Retro Thursday: Earthbound

Earthbound (or Mother 2 if you want) is quite possibly my favorite game of all time. The gameplay is your typical Japanese RPG, complete with lots of grinding and semi-random encounters, but what really sets the game apart is the crazy awesome (and also just plain crazy) story.

Earthbound is a classic RPG on the SNES that takes place in a pretty modern world (unlike the swords and sorcery of other 16-bit RPGs), and in the game you take the role of the boy Ness, who soon learns that he is one of the chosen few who will save the world from teh evil Giygas. During your time in the game, you run into your friends who help you on your way Paula the psychic girl from Twoson, Jeff, the genius from Winters, and Poo the amazing from Dalaam. The four kids travel throughout their world collecting the 8 sounds from the Your Sanctuary locations into your Sound Stone in order to use the world's power to turn away Giygas' evil.

Your time in the world introduces you to awesome people like Everdred, the loveable thief in Twoson park, Master Belch the pile of goop who enslaved the Mr. Saturns of Saturn Valley, or even the hit band - the Runaway Five! Speaking of the Runaway Five, the music in Earthbound is wonderful. It's really odd and strange at times, but every bit of music fits in with its point within the game so well, that whenever I listen to songs from the soundtrack (pretty muc every day), I can imagine that part of the game vividly. Basically, what really makes Earthbound so wonderful is the characters. The conversations with even the random townspeople are good for a chuckle. It's a really well written (and translated game), that I like to pull out at least once a year and play through.

Now, all I have to do is pray that they release it on the Wii Virtual Console, or (like in my dreams) release it on DS with Mother 1 and 3.