brawl). My impression is that a blindfolded employee is led to room where he or she must first try to dodge three baseballs (for every baseball they don't get hit with, a title is released) and then stumble to a wall where every potential Virtual Console title is written on yellow sticky notes. Whichever one (or two, or three) they touch first (and second, and maybe third) is then released.

I won't bother to go back and pick on the awful, awful titles they've released. What I will do is suggest you go look up the list of "comfirmed but not yet released" titles for Virtual Console on Wikipedia. There are genuine classic titles like Earthbound (a series that Nintendo of America seems to inexplicably hate and wish everyday that the throng of fans would shut up and go away), Phantasy Star IV (a Genesis RPG that's always been expensive to obtain), Shining Force II (my love!!), Mega Man 2 (now that interest has been piqued by the announcement of Mega Man 9, why not release it??), and Super Dodge Ball.

Also on the list are Boogerman and Clayfighter 63 1/3, two games that should never be played by anyone, ever, and should be painfully euthanized and taken off the release list. Sadly, they will probably see release before anything anyone who isn't legally too stupid to operate a motor vehicle would want.

The Videogame Solipsist: SNES

Classy, elegant...Super.

I came to the SNES like a late guest arriving in Paris for a party in 1940 just before the Germans took over. That is to say, I was there long enough to get a feel for a very specific time and place before it changed forever. In this case, the late SNES era represented the high water mark of Nintendo before they fumbled with the N64 and never managed to fully turnover the car with the Gamecube. Also, my metaphor implies that Sony's Playstation was analogous to the Nazis and therefore it's a mess. Anyway!!

If you're a student of videogame history (and, really, why would you not want to be??), you'll know that 1995/1996 were right about the time Sega was fragmenting their Genesis player base with the 32X and Sega CD. And the Sega Saturn, which had been released months ahead of schedule that summer in a "surprise" launch that angered developers, publishers, and early adopters alike. Meanwhile, everything sailed smoothly out of the Nintendo port: no crappy add-ons, and the 'Ultra' 64 suffered delay after delay until it would be released in the fall of 1996. It wasn't hard to think that the next Nintendo system would be awesome, mainly because Sega was doing such a great job of shooting themselves in the foot. And arm. And face.

Then there was that weird Playstation thing, but Sony was just some dumb Walkman CD player company. No, Nintendo was videogames.

I got a SNES specifically for Chrono Trigger. Oh, sure, when I got mine it came with Super Mario All-Stars as well as the Super Gameboy, but the only games I really went out of my way to buy for it were all the awesome RPGs--as well as Demon's Crest, but that game is pure awesome. The only console that can rival the breadth and overall quality of the SNES in terms of RPGs is the Playstation. Consider for starters that the SNES had, arguably, three of the best Final Fantasies (though the middle one wouldn't be released in the U.S. until a Playstation port in 1999), cult classic Earthbound (which, if you bought it at the right time, came in a big honking box with the strategy guide), possible best console RPG ever Chrono Trigger, the insane mash-up of Super Mario RPG, and Secret of Mana, perhaps the best use of co-op in a console RPG pre-Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles.

My friend Dave and I, being the Shining Force fanatics that we were, would often look through Nintendo Power at our local library. The Epic Center section that appeared in it, which featured RPGs, was the closest we could get to porn at such a young age. We literally lusted after Chrono Trigger, going so far as to try to draw our own versions of the characters as classes in a Shining Force game--for the sake of interest, we made Lucca into a "Sky Princess" and Frog into a "Frog Lord." Otherwise, it was kind of the beginning of the whole "Japan is awesome, 2D is awesome, RPGs are awesome!!" phase we went through for a long time, largely because all we had to go by was our imagination as well as cryptic screenshots and descriptions from the magazine.

Other than the fact that they were awesome, what strikes me as most memorable about those games, and the SNES in general, was the quality of the sound. The system is commonly regarded as having one of the best sound chips, especially for its time, and the music of those games is still much loved today. It was the first and only time in my life that I used a boombox to record music off my TV and unto cassette tapes. Cyan's theme from Final Fantasy VI and Love and Peace from Earthbound still give me chills when I hear them.

I fully admit that I missed a lot of games during the 16 bit era because I only got a SNES toward the end. But I still think of this time as one of the happiest of my life largely due to the great RPGs on the SNES and the fun, more action-y Genesis library. Funnily enough, the Playstation would offer us the best of both worlds in due time. But first, all my friends and I had to buy tickets for the curiously beloved Nintendo 64.