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.

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.

The Videogame Solipsist: 16 bit Halloween Edition

(Note: again, I'm not going over every horror/monster game on the Genesis and SNES...just the ones I've played)Splatterhouse 3 (Genesis)

While Splatterhouse is a series that can look forward to a rebirth during this console generation, I'll always think of it as a 16 bit series. Something about the gameplay and 'feel' of the game just won't translate well to a modern console experience, but whatever. Splatterhouse 3 is interesting because, even though your character is pretty strong, the game is still creepy and scary. The cut scenes--featuring pretty realistic looking pictures--are scary, and I've always hated the fight against the possessed teddy bear after your son is kidnapped. Perhaps the most memorable thing about Splatterhouse 3 is how difficult it is. The game operates on a time limit, so you either end up rushing through levels and dying or you keep getting bad cut scenes and outright losing because you didn't get somewhere in time. At the same time, the controls are awful and clunky. Still, Splatterhouse 3 is notable for somehow combining the beat-em-up and survival horror genres.

Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts (SNES)

Speaking of difficult games...perhaps all most people know about this series is how damn hard the games are. Unlike Splatterhouse 3, though, the difficulty never comes from bad game design or poor controls. No, it's just a tough son-of-a-bitch of a game in which you can't make mistakes. Overcoming the obstacles and perfecting the timing required to progress is oddly rewarding, albeit useless, sorta like teaching yourself to write with your feet. Anyway, despite having demonic enemies and classic horror monsters (zombies, skeletons, etc.) Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts is more cartoony than the Castlevania series. But that's ok, because it's not supposed to be scary. It's just a legendarily hard game with great looking 2D graphics and a horror theme.

Super Metroid (SNES)

Though neither a horror game nor a monster game, Super Metroid still fits into the gray area of games that correspond to both horror and monsters. This is largely because of the fairly obvious influence of the Alien franchise on the Metroid games, giving them--Super Metroid, in particular--a creepy atmosphere. There's a pervasive sense of loneliness throughout the game, and while there are no 'scares' or terrifying things, per se, Super Metroid has always felt creepy to me. Exploring an alien planet, even empowered as you are with a power suit, is a bit unnerving at times, reminding one of the scene in the first Alien where they explore the derelict ship. All Halloween business aside, Super Metroid is somewhere in my top ten games ever, and if you haven't played it yet, you really owe it to yourself to do so. It's that good.

Alien 3 (Genesis)

Speaking of Alien...I didn't know until years later, but the Genesis and SNES versions of Alien 3 are different. Both have a similar sidescrolling shooter gameplay style, but the Genesis version is primarily concerned with you rescuing prisoners before the timer runs out and chestbursters rip out of them. This led to a bizarre situation in which, the first time you played a level, you would let everyone die so you could see where they were and thus plot a fast course to get to them all on time. Stranger still, the game is a convoluted mix of Aliens and Alien 3, such that you're still on the prison planet playing as a bald Ripley, as in Alien 3, but there are a ton of aliens and you have weapons from Aliens. I never got very far in this game and if I recall correctly the mechanics were a bit off. Ah well, it's still better than...

Alien Vs. Predator (SNES)

...Alien Vs. Predator for the SNES, which ostensibly was supposed to be a port of the awesome mid 90s arcade beat-em-up by Capcom but instead was a single player only piece of shit. It wasn't anything like the arcade game at all and was just a bad all around, making the Predator into a weak and awkward pile of garbage. On a side note, I've always wondered why sometimes the Alien and Predator crossovers are called 'Alien Vs. Predator' while others are called 'Aliens Vs. Predator.' There's never any consistency and it doesn't make sense because all of the ones with the singular 'Alien' have more than one Alien in them, not to mention most of them have more than one Predator. But, whatever. The SNES game is a pale, barely perceptible shadow of the Arcade version, which you may as well pirate because it'll never see another release due to licensing issues.

Castlevania: Bloodlines (Genesis)

I think there was a rule during the 16 bit era that companies would make what were NES/mostly-thought-of-as-Nintendo-franchise games for the Genesis, but they would be really freaking hard. Contra: Hard Corps. is virtually unplayable because it's so damn difficult, while Contra III on SNES is just 'typical Contra' hard. Meawhile, Castlevania: Bloodlines is ridiculously hard while Super Castlevania IV on SNES is just 'typical Castlevania' difficult. Maybe it's got something to do with roman numerals?? Well, in any case, Bloodlines is actually a really fun sidescroller which allows you to choose between two different characters (whip-y McBelmont or spear-y McWhat'shisname) and has, for its time and native platform, some incredible graphics and animation. I have to confess that I haven't played this one for years, so maybe I'm wrong about the difficulty, but I was way better at, and more patient with, 'hard' games as a kid, so if anything it's probably gotten worse. (Note: I never played Super Castlevania IV until about two years ago, so I won't be talking about it)

Haunting Starring Polterguy (Genesis)

Haunting is a game that I wish more people had played. It's actually a pretty novel concept: you play as the titular 'Polterguy', possessing objects in a house to try to scare a family out of it. Shades of Beetlejuice, no?? This game is actually really fun and creative, since most (if not all) of the objects do something unique to scare the family. You are limited by some kind of energy meter so the game is actually a puzzle game more than anything insofar as you have to figure out the fastest and most efficient way to get rid of the family. This 'possession' concept has been used in a few games since (off the top of my head, Geist for Gamecube uses it, although in different ways) but never as well.

King of the Monsters (Genesis)

I'd be hard pressed to come up with a game that appealed more to me, specifically the mid 90s version of me that was hugely into both Godzilla films and videogames. King of the Monsters may have been a bit of a counterfeit fulfillment of my dream for a decent Godzilla game, since the monsters within are generic versions of Godzilla and his foes, but I didn't care. You can't go wrong with a game that lets you play as giant monsters who trash cities and fight other giant monsters in the process. The game even rates you based on your destruction!! King of the Monsters is a fun-if-simplistic fighting game, and the kind of thing you play and never get very far in but don't care. Oddly, most of the modern day Godzilla games (specifically, Destroy All Monsters Melee) are essentially 3D versions of the King of the Monsters series.

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: Playstation

If the NES made strides toward turning videogames into a mainstream form of entertainment, and the Genesis tried to make videogames cool, then the Playstation was the system that combined these goals and succeeded at doing both. This success was due as much to the actions of Sony as it was the botched handling of the Saturn and the failure of Nintendo to see the future (or, given their continued reticence in the online arena, a failure to do anything about the future).

It's easy to forget that the dominance of the Playstation was neither assured nor rapid. Launched in the fall of 1995, the system really didn't start to see any great games until 1997, by which point it was more than a bit sobering to compare its game lists and upcoming releases to the Nintendo 64 and Sega Saturn. However, I don't think anyone was really 100% sure about the Playstation until that time. Though it had the massive Sony corporation backing it, almost everyone assumed that Nintendo would clean up in that generation just as they had before. As kids and/or young adults, we didn't have any idea of the background to what was happening: the expense of producing carts vs. the inexpensive Playstation CD format; the arrogance and unfriendliness of Nintendo to third party developers vs. Sony's open arms; the generally crap N64 hardware vs. the easy to program for and great design of the Playstation. Hindsight is 20/20, but I think we could be forgiven for blindly believing Nintendo's promises and being suspicious of Sony. As some have pointed out, this was the era of failed CD systems like 3DO and Sega CD, and the Playstation felt like more of the same.

By 1997, though, we all knew that the N64 was going to be Nintendo's ballgame and the Playstation had everything else you could possibly want. Everyone kept their N64 around for those--admittedly--brilliant first party Nintendo titles twice a year and spent the rest of the time focused on the Playstation. Which, as I just said, had everything else you could possibly want, including 'cool' mature titles like Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, and Final Fantasy VII. It even had things you never knew you wanted, like the cult classic Parappa the Rapper, a rhythm game that, one could argue, helped pave the way for the success of Guitar Hero in the U.S. Of course, the Playstation also had all the best racing games, sports games, action games, practically every RPG of that generation (if you didn't import Saturn titles, anyway), fighting games, stealth action (Metal Gear Solid, hello), and even some shoot-em-ups.

Bizarrely enough, all of my friends continued to drink the Nintendo cult Kool Aid during this era. I guess their own biological clock interest in videogames coincided with Nintendo, so they only needed two or three games a year. As for me, I jumped unto the Sony ship in the winter of 1998. After being unable to obtain a copy of Zelda: Ocarina of Time--the one and only game that I felt could satisfy what I wanted on the N64--I wandered over to the Playstation case in Target and I couldn't lie to myself anymore. I wanted a Playstation. Funnily enough, I didn't end up playing through Ocarina of Time until just before the release of Wind Waker on Gamecube, and I know that if I had managed to get a copy of Ocarina of Time, it would only have delayed my Playstation purchase for so long.

There are a handful of factors that made me want a Playstation--the cool factor, the relatively cheap(er) game prices, the variety of titles, the novelty of new gameplay experiences like Parappa or Metal Gear Solid--but the main one was RPGs. Though it runs neck and neck in my heart with the SNES for having both the most and best RPGs, there's no denying how much the Playstation did for popularizing and expanding the RPG market in the U.S. This is largely due to the success of Final Fantasy VII, but since the install base of the Playstation grew so large, companies like Atlus and Working Designs were willing to risk bringing obscure RPGs over because they could probably turn a profit. I know that I bought at least a few RPGs for each year the Playstation was active, and not all of those were Square titles. So it became a positive Catch 22: more people were buying RPGs because more RPGs were being released, and more RPGs were being released because more people were buying them.

Life during the Playstation era was good, but we all still had eyes out for the next batch of consoles. During 1998, we began to hear about Sega's next console, the Dreamcast, which would be released in the U.S. on Sept. 9, 1999. A little over a year later, the Playstation 2 was released, and about a year after that, the Microsoft Xbox and Nintendo Gamecube would both hit shelves. Though the Playstation 1 era wasn't officially over until 2003, when Final Fantasy Origins (the last significant release by my reckoning) was released in the U.S., it only truly had us for a full 4 years (I'm counting 1997-2001 as the height of the PS1 era) before we started to move on. I kept buying and playing Playstation games, but in the holiday season of 2000 I got a Dreamcast, and a bit over a year later, I got a Playstation 2, at which point I traded in my Playstation due to the PS2's backwards compatibility.

In the end, one could just as easily make the argument that the original Playstation was the most significant console ever released as they could that the NES was. I still tend to bow to the NES, but I do have a lot of nostalgia and rose tinted memories of the Playstation. Though history has been continually less kind to the Nintendo 64 and its games (and the less said of Saturn in the U.S., the better), I would argue that the majority of PS1 games still hold up, and that's saying quite a lot in an industry that moves as fast as videogames.

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.

The Videogame Solipsist: NES

Oh my my, oh hell yes (image taken from VGmuseum.com)

I must have gotten the NES in '88. It was for my 4th birthday, and I'll always remember this because while my parents had gotten me the NES my grandparents on my Mom's side had gotten me an electric racecar track. While I played with the latter for 15 minutes or so while my Dad set up the NES, it would--obviously--never become a fixture for me. It was as if my entire future were set up then and there as a choice of toys: become the cool kid racing cars or become the Nintendo nerd.

My first memory of the NES was simply trying to get past the first enemy in Mario. Certainly we messed around with Duck Hunt but Mario held us transfixed. The coordination it took to somehow defeat the relentless Goomba seemed like a mountain I could never hope to climb; this also marked the last time my Dad would ever play a videogame, let alone be better at it than me. Only he could get to the end of the level at first, and my sister and I were jealous.

Still, it was an amazing new toy. A game you played on the TV--yet it wasn't just a game. You could put other game cartridges into it, too, not unlike tapes in a VCR. I honestly don't remember when I began to get other games, or what those were, but it seemed like everyone you knew had a Nintendo back then and different games to try. Eventually you rented scores of them from videostores--in the end I probably only owned a dozen or so games, but must have played a hundred or so more.

Actually, that was the big thing about the NES: its ubiquity. There were so many games for the damn thing that I eventually played something from every genre even before I began to use genre distinctions. Dragon Warrior was baffling until years later when I played Shining Force on the Genesis and learned about "levels" in terms of character power and not what stage you were on. Anyway, all my friends and neighbors had it and we would help each other on games. I'll always remember how my older neighbor Adam got really far into the first Zelda and during one summer used to come over every day and help me through it. Funnily enough, when his sister had a birthday party once, I spent most of it playing a gift for her: Rad Racer. Even then, I liked doing things alone--please, resist the urge to make the obvious joke here.

As for the games I played...well, this would be a really long post if I went through them all. Suffice it to say that the obvious ones--Zeldas, Marios, whatnot--were all amazing and mindblowing. Oddly, even back then I found Metroid obtuse and frustrating, though one of my friends insisted it was the best game ever. I remember playing games competitively and co-operatively for the first time on the NES, too, which was just as fun as playing them alone--if not more so. This was also during the era when you didn't scour websites every few hours to see if the Smash Brothers date had slipped; you pretty much heard about games from Nintendo Power or clerks at the store or video rental place and that was it. I recall the first Turtles game being a total bitch to find, both because of its popularity and the fact you couldn't find it to buy anywhere because nobody knew if it was out or not. Of course this was before everyone realized that the game was harder than a pair of diamond testicles and controlled like utter shit.

The end of the NES was particularly interesting to me because people weren't really sure what to do. The assumption amongst adults seemed to be "hey, this thing was supposed to be like a VHS tape player!! You're just supposed to get new games, not new systems!!" Sometime in 1992 or 1993 I got a Sega Genesis because most of my friends had it and the games looked so much better than the NES. For some reason, the SNES didn't interest us. About this time the NES began to start into the era of "blow into the end of it, blow into the machine itself, cut yourself and swear a blood oath to Yamauchi" in order to get the damn thing to work. But with time, the NES became a very fondly remembered piece of hardware which we would all dig out from time to time for nostalgia's sake. The majority of the games don't hold up as well anymore, partially because as kids we had no critical faculties, but enough of them do to make the system still worth playing.

Except that my grandma sold my NES and 5 games for like $15 at a garage sale in the mid 90s. I think it was revenge for ignoring the electric racecars.