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.

Player Choice and Freedom in Dragon Quest IX

Non-linearity and player choice are two of the main concepts that help define what a RPG will be. Depending on how freely you're able to progress, you can have anything from the rigidly-linear-to-the-point-of-absurdity Final Fantasy XIII to the go-wherever-you-want, do-whatever-you-want-but-you-may-die Elder Scrolls games from Bethesda. RPGs also present the player with innumerable choices beyond progressing the plot. Can you make or customize your characters, or are they pre-defined? Can you tinker with their stats/abilities/spells, or are these things going to progress in the exact same way every time, as with Final Fantasy IV? Can you return to previous locations in case you missed something, or do you have to wait until later in the game to go back?

The Dragon Quest series went from something I enjoyed to something I loved after I finished Dragon Quest IX. What strikes me the most about it, and some of the rest of the series, is its strongly Western derived non-linearity and wealth of player choice. Comparing the latest Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest entries has always been a study in contrasts in the Japanese RPG genre, but at no time in their respective histories has the difference been as stark as this year. Where FXIII was criticized for its dogmatic linearity, excising of genre traditions such as towns, and flashy-but-shallow gameplay systems, DQIX was praised for almost precisely the opposite reasons. In those regards, DQIX is indeed closer to Western style RPGs.

While its multiplayer aspects, as well as downloadable items and quests, are DQIX's most fresh and modern aspects, I found its overall classicist design to be its best asset. As with most old school Western style RPGs (as well as Dragon Quest III), you make and design both your main character and your party. I have a terrible habit of starting and never getting more than 20 hours into the original Icewind Dale because making up characters and deciding the party's composition is too much fun. DQIX goes several steps further by allowing you to change Jobs, as well as displaying every piece of equipment on your characters. The latter is something I wish all RPGs did, since you get bored of the same looking characters over the course of 40 or so hours. Anyway, the gameplay and whimsical charm of the DQIX's stories-within-the-main-story may be more classic Dragon Quest than Baldur's Gate, but there are several points in the game where you're either not immediately told where you need to go next or you're allowed to wander around to your heart's content. This is very reminiscent of Western RPGs; the original Fallout spring to mind, since you often had to explore a bit to figure out the next logical step. It's also analogous BioWare's modern games, which eventually get to a point where you have several branching locations to choose from to progress the plot, all of them tying back into the main plot thread at their conclusion.

Final Fantasy XIII may amount to a failed experiment or an attempt to revolutionize the jRPG genre in the way some of its forebearers had. That's for history to decide. On paper Dragon Quest IX may seem to be playing it safe, but like most of its forebearers, it sticks to the best traditions while simultaneously moving things forward a couple steps. In fact, much of its design is so smart and streamlined that the things that are behind the curve stand out more as a result. Had the multiplayer worked over the Internet instead of only local wireless, I think DQIX could've become the sensation here that it was in Japan. The 'Heal All' command makes a welcome return, but there are some nagging interface problems: menus/commands don't require a consistent amount of button presses, leading to mistakes; having to do some things one at a time when you should be able to do them all at once, like dropping off or calling up party members at the Stornway Inn; the traditional but probably unnecessary save system of having to go to a church; and so on. Still, these are only nagging issues at best, and I'll gladly put up with them if it means not throwing the baby out with the bathwater as FFXIII did with much of its design.

What I ended up loving most about DQIX is the way it encourages you to tinker and play around with its gameplay systems. Again, it's all about maximizing the amount of player choice. Its implementation of the Job system is among the most satisfying ever, even going so far as to let you farm skill points by leveling in one Job you don't plan on using and carrying the points back to one of your “main” Jobs. More choice still: you can evenly level the entire party in the same classes or you can play the game with only two or three characters or you can play through the game with friends in multiplayer. What's more, the game's Alchemy system can either be completely ignored or exploited to its limits during any point in the game. If you take the time out of the main quest to chase down obscure ingredients, you can produce items and equipment that are more powerful or at least cooler looking than what you can get in shops. The same applies to the 100+ side quests in DQIX: do them as they come up, do them all in one fell swoop toward the end of the game (or in the meaty post-game), or ignore them entirely. All of this, again, is in stark contrast to FFXIII; its character building system is obscurantist, trying to fool you into thinking you have more choice and customization than you really do. As for its Alchemy-style system, you're basically forced to do it to upgrade equipment. I can't speak to its side quests, since I didn't get that far in the game, but reportedly they don't open up until 30+ hours in.

While some entries in the series are more traditionally Japanese than others, Dragon Quest IX continually struck me as one of the best games at bridging the gap between the Western and Japanese approaches to RPG design. The original Dragon Quest, and other jRPGs of its era, were clearly patterned after Wizardry and other old school Western RPGs. Thus by the series sticking to its roots, it has wrapped back around to feel fresh and satisfyingly modern. Final Fantasy XII became one of my favorites of the last generation because it, too, took many cues from Western RPGs, albeit in a more purposefully modern form. It has an openness and depth of player choice that is more akin to a MMORPG or BioWare game than the other games in the series (not to mention much less of the bile inducing jRPG plucky teen heroes and pseudo-philosophical psychobabble plots). FFXIII superficially looks and plays like FFXII, but in their details and design, they are as different as, well, DQIX and FFXIII. The Dragon Quest series may never be as popular in the States as Final Fantasy is, but DQIX is definite proof that the supposedly staid and conservative jRPG genre has much life in it, thanks to the important Western influences of openness and choice.

You Or Your Memory: Final Fantasy VII

I've been trying to think of a good way to go back to some old videogames and music while at the same time getting a semi-regular column going. And so after some time mulling over ideas, I've conflated the two. For 'You Or Your Memory' I'll do just as I said: go back to videogames and music from years past and see how things shake out. Mostly it's a question of whether they still hold up, but I'll be providing some background to give you context and an idea of where I'm coming from.

Having recently purchased a PS3 about a month ago, I was perusing the Playstation Store for old games to play. For some reason Final Fantasy VII jumped out at me, even above Silent Hill 1, a game I've wanted to play for awhile now after loving Silent Hill 2 and, to a lesser extent, 3. Still, FFVII has become such a divisive game over the past 12 years since its release that I wanted to see what I would think of it now.

Ironically enough, the only place I'd played FFVII before was on the PC. I was a brainwashed Nintendo fanboy back in '97 and most of '98, so by the time I got a Playstation I didn't want to go back to FFVII since there were so many newer RPGs coming out. More importantly, though, I bought the pretty awful PC port of FFVII that Eidos did, so there was never any true need for me to pick it up for the Playstation. I say the port was pretty awful because it was. For whatever reason, the FMV played upside down so that the polygonal characters were completely opposite of where they were supposed to be. Cloud would fall "down", but the FMV was flipped so really he was soaring toward the ceiling. Despite this, I recall getting to the very end of the game (thanks to FAQs) but never beating it.

Since the late 90s there has been a tremendous growth in the number of RPG fans, many of whom cut their teeth on FFVII. For a lot of gamers in the West, it was the first Japanese style RPG they had played. However, I was somewhere in the middle between the people who first experience Japanese style RPGs with the original Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy on the NES and the aforementioned FFVII generation. My first Japanese RPG experiences were on Genesis with the Shining Force series and on SNES with Final Fantasy VI. Parallel to this, I was playing a lot of great stuff on the PC, though Bioware had yet to revitalize PC RPGs with Baldur's Gate so I didn't have any real sense of Western vs. Japanese RPG design anyway. What I did have, though, was pretty impressive graphics on the PC, which made the primitive 3D characters and pre-rendered backgrounds of FFVII seem a bit off. So when I did finally play FFVII on PC, a game that was ostensibly the first true "next gen" RPG (again, Baldur's Gate wasn't out, and my last RPGs were 16 bit), it seemed more like a weird transitional piece between late SNES RPGs and Playstation and PC titles to come. I'm especially thinking of Super Mario RPG: Legend Of The Seven Stars for "late SNES RPGs" here, a game which also toyed with 3D and pre-rendered backgrounds (or at least, I think it did...)

At any rate, I neither loved nor hated FFVII after my first experience with it. I don't know quite how to explain this, but it ended up being a pretty forgettable game for me. This was back in the time when if I couldn't understand a game's story, I assumed it was because I wasn't smart enough to get it--not that, you know, the game had had an awful translation. So the story and characters didn't especially grip me, the gameplay and character building seemed a bit dumbed down from FFVI, the graphics were odd, and the music was weird, squelchy MIDI shit in a time when PC games seemed to be going for "real" music and orchestration. But still, it was an OK game, and my ambivalence made it unmemorable.

Coming back to it in 2009, my initial enthusiasm saw me make quite a lot of progress in a few days. But I only made it to a bit of the way through disc 2 of FFVII before giving up. While I don't think it's actually a bad game based on its own merits and the standards of its day, it is a rather unfortunate case of a game aging poorly and being done in by its offspring. If one were to make the argument that FFVII was one of the most influential and important titles of the Playstation 1, I'd be hard pressed to argue. Bad translation and awful sounding music aside, so much of what that game did was, at the time, evolutionary if not outright revolutionary. The way CG cutscenes and cinematics were employed, the dynamic 3D battles and camera angles, the lack of censoring or changing Japanese elements (sure they still substituted gibberish for some swearing, but still left multiple shit's and the weird gay bathhouse part in), and the way the game tried for a more serious, pseudo-spiritual/philosophical plot...it was all damned cool at the time.

Unfortunately, almost everything about FFVII has not held up. Assuming you're a blind fan who has played the game so many times you don't even see it for what it is, you'll probably never feel that it's less than one of the best games ever made. But I think most people, even those who were blown away by it at the time, will admit that it hasn't aged well. Most of the revolutions it brought to the Japanese RPG archetype have been so improved upon and finessed that I would posit the notion that, with Final Fantasy II being a bit worse, FFVII is probably the least interesting and least playable Final Fantasy game by today's standards. There's a charm and artistry to sprite artwork that never goes away, while early polygonal/3D games like FFVII look like ass by today's standards. At the same time, since FFVII's story was originally kind of a mess made even worse by poor translation, you can't even enjoy it for that today. And the character building system is incredibly boring since all of you're actually building and improving is Materia. Sure, character stats go up with levels, and they learn new Limit Breaks, but all abilities and magic depend on which Materia is equipped to whichever character, effectively making everyone interchangeable. FFVI had something similar with Espers, but they were mostly for summons and spells; the characters had inherent special abilities, however, giving them each more personality and unique-ness in battle.

I'd be curious to see what younger people would think of FFVII. No, I don't mean people who played FFVII when they were 8 or 8. I mean people who didn't play FFVII back in the day at all, people who got into RPGs from latter day Pokemon titles or what have you. Given the context of the rest of the Playstation and Playstation 2 era RPGs (and games in general), I just don't think FFVII holds up in any way: graphics, story, or gameplay. Still, it is a curious time capsule of a game, and one that is crucial for understanding the past as well as the present and future of Japanese RPGs. I will agree on those points, at least; just don't make me play it anymore. FFVII may have been one of the best games of 1997, but it's also one of the worst in 2009.

The Videogame Solipsist: Baldur's Gate I

Baldur's Gate(PC) 1998

In the mid to late 90s, I flirted with being even nerdier than I already was: Magic The Gathering and other 'collectible card games' became a short time obsession. In fact, I had subscribed to InQuest magazine and eventually tried forcing all of this on my friends. As if that wasn't enough, the same went for a starter kit of Dungeons & Dragons. I might have gotten my friends to try collectible card games once or twice, but the D&D kit never saw use beyond me reading the big manual over and over, messing with the figures included, and wishing I had friends who weren't jerks. Since I never had a girlfriend in high school without being a D&D and Magic playin' fool, I doubt it would've made much difference. And I think I would have really loved D&D because, hell, I'm a writer and I'm a good improviser. Plus I have a soft spot for anything fantasy. On a sidte note, one of friends was really into Warhammer, specifically the naval sort of Warhammer, so I don't know why he felt so 'above' my stuff. But I guess this is just nerdy kettles calling nerdy pots black.

Anyway, it was during this time that my family got a second, newer computer and I was getting fed up with my Nintendo 64. Thus I ended up going through a phase where I played a bunch of awesome PC games in about 3 months before I got back into console gaming again thanks to the Playstation I got for Christmas in 1998. With Half-Life 1 and Starcraft fresh in my memory--two games that revolutionized their respective genres--it seemed only appropriate that I would play Baldur's Gate in early '99, a game that similarly revolutionized PC RPGs after they had spent years wandering in the wilderness.

The original Baldur's Gate is one of those "classic" games that you can go back to now and find lots of flaws with. It's a matter of evolution in terms of game mechanics and graphics. Graphically, it hasn't aged badly, but it doesn't still look amazing, either. Mostly, I suppose, the flaws are with its gameplay, which tries to encompass too much in one game. To be a true D&D experience, it would need to allow for a wider range of options and character types. Even though you can go anywhere at any point in the game, theoretically, you're definitely guided down a linear series of stops. At the same time, you'll be hard pressed to finish the game if you don't make a character that's at least very good at combat. Baldur's Gate isn't as combat intensive as the dungeon hacky Icewind Dale games, but it's still more or less mandatory to beat the game. The Fallout games did a bit of a better job with this 'open ended character' idea; it wasn't easy to finish Fallout 1 or 2 with a non-combat character, but it was at least possible. This isn't the case for Baldur's Gate, but then again, that kind of play never interested me. I suppose the biggest problem with the game is that you would really need to know a lot about the D&D universe and rule system to understand most things without trial and error. The death mechanic and spell systems are very, very different from most other RPGs and without reading the impressively thick manual you would only find these things out too late. Even as familiar as I was with D&D, it took me awhile to get over the fact that Warrior types are incredibly basic and have no 'special' attacks. And the armor class thing has thankfully been finessed a bit in later rule revisions of D&D. THAC0?? Oh no!!
However, I'm not here to criticize Baldur's Gate. Sure, the future Bioware/Black Isle games would improve on nearly every aspect of this game--from the combat (the Icewind Dale series), the story/dialogue (Planescape: Torment), to the expansiveness of the world and number of options available to you (Baldur's Gate II)--but there's always something to be said for being first. To my knowledge, this was the first RPG that operated in real time but let you push the spacebar to 'pause' the action and issue commands on the fly. This made the game simultaneously more streamlined and more strategic than the average PC RPG. This 'real time' concept carried over into the non-combat elements of the game, meaning that Baldur's Gate had day/night cycles and changing weather. Unfortunately this tied in with the D&D mechanics of how you regained spells and replenished health, so you would have to stop every so often and 'rest', causing hours to pass in the process so that you would suddenly be in the dead of night and at a disadvantage (unless you had someone with infravision). Or you might have that annoying thing where you try to rest but random enemies interrupt your sleep, so your battered party has to fend off some foes with low health and/or spells. In which case you quickly learned to use (abuse??) the game's save/load system. And if you didn't rest, eventually your party members would complain incessantly and their abilities would suffer. This made the game more realistic but also more frustrating, too.
Though I never got far into the game, the story and characters were the first inkling most of us got of how brilliant Bioware/Black Isle's writers were. The first two Fallout games were out by this point but they were mostly just about the character you made; as they were set in post-nuclear war settings, you were alone for long stretches of time and the world was a lot of empty, moody expanses. Still, it all gets a bit complicated when you know that while Bioware wasn't involved with the Fallout series, Black Isle worked a bit on Baldur's Gate and solely developed later games using the Infinity Engine ( the engine made for Baldur's Gate) including the aforementioned Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale. At any rate, I was looking over a FAQ for this game yesterday and Baldur's Gate has way more characters than I remember, most of them with unique voice actors and personalities. The most memorable is, of course, the crazy Minsc, who has a hamster named Boo who he thinks is some kind of 'giant space hamster.' It'll be awhile before you forget his battle cry of "Go the eyes Boo, go for the eyes! Rarrrghhhhh!" The story, meanwhile, was a classic fantasy tale of the main character (who you create) trying to figure out his or her backstory set against the backdrop of bandit raids and an iron shortage in the Baldur's Gate/Sword Coast region. I think it eventually comes out that you're a spawn of one of the Gods or Demons of the D&D world, which is a pretty interesting plot twist.
Though the Fallout series got there first, Baldur's Gate set the precedent of Bioware games having moral choices and entirely different quests based on your actions. Of course this moral system is borrowed wholesale from the D&D 'alignment' system, but it arguably makes the first, best, and most consistent use of it in an adaptation of D&D to videogame. Depending on your alignment and the responses you give in dialogue, you can end up intimidating people, tricking them, insulting them, praising them, and much more. Not only did this go for NPCs, it went for your party, too. Depending on their alignment, the characters in your party might leave if they don't like your actions or how you're running things. There are also a few 'pairs' of characters, so if you, say, get rid of Jaheira or Khalid, the other will leave, too. If memory serves, you could even run into situations where your party members were so horrified/disappointed with your actions, they would leave and subsequently attack you. Speaking of killing: since I didn't play Fallout until later, this was also the first RPG I played where you could kill anyone you wanted in the game. Yes, this would call down the guards and eventually powerful bands of mercenaries and troops, but it was a really novel thing for the time.

I still have my complete box copy of Baldur's Gate and looking over the contents just now really puts me back in the mood and mindset of a younger version of me, incredibly excited to sit down with this game and go on an adventure. The Baldur's Gate series always struck a Lord Of The Rings-like balance of exploration, story/dialogue, and combat, and so whenever I think of classic RPGs--PC or console--it's usually what I'm thinking of. Looking back, the game has some flaws insofar as the gameplay is concerned--the difficulty varies wildly depending on your party and how you're playing the game, on top of the sudden curves already inherent to it because of the various assassins and 'boss' characters--and you'll need to do a lot of tweaking and modding to get it to run properly on today's computers. But I would argue that, for its time and for how its aged, Baldur's Gate is every bit as important and still incredible as its '98 brothers, Starcraft and Half-Life.

Just remember to gather your party before venturing forth.

The Videogame Solipsist: Dragon Quest IV

Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen (DS)

While the rest of the world is going crazy in anticipation of election results, I thought I would spend today's update escaping into the simple, charming fantasy world of Dragon Quest IV. Because to me, that's what good RPGs have always been: pure, escapist delight.

Games journalism has bloomed to include genuine critical discourse, and so a lot of it has had to do with history and context to help us understand how we've gotten here. Through venues like 1UP's Retronauts podcast and the exhaustive work of Hardcore Gaming 101, we've reached a better understand of videogames as both an entertainment medium and an artform. As a nerd who grew up loving RPGs even before they were popularized in 1997 by Final Fantasy VII, it's been fascinating to see the retro/critical collective fill in the gaps on the two biggest console RPG series's going: Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy.

Though things were even more sparse in Europe, America got both series in an odd fashion and missed several key titles in both. It was only in 2006 that we finally, officially, got every numbered entry in the main Final Fantasy series, while we've still yet to see Dragon Quest V and VI in the U.S. Thankfully, they are coming via the Nintendo DS in the next year or two.

The story of the Dragon Quest franchise, especially as it pertains to the U.S., has been better told elsewhere. Mainly I want to focus on the gap in America's view of the series. Growing up, I did play the first Dragon Quest game (released here as Dragon Warrior) and despite its age I thought it was an interesting game. I wasn't savvy enough to realize it had taken several years to be released here so I assumed its archaic-look and fool was purposeful. Besides, I didn't get around to playing it until I was currently obsessed with the Shining Force games on Genesis, so...

Like many people, then, I ignored the series, missing the American releases of II, III, and IV. Technically I suppose I didn't even know they existed since I didn't play the first one until around 1994, but...whatever. Sadly, Enix closed up shop in the U.S. after releasing a handful of terrible RPGs on the SNES and deciding Americans didn't like the genre. The next Dragon Quest we got would be VII, but I think it bears dwelling on the fact that the majority of this country never played DQ II, III, and IV so we didn't exactly know we were missing V and VI. VII, of course, did little to change our mind about the series: it was a SLOOOOWWW, archaic, and boring-ly translated jRPG. I think Shane Bettenhausen said it best on the Retronauts episode about the Dragon Quest series, that it was a mechanics heavy RPG with visuals that were an "abortion."

It's depressing that we re-entered the series with VII since it is, arguably, one of the weakest entries in the series. It would be like judging the Final Fantasy series by Final Fantasy II. The remainder of the Dragon Quest series was much more focused and had far better balance, pacing, and scenario writing. This is what I discovered with Dragon Quest VIII, along with most of the people who were interested in the series but passed on VII. And the more I've played of Dragon Quest IV, the more I understand why the Japanese are so crazy for this series. It's got nothing to do with ambitious (some would say, pretentious) storylines, bleeding-edge graphics, or ever changing gameplay systems like the Final Fantasy series and everything to do with sheer charisma and old fashioned story telling.

Dragon Quest IV is an incredible achievement, both in its original NES incarnation and now on the DS. The way you play the various 'chapters' before controlling the main hero character of the game is a fascinating concept that I wish more RPGs would have borrowed. In the game's most infamous and unique chapter, you play as a merchant trying to make money, flipping the tables on the entire RPG genre convention of shopkeepers. Now you play the normally anonymous shopkeeper while a succession of heroes (and maybe even some villains) comes in, makes their transaction, and leaves. At the same time, the chapters have little ties to the other characters therein, as well as overlapping areas of the game. In the second chapter, you visit some of the same areas you will, later, as the merchant, for instance, and when playing as the merchant you hear about the fighting tournament you participated in during the previous chapter. The only thing that comes close, as far as I remember, is the 'Trinity Sight' scenario system of Suikoden III (which is secretly one of the best PS2 RPGs). But that was played on a much larger and more ambitious scale. And it had duck-people. Aaaanyway...

Really, I love Dragon Quest IV (and by extension, VIII) for the aforementioned charm and old fashioned story telling. There's just something about the feel of the game, from the gorgeous 2D graphics to the animated-with-plenty-of-personality sprites to the phenomenal soundtrack and wonderfully retro sound effects to the imaginative and clever new translation...all of it works for me, plain and simple. The gameplay may not be ambitious, the battle system may not have as much depth as certain Final Fantasy titles, but that's OK. Nothing about Dragon Quest IV, in this day and age, is attempting to be revolutionary even if, for the time, it was an amazing game. The story line may be simplistic and cliched by today's standards, but you can boil almost anything down to the same few stories. Hero save the world, the end. The important thing it that it's told well, and Dragon Quest IV manages to do that.

I will confess that I was more excited to play Dragon Quest V and VI than IV mainly because they were the contemporaries of Final Fantasies IV, V, and VI, which are the console RPGs I most associate with moving the genre forward during the 16 bit era. From what I've read, they're just as charming as Dragon Quest IV but have deeper gameplay/character building systems, too. Yet in playing Dragon Quest IV, I've really come to appreciate it as its own entity as well as an important touchstone in the jRPG genre. I feel as though history has been re-written again. Final Fantasy IV is often touted as the point where story began to be emphasized in console RPGs while also being the first true "next gen" RPG...but Dragon Quest IV would be an even earlier example. It's not the story that it tells so much as how it's told; the characters and the scenario writing are miles beyond the characters and scenario writing of its then-contemporary Final Fantasy III. I suppose if we really wanted to split hairs, Phantasy Star I, which pre-dates both, had an ambitious story and characters even earlier...but whatever.

Dragon Quest IV is a really great game, and anyone interested in retconning the history of console RPGs as they think it happened should check it out.

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.

The Videogame Solipsist: Shining Force I and II

I'm not really sure where I first heard of Shining Force. It's one of those games that, somehow, comes into your life and you feel like it's always been there. I want to say that I rented it from the local video store because I thought the screenshots on the back of the box looked like Zelda, but I don't particularly think they do now. I guess I had a vivid, deluded imagination as a kid.

Shining Force I was the first strategy RPG I ever played, though I didn't know what RPGs were and my only strategy in the game was to kill everything regardless of any pointless peril I was putting my characters in. It speaks volumes for the easiness of this game that I never bothered to level grind as a kid because I didn't understand the concept. I just knew that a lot of my people died in every battle, and once mages ran out of MP they were worthless as anything other than bait.
People talk a lot about how 2D games have more lasting aesthetics and appeal, and it's games like Shining Force that I think of when this comes up. Though 16 years old, the game still looks cool even if the sprites aren't up to the later standards of, say, Chrono Trigger or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. For its time, though, Shining Force had incredibly large and detailed in-battle cutscenes. The characters animated well, and besides, the game had that awesome, fun dialog/choice/menu system, with cool animated icons instead of simple "yes/no/item/attack/etc." options. Though Blizzard is rightfully praised for their brilliant interfaces and--frankly--awesome looking icons/menus, Shining Force was an early game that even as a kid and not a critic I could appreciate on that level.If there's a problem with the game--and this is something that's endemic to the second game as well--it's that, the further you got into the game, the harder it was to train up new recruits. Since characters join your party at pre-determined levels, and even if you aren't actively leveling instead of just playing, they'll always be behind your other characters. Some characters overcome this by being so outrageously badass you force yourself to use them (see Hanzou the Ninja, above) while others--like Bleu the Dragon--require hours of effort to baby them up to your level. I'm told that he and the other 'useless' characters, like Arthur the magic using Knight, become incredibly strong if given enough time, but honestly the game is easy enough that it's not worth it.

At some point, Shining Force II came out. This was back in a time when you weren't always following release dates or waiting for sequels, so one day I saw it at the video store and excitedly rented it for a weekend. It was everything I'd wanted out of a sequel--bigger, more characters, slightly better looking, and a more free roaming style than the original game. I even woke up early before going to church just so I could squeeze some more time in with it because I knew it had to go back on Monday.

For any number of reasons, I never bought Shining Force II or received it as a gift. I suppose it's mainly because my friend Dave and I rented it so often, praying that other people who had it in the meantime didn't erase our save, that we felt as though we already did own it. To my knowledge I never beat either Shining Force until I was older, though I do remember playing someone else's save for a bit and seeing the very late stages of the game, marveling at how insanely strong and godlike the player's party becomes later on.
The most significant addition to the game--and the one that I wish more games would borrow--was in how you could use items to promote your characters to new, different classes. In the original game, all your characters had a set promoted class they could become. Knights became Paladins, Warriors became Gladiators, Mages become Wizards, etc. But in Shining Force II, you could use certain items to allow different promoted classes: Knights could become Pegasus Knights, Warriors could become Barons, Mages could become Sorcerors, Priests could become Master Monks, and Archers could become Brass Gunners. With the exception of the latter, these 'secret' classes were flat out better than their 'standard' counterparts. With the addition of the absurdly strong Peter (see below), they made the game even easier than the original had been. To be fair, Shining Force II offered a difficulty selection, though from what I've read all it affects is the intelligence and ruthlessness of the enemy AI.
Shining Force II's only flaw is that it's broken. As in, easy to the point of laughable. Enemy AI aside, the characters you get in this game are ridiculously strong even without the 'hidden' promotions. Peter joins your party no matter what, and he often can turn the tide of even the game's most precarious battles all by himself. Moreover, the main character of the game (you name him, so I'm referring to him in the generic) is a monster. The main character of the original was no slouch, particularly when you got to the end game's powerful, unique swords, but in the sequel he even gets a lightning spell that puts his MP to some use other than casting Egress to escape battles. On top of all of this, you get Mithril throughout the game. I never knew this as a kid, because I never found the hidden village, but later in the game there's somewhere you can go to 'spend' the Mithril to get amazing new weapons. This seems to be determined randomly from a pool of set weapons based on the character asking for it, but by abusing save states or diligently saving/resetting over and over, you could outfit most of your party with the game's best weapons.

Though I actually have played Shining Force III, at the great expense of my friend Dave, it never really caught on with us. There's something about the original two games that feels timeless and fantastic. I think I can see why they've never made a true strategy RPG Shining Force title since the third, mainly because if you add anything more to the formula it makes things needlessly complicated. Shining Force I and II may be simplistic and easy compared to any of today's strategy RPGs, but I love them for it.

Overpowered RPG Characters

One of the ongoing discussions in any game with an active community is usually what character/class is over or underpowered. This usually takes the form of one group saying something is overpowered, another group pointing out how they totally aren't overpowered, and another group that either makes fun of the whole thing or says that another thing is what is really overpowered.

However, overpowered characters are not necessarily a bad thing. Most of my favorite games have them. Perhaps that says more about me than it does the games, but nevertheless...allow me to present my favorites.
Who??: Alucard
Game: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Why??: Alucard is Dracula's son. Therefore, he has all kinds of awesome-ness already going for me. Specifically to Symphony of the Night, it means that, almost from the minute you start the game, you're a walking death machine. Once you start to get better equipment and spells, the game becomes a cakewalk. In fact, this entry in the Castlevania series is notoriously easy, especially if you abuse things like the Shield Rod + Alucard Shield combo, the spell that drains the life of enemies, or the Crissaegrim sword. You might immediately say "Well, Alucard is the only playable character in the game, so does he count as overpowered?!" but you forget that you can unlock Richter Belmont and, depending on the version you're playing, Maria. Richter is a bit more challenging, while Maria is awkward and lame. So, yeah, Alucard is stupidly powerful.
Who??: Peter the Phoenix
Game: Shining Force II
Why??: When you first get Peter in your party, he looks like he does above and is controlled by the computer. Once you see him in action during a battle, though, you'll quickly learn why Peter is considered the best character in the game. Or at least the cheapest. Unlike some of the other characters in the Shining Force series, who start out horrible but with a lot of work become unstoppable, Peter is immediately awesome. After he's promoted and he starts looking more like an Aztec bird god instead of a retarded muppet, he becomes even better. Not only does Peter automatically resurrect himself so you don't have to pay money after battles to get him back, but he has gobs of attack, speed, and HP. Also, in the game's story, he permanently joins your party on the order of a God. Sweet.
Who??: Orlandu a.k.a. T.G. Cid
Game: Final Fantasy Tactics
Why??: Orlandu is one of the earliest known times where people began to use terms like 'overpowered.' Though he joins your party well into the game, he comes with the All SwordSkill ability set, meaning he can use ALL of the awesome Sword Skill attacks in the game. You know, the ones that are way too powerful and awesome. Not only that, he comes with the Excalibur sword, which casts Haste on any character wielding it. So he gets twice as many turns as your other characters, and he has some of the best unique attacks. Assuming you twink him out with some of the abilities from the game's other unbalanced classes (hello, Dual Wield from Ninjas) he becomes, you guessed it, even more powerful. Obligatory Note: T.G. Cid stands for "Thunder God Cid."
Who??: Warlocks
Game: World of Warcraft
Why??: Warlocks are a contentious subject in WoW. They have been considered overpowered since the release of the game, and while they aren't the "automatic win" that most of the other characters I'm talking about are, they still are pretty bad. WoW is a game where most classes have a specific role, or two, to play. Warlocks can seemingly do everything in the game at once, even if some of those roles are better done by other classes. Just for the sake of argument: they can DPS with awesome spells, DOT with awesome curses, resurrect healers, create items that quickly heal other players, breathe underwater with a spell, crowd control with Banish or Fear or Enslave, get their mounts and epic mounts for free (requires doing involved quest chains, but still), tank via certain pets (Felguard says "hi!!"), summon other players, siphon mana or health from enemies...

The most telling thing about Warlocks is that, for a class that can only wear cloth armor, they dominate in PvP. This is because they can max out their Stamina--thus getting a nearly bottomless reservoir of HP--and use an ability that quickly converts HP into mana, effectively giving them infinite MP for spells and making them nearly unkillable. Combined with a healer class like Paladin or Priest, in 2 v 2 matches they are gods. Combined with Shadow Priests in PvE questing, instanced dungeons, or raids, their combined Shadow spells and Shadow resistance lowering effects make them great in every situation. Whew.
Who??: Sorcerers
Game: Diablo
Why??: The first Diablo is embarrassingly unbalanced to the side of Sorcerers. Of the three available classes, they become unstoppable whirling death by game's end due to their array of spells and Mana Shield. Basically, Mana Shield causes you to take damage from your MP instead of HP. At the same time, you can spam Guardian (which summons three-headed dragon dealies to shoot at enemies) and Apocalypse (which is the big, end-game nuke spell of the game) to roll over your enemies with ease. Sorcerers are the definition of overpowered, though the early-to-mid game can be rough as it is for every caster class in most Western style RPGs. Speaking of which...
Who??: Bards
Game: Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter
Why??: I chose this one for last because it's one of the more interesting examples of the changes an expansion can bring to a seemingly set-in-stone game. The thing is, I like music a lot, but in the context of RPGs, Bards are unspeakably lame. This was especially true in the D&D games that Bioware/Black Isle developed in the late 90s/early 00s. However, with the Heart of Winter expansion pack for the dungeon hacky Icewind Dale, Bards became arguably the best class in the game, with the exception of Druids. Bards are kind of like the Warlocks of Icewind Dale: they do a lot of things and a good number of those they do well. Bards can pickpocket like Thieves, cast spells like Mages, get buffs in the form of songs, can identify items with their high Lore rating (an awesome skill that most people take for granted), get some great Bard-only items, can do certain quest things that other characters can't (in the first town, they can sing to a ghost for extra experience), and, possibly, could tank. I never bothered with the latter, though. Maybe 'overpowered' is too strong a word, but the Heart of Winter changes made the Bard one of the best classes in the game. With the final song (which they learn at a measly level 11) they become an essential part of your party.