Mother 3 Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 12/30/2021)

[Image from igdb.com]

Mother 3

Developer: HAL Laboratory/Brownie Brown

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): JRPG

Platforms: GBA

Release Date: April 20, 2006

I love the internet. Well, I love the internet most of the time. Certain people who lack self-awareness and project their unresolved trauma make the internet insufferable sometimes, but that’s a discussion for another day on a completely different platform. Despite my reasons for why I love the internet, the initial purpose of it was to bring people together from all over the world and break language barriers. In the years that the internet has been steeped with a seemingly endless amount of porn and cat videos, this core tenant of the internet still holds value to this day. Emulation has always tapped into the vital essence of the internet, erecting a bridge between the west and the video game motherland of Japan for those games that didn’t quite make that journey overseas. The internet provides easy access to these games that would’ve been forgotten in time, condemned to obscurity due to the lack of being internationally available. Admittedly, there are probably a metric ton of games that should’ve been left in the vaults of their Japanese homeland. Still, some games have achieved national notoriety and a second wind of popularity. I can’t think of a better example of this than Mother 3, the sequel to the cult classic game Earthbound. Through emulation, Mother 3 has not only gained more critical acclaim than its widely celebrated predecessor, but it has steadily garnered a reputation as one of the greatest video games of all time.

The amount of praise Mother 3 has received strictly through emulation is utterly baffling. I was not being the slightest bit hyperbolic when I stated that Mother 3 has been placed in the same ranks among giants of the video game medium. Every online video game outlet I’ve seen consistently places Mother 3 at the top of the charts, whether based on critic scores or an aggregate average. IGN even placed it at #60 in a list of the top 125 Nintendo games of all time, a mid-way compromise that at least acknowledged Mother’s 3 existence in a mainstream gaming publication. Considering all of the acclaims Mother 3 has received, it’s getting difficult to ignore. That’s the ironic thing about Mother 3’s newfound notoriety: emulation has raised it above the clouds and into the bright light of overwhelming adulation, but emulation also keeps this game in the dark. Emulation is still a relatively contentious issue in the realm of gaming. Mother 3 was only released in Japan, so gamers in the west didn’t have any other choice than to resort to piracy. The stigmatization behind emulation seems to have dissipated over the years, and some industry leaders have given up trying to enforce rules against emulation. Nintendo, on the other hand, will get medieval on the asses of anyone who dares to infringe upon their intellectual properties. Writing a review on the contents of Mother 3 as an English-speaking westerner is, in a way incriminating myself, so I plead the fifth on how I managed to play it. If you know, you know. Why then is Nintendo insisting on relegating one of their finest outings to their home country? Why are they forcing players to stoop to flirting with the thresholds of legality just to play a video game? There is no way Nintendo isn’t aware of the infamous “localize Mother 3” chant, a sentiment echoed so vociferously that even Terry fucking Crews joined in as a free celebrity endorsement. Nintendo knows there is a demand, but why aren’t they supplying? One common assessment of the situation is that Mother 3 still wouldn’t succeed in the west because the content is too “high brow” for western audiences. Earthbound initially tanked in the west, and Nintendo isn’t going to the trouble to reproduce another inevitable cult classic. There’s also the issue of the risque content of Mother 3 that might draw some ire in the west. With all of this in mind, perhaps it’s better to leave the game.

In this timeline, Mother 3 is better off as a heavily pirated cult classic than it could’ve been. Mother 3 was initially intended to be released as an N64 game. Its earliest development period saw a game with blocky graphics and a fully rendered 3D environment. Mother 3 would be the series leap into 3D like Mario and Zelda before it, but developing a 3D JRPG onto a cartridge-based system would be an incredibly ambitious undertaking. There’s a reason why there were only a few made during the system’s lifespan. The project depended on the success of the 64DD, an add-on to the N64 that played discs. Needless to say, the failure of this peripheral resulted in a 3D Mother game never seeing the light of day, and I say good riddance. A 3D Mother game on the N64 would’ve been a colossal bomb that would’ve killed the series on sight. Thankfully, the developers decided to continue the production of Mother 3 for the handheld GBA system. The more primitive handheld console offered pixelated graphics for Mother 3 that were only slightly more advanced than Earthbound’s were on the SNES. This, however, seemed to be for the game’s benefit as the more pixelated graphics better maintained Mother’s quirky charm and absurd sense of humor, becoming an idiosyncratic style for the series. One might think it’s disappointing enough that this grand title is only legally available in Japan. Still, I’d rather have that than Nintendo potentially murdering the series with their stubborn initiative to render everything in 3D during the N64 era.

This means that the GBA hardware makes Mother 3 all the more like Earthbound. Mother 3 carries on the same warm sprite animation, minimal combat system, and weird, absurd sense of humor under the scope of a “domestic JRPG”. Mother 3 has everything everyone loved about Earthbound, and I’m someone who was beguiled by all of these aspects. However, I was initially apprehensive about diving into Mother 3 because of all the things about Earthbound that I found vexing and unamusing. I am thrilled to report that while Mother 3 may resemble Earthbound in a myriad of ways, it does not feel like Earthbound, or at least made me feel as embittered as Earthbound often did. Every aspect of Earthbound that irked me has been completely reworked in Mother 3 to make for a substantially more enjoyable experience.

One of my major grievances regarding Earthbound’s gameplay stemmed from the stiff penalty for dying and the lack of convenient places to heal. After dying in Earthbound, Ness would be fully revived, but his partners would still be in a state of lifeless purgatory, floating behind Ness like a morbid reminder of his failures. Ness would have to travel to a hospital and pay to revive his teammates like a bail bond. Ness then has to stay at a hotel to replenish his PP, which also costs a pretty penny. This whole process is such an ordeal that one can easily forget what they were doing or the obstacle that caused them to die in the first place. Hospitals and hotels are generally placed in urban areas, so the travel time between the place of death and the nearest city can be the most monotonous part of the restoration process. An alternative healing method is the “instant revitalization devices”, but I could count how many there are in the game on one hand. Earthbound probably force this circuitous escapade on the player because of the game’s emphasis on humdrum modern life and its many facets, like going to a hospital when someone is ill. Without spoiling its themes or story, Mother 3 does away with the medical system of Earthbound and streamlines this whole system with a simple, traditional Japanese method of physical therapy: hot springs. All the player has to do is sit in one of these for 5-10 seconds, and their health and PP are revitalized. These hot springs are also located everywhere, so the player should never feel too weary about being low on health and vigor. I’m not sure how accurate the abundance of the hot springs is because I’ve never been to Japan, but I’ll gladly take the convenience. Dying in battle will also take the player back to the last save point with all of their health and PP restored. All of these conveniences almost make me take my health for granted, and I am relieved that the developers opted for these instead of the old system from Earthbound.

Dying occurred often in Earthbound because the enemies were feral than starved timberwolves. The enemies would also tend to run in packs like the animal mentioned above. Encountering enemies in the overworld of Earthbound became so overwhelming that I dreaded combat after a while. In most JRPGs, the game will give the player an option to escape from battle. Earthbound has this option, but I swear it only worked about a fifth of the time. The other option was to run past enemies to avoid battle encounters, but this was yet another thing that the developers merely teased the player with. Ness and his friends couldn’t run, so they were defenseless sloths against the wild cheetah. The skip sandwich item lets the player move quicker, but only for a pitifully short amount of time. The slight burst of energy doesn’t even provide enough speed to bypass most enemies, and this is also considering that enemies are found in tight corners as well. Adversely, Mother 3’s combat and overworld enemies are much more manageable. Enemies will never appear in more than three groups, and they move toward the player at a less ferocious speed. There are still some enemies with frantic movement patterns on the field, but they never dart in the player’s direction upon seeing them. Mother 3 gives the player that much-needed run option, and it’s incredibly refreshing to have. It may not be quick enough to divert past everything, but it beats getting dogpiled. Even when combat is imminent, I never grew tired of it. It’s the same minimal combat from Earthbound with the rolling health meter and lack of character movement. The main difference is the inclusion of a rhythm mechanic during a battle that allows the player to earn extra hits on an enemy by pressing a button with the background song’s tempo. This can benefit the player greatly from a combat standpoint, but executing it takes quite a bit of skill and practice. I never got the hang of it as I mashed the A button like it was a double-kick drum, but I still appreciate the added level of kinetic involvement.

As for improving upon Earthbound’s godawful inventory system, Mother 3 shifts all of the items deemed “essential” like maps and one-time-use tools to a key section with an infinite amount of space. I still found myself overstocked on items among all four of my party members in Mother 3, but not to the extent of cursing the game under my breath. Item management was still comparably refreshing compared to what it was in Earthbound, and all it took was an obvious change. The player will still buy items one at a time, but there wasn’t an overly eager store clerk that would insist on asking me if I wanted to purchase the item I selected. Items descriptions are also easily found in both the store menu and in the player’s storage roster. As for the extra storage for unwanted items, the player no longer has to use a phone to call a service just to pick up three measly things. A homeless-looking man known as “Item Deposit Guy” will happily store up to at least twenty items, and he can be found in most places. The whole system is wrapped up neatly, and I couldn’t be happier.

Streamlining the tedious aspects of Earthbound seems to be a prevalent thing in Mother 3. Another convenience that is just as widely available in the game is save frogs. As the namesake implies, these helpful little critters will save your progress. Sometime in the middle of the game, these frogs also double as an ATM that saves money from battling enemies. The Earthbound equivalent of both of these separate aspects was Ness calling his dad to save the game and using an ATM to hold or withdraw money. In Earthbound, I didn’t mind this so much because both phones and ATMs were both located in the general vicinity of each other. If Ness and company weren’t near a town, the game would fashion a random object like a phone to call Dad so as not to inconvenience the player (and the game gets away with it because it’s Earthbound). My gripe with this feature in Earthbound had more to do with Dad’s extra commentary that followed each save that Dad never bothered to change up after a hundred goddamn saves. Fortunately, the frogs are not related to the player and won’t try to haphazardly rekindle any familial bonds via long-distance calls. They are all business and give their regards to the next frog the player meets. I never minded that the ATM was separate from the save feature in Earthbound, but I never knew that combining them with a series of amphibians was what the series needed. Also, the color variation of frogs the player encounters is too precious.

In my review of Earthbound, I listed off my favorite oddities in the game that had me grinning from ear to ear. I could probably do the same for Mother 3, but I feel as if doing so would be a disservice to the game’s solid narrative. Earthbound established a loose adventure arc from the beginning that never really deviated from the main course. It was a surrealistic odyssey that used its quest plot as a base while incorporating several wacky occurrences. I could simply list a selection of these moments from Earthbound in no particular order because they didn’t fit along with a stark narrative structure. Mother 3’s story, on the other hand, is a tale of epic proportions divided by eight chapters. The game still retains a silly, absurd sense of humor, but these events are supported by a more enhanced narrative. During these eight chapters, Mother 3 explores themes of grief, loss of innocence, fascism, the toxic nature of capitalism, the birth and death of civilization, and course, motherhood. It’s interactive War and Peace being played on a pixelated handheld console.

Those who haven’t played Mother 3 might still be familiar with the character of Lucas, mainly through his inclusion in the Super Smash Bros. franchise. One might assume that he’s the central protagonist of Mother 3, but they’d only be half correct. The player doesn’t get a chance to play as Lucas until the fourth chapter. The first three chapters of Mother 3 act as a prologue that establishes the world, its characters, and the central conflict. The first three acts are also presented in a non-linear fashion that focuses on the perspectives of three different playable characters surrounding events that occurred around the same time ala Pulp Fiction.

Mother 3’s story certainly does not begin with a slow burn of exposition. It establishes every aspect the player is not initially familiar with, like its setting and characters, while providing a consistently entertaining structure. It's beginning also establishes that Mother 3 does not pull any punches with its gut-wrenching moments. The player can choose the names of a mom, dad, two sons, and their pet dog. The characters here are the pinnacle of a nuclear family dynamic, living in a cozy cottage home in the countryside to top it off. These people live simple, happy lives without any trace of dissension. Even the massive dinosaur-like creatures the Dragos peacefully coexist with these people without any inkling of carnivorous intent. The boys of this family even roughhouse with the Dragos as if they were neighborhood kids. Everything is as ideal as can be until the night the mother of this family encounters a strange object floating overhead. Everything changes the night the pigmasks attack. An explosion off the mountain path causes a wildfire and the father of the family, Flint, rushes up the mountain in a panic to save his family. He gets distracted along the way and has to rescue some of his fellow villagers from burning to death in a fire. Once he saves them, the townsfolk of Tazmily aid him in rescuing his two sons, Lucas and Claus. His boys are safe and sound, but Flint receives the cataclysmic news that his wife has been slain by a Drago. Hearing this causes Flint to take out his heavy emotions on the townsfolk, resulting in him being taken into custody. When he leaves his temporary cell, he gets news that his son Claus has taken it upon himself to avenge his mother by killing a Drago. Flint and his father-in-law Alec look for Claus to stop him, but Claus is nowhere to be found.

It’s almost as if the game purposefully lulls the player into a sense of comfort to just pull the rug out from under them in Mother 3’s first chapter. The tone of the tranquil mountainside that the characters live in is so comfortable that it's almost adorable. All the player needs here is a brief, five-minute introduction to their uncomplicated lives and set up the chaos surrounding the invasion to catapult the player into the action. It’s an effective juxtaposition of tone that makes the player care for the well-being of these characters they were just introduced to. Establishing all of the supporting characters is done very cleverly in that it uses the predicament of the wildfire to get all of them involved because the situation affects all of them. The setup here organically makes the town and its denizens as established characters without having the player go around and talk to them like a normal JRPG would. Regarding the reveal of Hinawa’s death, if this is the event that catalyzes the plot, then the game’s story is at some seriously high stakes. Flint’s devastation after hearing the news is palpable, and the scene where he physically lashes out at his neighbors to cope with the loss of his wife is such a visceral scene. The fact that Flint’s crisis is only prolonged by his son going missing emits such a sympathetic reaction to Flint and his entire family. This shellshock of an introduction may have run the risk of Mother 3’s narrative peaking here, but fortunately, the story maintains its quality.


Chapter 2 is a change of pace along with a change of a playable character. The player will be in control of Duster, a thief who aided Flint in his rescue mission, as he explores the famed Oshoe Castle looking for an artifact that resides in its walls. The inhabitants of this abandoned Tazmily relic are ghosts who spend their days having parties that consist of eating fanciful food, drinking wine, and playing ragtime piano. After confronting a pompous ghost posing as a classical composer, Duster brings back what he thinks is the artifact to his elderly father and fellow thief, Wess. Wess chastises Duster for retrieving the wrong thing and accompanies him back to Osohe Castle to find the true artifact. They return to Osohe Castle to find that pigmasks have ransacked the place looking for the same artifact. Only Wess knows its true location as he wiggles his ass in a dance that unlocks the secret doorway. They find a spunky pink-haired girl named Kumatora, that Wess seems to be acquainted. All three recover the artifact and swim through the perilous moat around the castle to escape from the pigmasks. They wash up on the shore where Duster is accused of stealing something from one of the townspeople.

Overall, the second chapter does not deliver the same impact as the first. This is a chapter of exposition in which the goal is to recover an item whose relevance isn’t revealed until the very last chapter. I guess the more important point of exposition in this chapter is the involvement of Duster and Kumatora, two of the four central party characters in the game. Playing as Duster is nice, but it presents a gripe I have with the game. I don’t understand why the developers felt the current playable character in the front line of action needed to be silent when the player is controlling them. We’ve seen Duster speak before in the first chapter, and he speaks plenty of times as a party member in the following chapters. It doesn’t make sense that Duster is silent here, especially when Wess is berating him. I can understand Boney and Salsa not speaking because they are animals, but the speechless human characters have no excuse. I could maybe understand Lucas being silent because of his central protagonist role and his timid character trait, but he even speaks before he’s playable. It’s an awkward crack in a game with some solid character foundation. The one standout point of this chapter is the rise in difficulty as Mr. Passion and the Oh-So Snake are the first roadblocks for me.

By now, the player will get an impression that the villains of Mother 3 are impeccably strong aspects of the narrative. The pigmasks are imperialistic fascist scumbags that are accompanied by a bombastic theme that even resembles Ride of the Valkyries. They uproot the sleepy town of Tazmily without care and adulterate their wildlife, turning them into abominable chimeras. After the events of the first chapter, any player with a conscience will have a seething contempt for these guys. Upon talking to any of these pigmasks, however, they all seem to be bumbling oafs in uniform like the Stormtroopers from Star Wars. One can assume that there must be someone of higher intellect pulling the strings, and chapter 3 introduces us to someone in charge. Fassad has become one of my favorite video game villains because he is delightfully despicable. Throughout the third chapter, he ventures through a desert to get to Tazmily with a monkey named Salsa that he’s keeping as a slave. Salsa has to comply with Fassad because the pigmasks have Salsa’s monkey girlfriend captive. That, and Fassad has implanted a remote-controlled shock collar on Salsa that he always keeps at arm's length. The player controls Salsa for the entirety of the chapter, enduring the brunt of Fassad’s cruelty. Fassad constantly berates Salsa, starves him, and shocks the living hell out of the poor monkey, seemingly just for yucks. There’s a task in the middle of the chapter in which Fassad has Salsa delivering happy boxes to the people of Tazmily and warns Salsa that he’ll get shocked if he takes too long. No matter how long the player takes, Salsa will still get shocked. Fassad is such an unscrupulous bastard, and the point where Salsa is liberated from his captor at the end of the chapter is such a cathartic moment. This might be my favorite chapter.

Chapter 4 was when I noticed a heavy emphasis on the themes of capitalism. Three years pass after the events of the first three chapters, and much has changed in Tazmily. The once rustic village has transformed into an industrialized Americana town similar to something like Onett from Earthbound. The “happy boxes” Fassad has planted in everyone's homes keep the townspeople under a state of sedation. A good number of them have blue-collar jobs working in the mines with the Clayman, and their nightly reward is to get liquored up at Club Titiboo and listen to a live band play. All the elderly people are forced to live in a dilapidated nursing home, and Fassad preaches the gospel in the center of town like the patron saint of Tazmily. Most people seem content with the changes in Tazmily. Still, several houses of some vocal dissenters against the changes were annihilated by lightning strikes. As effective as Hinawa’s death was in the first chapter, I found myself moved by Tazmily’s transformation by the start of chapter 4. All the capitalistic changes brought to Tazmily, like the need for commerce and vapid distractions like the TVs (sorry, “happy boxes”), are quite disillusioning. Tazmily didn’t even have a method of currency before the pigmasks arrived, and their jail was a glorified time-out cell because no one in town did anything that warranted anything more severe than that. Mayberry wishes it could be as ideal as Tazmilly. It’s upsetting to see such a happy community transform into a jaded mirror of modern society. This probably wouldn’t have been as effective if the first three chapters didn’t introduce this place so efficiently. The player empathizes with the town itself as a character.

Chapter 4 is also where the narrative fully takes off, and Lucas becomes the protagonist from here on out. He’s a little taller, wiser, and braver than before, but the tragic loss of his mother still looms over him like a dark cloud. He takes his dog Boney and ventures across town along the train tracks to assemble a squadron to take down the pigmasks. He hears of a bass player who plays at Club Titiboo who bears such a strong resemblance to Duster that it must be him. To get to Club Titiboo, Lucas and Boney both have to earn a ticket like everyone else and endure the new bureaucratic labor force of Tazmily by working in the mines. He also encounters Kumatora at Club Titiboo, disguised as a waitress named Violet. The bassist of the DCMC is an amnesiac Duster in a poofy wig who comes along with Lucas and the others despite not being sure of his past. Duster leads them to uncover the precious artifact from the second chapter, which has a power that makes Duster regain his memories. The main goal of chapter 5 with all four main party members is to take down the Thunder Tower, a monumental building eclipsing Tazmily that is the cause of so many destroyed homes in Tazmily. The gang climbs the tower and dismantles the tall terror of Tazmily, causing a frantic countdown to an explosion. Fassad tries to take the only means of escaping the tower but slips off the tower by tripping on one of his banana peels. By using the trusty rope snake, Lucas and company attempt to cling onto the ladder hanging from the helicopter. The rope snake gets slippery, which causes everyone to fall, but not before they get a glimpse of the true pigmask leader. The brief chapter 6 finds Lucas and Boney falling in a lovely field of sunflowers where Lucas has a fleeting apparition of Hinawa before falling further down into a haystack. Chapter 6 serves as a nice intermission between the climactic end of the fifth chapter and the two longer final chapters. Whether the field of flowers is real or a nice accompaniment to Lucas’s vision is vague enough that it can be up to self-interpretation.

Let me summarize my opinions of the fourth and fifth chapters of Mother 3 by discussing the group dynamic between Lucas, Kumatora, Duster, and Boney. By chapter 4, the player will be used to switching between a roulette of different characters. The ability to play as Lucas locks the player into a sole main, playable character. These two chapters are Lucas assembling his gang of psychic adventurers like Ness before him. The advantage that Mother 3 has over Earthbound is that the player is already familiar with all of Lucas’s party members and has gained a small amount of battle experience with each of them. It’s obvious that by the beginning that Lucas is the weakest of the four due to not having battled until this point. Still, the player should accumulate enough experience as Lucas and Boney on the way to Club Titiboo to contend with Kumatora and Duster. Setting up these characters in the first three chapters is a refreshing change of pace from Ness having to grind for experience with a new partner at a significantly lower level than he is. Assembling these characters as a team is also much more organic than the partners of Earthbound joining Ness by happenstance. As a team in battle, the four main fighters of Mother 3 are a much more capable team than the four from Earthbound. They have the same general dynamic but are much more functional in their roles. Like Ness, Lucas has a special role as the leading party member with unique PK abilities. Kumatora is in Paula’s position as the offensive powerhouse with the elemental PK powers. Neither Duster nor Boney has PK powers, making it seem like the game has stuck the player with TWO Jeffs, but this is not the case. Duster can use his thief tools to debuff the enemy and cause status effects without using PP. As for Boney, he can identify the enemies' weaknesses by sniffing them, similar to Jeff’s spy ability. Boney is also the quickest of the bunch, giving him the first turn over everyone else. Because of this, it’s important to stock healing items with Boney. As for Poo, Mother 3 proved that the team didn’t need a psychic wildcard with much less experience than the others. His special Starstorm ability is shifted to Kumatora.

Chapter 7 of Mother 3 is the one most like Earthbound because it’s essentially the plot of Earthbound crammed into one long chapter. The Magypsies tell Lucas of a harrowing prophecy involving seven needles and an ancient dragon. The Magypsies tell that the world they exist in lies on the back of a dragon, and their role in this area is to protect the seven needles that keep the dragon at bay. The pigmasks are on a mission to pull those seven needles, awakening the dragon and making it their subservient puppet. This will signal the grim end of the world, but alternately, a person who is pure of heart can also pull the needles and save the world. Lucas and his friends venture across the land in a race to pull the needles and keep the world from imminent destruction. Does this sound familiar? It should. It’s also the point where the narrative of Mother 3 falters a bit. I didn’t mind the loose adventure narrative in Earthbound, but it’s a shame that Mother 3’s solid story regresses as late as the second to last chapter after such a consistently strong narrative flow. Chapter 7 is a long trek of humorous, madcap occurrences on their way to each needle. I felt like listing a series of highlights detailing the wackiness for Mother 3 like I did for Earthbound was inappropriate, but this chapter is an exception. Lucas and Boney make their way to the pigmask’s chimera lab, where a demon with a gaping mouth and a bird on its head, referred to as the “ultimate chimera,” wreaks havoc on the pigmasks and the scientists. Navigating this creature turns the game into a tense, survival horror segment. The gang will ride a horse, coffee table hybrid down to Saturn Valley (yes, that same one from Earthbound), where the pigmasks are interrogating the Mr. Saturns and Duster with a frightbot that tortures them by telling scary stories. This portion of the game was the funniest, in my opinion. The gang walks underwater to get to a nearby island, making out with a series of Mermen that supply them oxygen. Once they get to the island, everyone except Boney eats a bunch of psychedelic mushrooms and hallucinates visions of their loved ones admonishing them. The surprising part about the quest for the needles is that the masked man in the helicopter from earlier gets to three of the needles before Lucas does, tying the score up and making the race to pull the last needle incredibly tense.

Chapter 7 also heavily features the main point of contention that keeps Mother 3 from being released internationally. In a game with animal cruelty and drug trips, the Magypsies are the icing on the controversy cake. The Magypsies are a group of very flamboyant beings who, despite having feminine names and dressing like women, look very masculine behind all that makeup and posh clothing. They also talk like Big Gay Al from South Park, and their speaking text practically uses heart symbols as punctuation. It’s pretty obvious that the Magypsies are a group of trans-gendered women, and they are depicted in a less-than-savory manner here. The Magypsies are walking, talking stereotypes of the gay/trans community. They are literally the personification of the “fairy” slur commonly used against gay people. Some people argue that the Magypsies are great characters because their dialogue is fun and their roles in the main story are interesting, myself included. Subtly learning that Fassad is a Magypsie that betrayed his kind was one of the most intriguing moments of the game for me. However, there is one scene in the game involving the Magypsies that even offended me. In the fourth chapter, Lucas approaches a hot spring where the Magypsy Ionia is bathing. Ionia senses a potential for psychic powers in Lucas and goes through a sort of process where the screen goes dark, and Ionia is saying things like “don’t struggle!” and “just endure it for a little bit!”. Ionia is dipping Lucas’s head under the water like he’s being baptized, but my smut-addled American mind ran to different conclusions. What else am I expected to think when the screen goes black with two naked guys in a hot tub, and Ionia says something like that? The stereotype that all gay men are also pedophiles is one of the most heinous ones to uphold, and it’s no wonder why Nintendo won’t touch this game with a ten-foot pole.

The final chapter begins with an invitation by limo. Lucas and company are cordially invited to the metropolis of New Pork City by its founder of unknown origin. It’s here where we learn who is pulling the strings behind the whole pigmask operation. The Japanese players who played Earthbound might already guess who this person is judging by the pigmasks' animal uniform. Still, the foreshadowing will be lost on any American player due to a mistranslated typo in the American version of Earthbound. Ness’s portly, shithead neighbor Porky Minch (or Pokey if you’re not Japanese) has accomplished quite a bit since sending a braggadocious letter to Ness at the end of Earthbound. Porky has accomplished the impossible and ventured throughout time and space by stealing Dr. Andonuts’s phase distorter, making him like a lovechild of Dr. Who and Eric Cartman.

Through a large part of spoken exposition from the beanstalk man who rang the Tazmily bell, Porky has settled down on the land that used to be his hometown one apocalypse ago and intends to have total dominance over everything with the dragon’s power. His biggest accomplishment thus far is the creation of New Pork City, a drab eyesore of a city that reflects Porky’s vanity-driven ego. NPC is modeled like an even gaudier version of EPCOT. At this point, everyone has vacated from Tazmily to NPC either from coercion or because their role in the town has been rendered obsolete. The cycle of turning this once pristine, uncomplicated world into a dystopian hellhole has come full circle, and everyone from Tazmily is now jaded to the point of no return. Porky is well aware of Lucas and his friends and their mission to pull the final needle. He wishes to see them at the top of his grand tower, but not before playing with them like toys. The run-up to Porky is an obstacle course of games where Porky makes up a new rule every second. Finally meeting the fat fuck is a surprise, to say the least. The eons Porky has spent traveling through space and time have taken a toll on him as he is now a decrepit albeit immortal old man kept in his familiar walker casing. His final brawl in the deep caverns of NPC plays out exactly like Earthbound, except this time Porky can’t be defeated. He gives up and traps himself in a robotic cocoon that Dr. Andonuts made for him, which he will spend for eternity. Despite being ancient, Porky is still the spoiled, bratty kid he was in Earthbound, which is probably a comment on the characteristics of real-life dictators. If Mother 3 has a cyclical nature with Earthbound as a reference, Porky is now the powerful force of corruption that Giygas was.

The Masked Man is now the impressionable youth with a lust for power that Porky was in Earthbound. According to Leder, Porky couldn’t accomplish his goal alone because he could not physically pull the needles. His pawn in this role is the Masked Man, who is none other than Lucas’s long-lost twin brother Claus. One could probably tell it was him behind the mask, but the more intriguing question is why. Porky was lucky enough to find Claus after the events of Hinawa dying, a low and vulnerable point for Claus. Porky fed into Claus’s newfound anger and manipulated it for his gain to the point where the old Claus is long gone and is now Porky’s machine. The final battle for the needle is Lucas and Claus, mono y mono on a dark battlefield. Knowing that the Masked Man is his brother, Lucas refuses to fight. Claus, on the other hand, unleashes all his power on Lucas.

Lucas must endure as much damage as possible while Hinawa’s distant voice tries to get through to Claus to make him stop. The fight against Giygas in Earthbound was uncomfortable because of how frantic it got. Still, the final fight here is equally as uncomfortable because of how heartbreaking it is seeing the two brothers fight. Claus even deals damage to Flint for good measure. After Hinawa’s voice gets through to Claus, he unmasks himself. He unleashes the most powerful lightning strike he can, knowing that Lucas will deflect it. He dies in Lucas’s arms. Lucas pulls the final needle and finds out the prophecy was wrong. The dragon awakes and causes an apocalyptic storm of meteors and earthquakes that destroys everything. A pitch-black screen with the word “end?” is the final thing the player sees before the credits. If the player moves around this screen, the characters of Mother 3 will tell the player that they survived and are all okay, but I remain skeptical.

This ending was not what I expected from Mother 3. Earthbound’s horror-inspired final boss was hectic, but his defeat resulted in a bittersweet ending that wrapped up the game nicely. Mother 3, on the other hand, concludes with an ending that made me feel like I got belted in the stomach with a baseball bat. The final encounter with Claus and his death was a poetic end to his arc, but it was hard to sit through. It is, however, the only possible way the game could’ve outshined Hinawa’s death at the beginning. The ambiguous ending with the aftermath of the apocalypse was a satisfying end, but it rubbed me the wrong way due to how bleak it was. I suppose it is to highlight a cyclical theme that Mother 3 details. The world got so lost in itself with Porky’s empirical corruption that may be a violent apocalypse to start anew. Perhaps this is what happened to the people before them, and there is some poetic beauty to their demise. As for the themes of motherhood that the series upholds, Mother 3 tackles these with an inversion to Earthbound. Motherhood in Earthbound was depicted as a symbol of purity that reminds every adult of where they came from and how it reflects the outside world. The themes of motherhood in Mother 3 are more overt due to Hinawa’s death being a catalyst to the arcs of both Lucas and Claus, but the themes reflect more strongly on Claus. Claus loses himself in his grief and confusion, and it takes Hinawa’s motherly influence to bring him back to his senses. His unmasking and sacrifice were a means to stop himself and an apology for his actions. His humanity is regained through this act, and motherhood is the pinnacle of humanity that helps him.

Mother 3 was everything I wanted in Earthbound and so much more. All of the strong aspects presented in Earthbound, like its irreverent sense of humor and unique battle mechanics, are here on full display. The huge difference is that Mother 3 utilizes these aspects, turning a game that I have a love/hate relationship with into a game that I grew to fully adore throughout my time playing it. Every tedious aspect that made Earthbound a chore to play at times is streamlined to make everything more convenient, making for a more enjoyable experience overall. The comical moments in Mother 3 are no longer random events but are organized in a story worthy of some video game equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize. It is somewhat unfortunate that the west still has to fight the good fight to get Nintendo to publish a localized version of their game. Still, it’s pretty apparent why they’d be apprehensive to do so, considering some of the content. I, on the other hand, say fuck it and emulate Mother 3. The masses should quiet their chants and topple down their signs and just appreciate Mother 3 in its unadulterated form. The fan translation of Mother 3 is fantastic, free of charge, and is the version we’ve all come to know and love. Nintendo usually reigns down on all emulated or modded versions of their games, but this fan translation has not been attacked since its inception. Perhaps Nintendo is letting this one slip because they want everyone to experience one of their greatest achievements without explicitly saying so. Even if the first Mother and Earthbound weren’t your fancy, everyone should experience Mother 3.

Earthbound/Mother 2 Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 8/21/2021)

[Image from igdb.com]

Earthbound/Mother 2

Developer: Ape/HAL Laboratory

Publisher: Nintendo

Genre(s): JRPG

Platforms: SNES

Release Date: August 27, 1994

The Mother series has always been an elusive anomaly in Nintendo’s back catalog. The series comes highly revered by most who have played it, but that number is practically nothing compared to the number of people that have played their other franchises. It’s a series with one of the biggest cult statuses in gaming, aided by the fact that most of the games in the franchise are exclusive to Japan. The sole game in the franchise that was shipped out overseas to the Anglosphere was (until the first Mother game was released internationally in 2015 and the fan-translated version of Mother 3 was circulated through emulation) Mother 2, or Earthbound as we yanks know it as. My initial impression of Earthbound came with an incredulous range of thoughts. Earthbound is a subversive, unassumingly bizarre JRPG with a quirky, absurd sense of humor contrasted by its surprisingly macabre sensibilities. Yet, it’s charming and awe-inspiring all at the same time. This game came from Nintendo of all places, and it came out as early as 1994? Nintendo has been known to dabble in traces of psychedelia, with the Mario franchise being a clear example, but absurdism? That in itself is absurd. This unique concoction of elements presented in Earthbound makes it a gaming experience unparalleled by anything before or after it. To say that Earthbound was before its time is too easy. That statement connotes that the gaming industry has taken note of Earthbound and has expertly managed to emulate its properties to other comparable games. Earthbound is a gaming experience whose unique elements still give it an unparalleled intrigue, even decades onward. Every facet of Earthbound still offers something that makes it special, but some of these elements are also what makes Earthbound somewhat insufferable.

As an American, I must constantly be reminded that Earthbound is a sequel because of its standalone title and (legitimate) western availability. Nevertheless, the unique properties of Earthbound are more or less borrowed and built upon the unique elements of Mother 1. It’s a “domestic JRPG” set in modern times where a group of psychokinetic children ventures across the land to save the world from aliens. The battle system is minimal, and there are absurdist humoristic quirks. Nintendo isn’t exactly ambitious in terms of diversifying narratives in their properties, but this was mostly indicative of the SNES era. What are Super Mario World, A Link to the Past, and Super Metroid enhanced versions of their older NES counterparts? This distinction between Mother 1 and Earthbound is cut from the same cloth of general enhancements, but this is obviously less apparent to western audiences due to Mother 1 never seeing the light of day outside of Japan. The graphics, battle system, and overall presentation are augmented as an evolution to fit the Mother franchise in the 16-bit era. Judging from retroactively titling the first Mother game as “Earthbound Beginnings” or “Earthbound Zero”, we are supposed to think of Earthbound as more of a soft reboot rather than a next-generation sequel like the other franchises. The rudimentary elements of Mother 1 serve as a beta for Earthbound.

As par for the course with a soft reboot, Earthbound essentially shares the same narrative premise as Mother 1. The tweenaged protagonist is called to adventure when his rest is disturbed at night. In Earthbound, this disturbance is in the form of a meteor that crashlands on the peak of his hometown, causing the earth to quake. Already, the beginning premise is much better than having to beat up a sentient lamp in Mother 1, but this set-up is still all too familiar. Ness, the cannon name for the protagonist, investigates the meteor with some bratty neighbor brothers Pokey and Picky Minch. A fly named Buzz Buzz emerges from the fallen meteor revealing a prophecy to Ness about his integral role in saving the world from an evil entity named Giygas. Buzz Buzz is then obliterated by a single swipe from Ness’s mom, a humbling end to the game’s narrative catalyst. To defeat Giygas, Ness must travel around the world, discovering eight different guardian-protected sanctuaries and recording their essences as a collective force to access Giygas’s whereabouts. He must also recruit three other psychic kids around his age to aid him in his quest.

“The Domestic JRPG”, a term that is entirely my own creation, refers to several JRPGs that are set in a modern setting that mirrors the real world. The elements of a traditional JRPG, like classes and magic, aptly fit the high fantasy world of those games (Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, Suikoden, etc). A domestic JRPG like Earthbound translates those elements into a mundane, modern setting, usually translating the more fantastical elements of a JRPG to fit the more grounded world. At the time, the Mother series was a trendsetter of the “domestic JRPG” style as setting a JRPG in a modern period with modern aspects. The world of Earthbound is meant to look as humdrum as possible. Places like Onett and Twoson are a degree away from having an uncanny resemblance to the town from Leave It To Beaver. The homes of Onett are guarded by white picket fences, the sun is shining as the birds chirp harmoniously, and the town is filled with working-class people operating bakeries and marketplaces. It’s a wonder that Ness’s mom doesn’t have a pie cooling off on the windowsill. It’s like the opening scene in Blue Velvet. In fact, Earthbound seems to share a lot of similarities to the works of David Lynch. There is dark surrealism that permeates through the squeaky-clean Americana setting. In the works of David Lynch-like Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, or even Mulholland Dr, the dark surrealism is meant to showcase a dichotomy between a seemingly pristine setting with realms of unholy perversities. The barriers between these two worlds are a thin veil as the dark surrealism starts to bubble up on the sugar-coated surface. This contrast is meant to expose the dank underbelly of a seemingly taintless society. While Earthbound’s sense of dark surrealism most likely isn’t meant to be as cynically charged, the dichotomy similar to a work of David Lynch is still readily apparent. Or, it could just be a means to complement the exceedingly bizarre tone the game consistently upholds.

Listing out all of the weird elements of Earthbound would be an enervating affair. Doing so would just result in me giving a long-winded synopsis that includes every moment in the game. Some of these moments cause utter bemusement while some tickle my absurdist funny bone, so I’ll just detail a few highlights. A small town east of Twoson called Peaceful Rest Valley is ruled over by what can only be described as the “Blue Klux Klan”. This cult’s mission is to paint the world blue, a goal marked with the imperative that blue is the one superior color. These cultists wear blue suits with blue hoods over their heads, arming themselves with paintbrushes that exclusively paint the color blue. A touring music group called the Runway Five will make frequent stops in the various towns the characters visit along their journey. The band’s look is inspired by The Blues Brothers, while their antics are inspired by The Beatles in A Hard Day’s Night. These antics usually owe someone a hefty debt that Ness has to pay off at least twice. In return, the band performs free shows for our heroes, gives them rides in their tour bus, and they even aid in fighting a boss with Ness and his friends. The Saturns are a race of pint-sized creatures with whiskers, bulbous noses, and pink bows on a single strand of hair. Their civilization residing in Saturn Valley mirrors the function of towns like Onett and Twoson, but if every denizen spoke broken English (fun fact: the scribbled, borderline incomprehensible font the Saturns speak is taken from the handwriting of the five-year-old daughter of one of the developers). The Saturns are being enslaved by a sentient pile of vomit named Master Belch, who is forcing them to work in his factory making Fly Honey, his favorite treat and #1 weakness. The five guardian diggers of the Gold Mine will all insist that they are the third-ranked mole. After fighting the Kraken, the ship’s captain tries to save face by saying he aided in the fight by throwing his slippers at the beast. The zombies infesting the town of Threed are defeated by planting sticky “zombie paper” like they are common rats. After planting them, they are all stuck inside a once-possessed circus tent.

There are too many weirdly humorous moments left unmentioned, but I have to limit the examples for brevity. Earthbound does a fantastic job keeping the game interesting by maintaining an erratic sense of pacing through all of the different oddities. I was always enticed to keep going and see what wackiness the game had in store for me. It’s Earthbound’s greatest strength and what preserves its uniqueness. However, the consistent weirdness isn’t always to the game’s benefit. Like the films of Wes Anderson, Earthbound sometimes lays the wry quirkiness on a little too thick to the point where I can’t help but roll my eyes and groan. To access Saturn Valley, Ness has to stand behind a waterfall for three minutes in real-time. Thanks, Nintendo, but if I wanted to take a break to piss or jerk off, I would’ve paused the game. Moonside, the neon-illuminated bizarro realm of the city of Earthside, has an opposite gimmick where yes means no and vice versa. It’s not a huge deal as this is easy to learn, but accidentally picking the wrong option can aggravate depending on the situation.

Teleportation is a skill Ness acquires that allows him to warp to any town the player has discovered. This is a very convenient skill once Ness strays further from Onett and the game's world becomes larger. However, the way teleportation is executed couldn’t be any less convenient. To gain enough momentum to travel, Ness and his friends must rocket themselves in a straight path without obstructions. If Ness hits absolutely anything, the teleportation will fail. Unless Ness finds himself in a place with a straight road, attempting to teleport is an arduous task. The teleportation move becomes easier for the player, but they still need enough room to warp in a circular motion. Throughout the game, a bearded man wearing a suit and top hat will drop from the sky to take your picture. This happens at what practically feels like every waking moment of the game, so of course, it gets really irritating. When he takes your photo, he tells Ness to say “fuzzy pickles” as Ness smiles and gives a peace sign. If I were Ness, I’d flip him the bird, and maybe he’ll get the hint. Complaining about the less desirable quirks in Earthbound ultimately comes down to nitpicking. The more unbearable aspects of Earthbound come with the gameplay. Like the quirky, absurd presentation of this game, the combat and RPG elements are certainly unique. However, criticizing this facet of Earthbound does not boil down to appreciating its quirks with a few irksome moments. The gameplay of Earthbound can be so infuriating that you’ll want to take Ness’s baseball bat and beat him to death with it.

One factor of Earthbound’s gameplay that slightly deterred me from it upon the first impression is the minimalistic combat. In most JRPGs, even with Earthbound’s old-school contemporaries, every move during the turn-based fights was clearly shown. In Earthbound, one has to use a bit of imagination as to what is happening. The enemies are displayed as still images with the playable characters completely unseen during the fight. Perhaps the angle of view is a POV view in a first-person perspective. Each move during the fight is displayed in a textbox at the top center of the screen. Any attack the players or the enemies execute is not clearly seen on the screen, with the minor exception of the player’s magic attacks. The battles rely more on the element of sound to make the fights engaging. Every time an enemy is hit, the noises are always satisfying, especially on the rare occasion that one of the players lands a critical hit. I thought I’d quickly become disinterested in the game with this combat system, but it never got stale. I guess turn-based combat is still invigorating as long as it retains its fundamentals. All Earthbound needed was still images, vigorous sound effects, and a range of psychedelic backgrounds like looking through a kaleidoscope.

Earthbound also implements an interesting health system I haven’t seen in any other JRPG. Once health is either gained or depleted in battle or the overworld, the health of Ness and his friends will scroll up or down incrementally through slotted numbers. Suppose the enemy executes an attack dealing “mortal damage”, potentially killing a party member. In that case, this can be prevented by defeating the enemy before the mortally wounded party member’s health scrolls down to zero. This health system is the only means of dealing with enemies that self-destruct upon defeat, which includes an abundant amount of enemies in the game. It’s a unique display, but it’s not always consistently practical. Health scrolls at the same quick pace whether or not Ness and his friend have 10 HP or HP in the hundreds, so the system is only practical later in the game when the player has enough for the scrolling health to take longer to reach zero. Thank god most of the exploding enemies are near the end of the game. It’s still a relief to sometimes prevent potentially fatal damage with this system.

The playable characters of Earthbound are also quite varied in terms of combat. This is a tad ironic considering how minimalistic combat tends to be, but each partner has their own moves and statistics. Ness is the de facto leader of the group but does not hold higher precedence over the other party members. If Ness dies during combat and the battle is won, the player will just walk around as the next player in line. The player will naturally become the most familiar with Ness as the game begins with him and ends with him with a lot of time solely playing as Ness in between. Because all of the time Ness is adventuring solo, his stats are always naturally higher than his friends. His melee weapon of choice is a baseball bat, an item for a boy living in a podunk Americana town. He also has the widest range of psychokinetic abilities to aid in battle. His primary psychokinetic attack is a move that does a great deal of damage and targets multiple enemies. The name of it is PK, whatever the player named Ness’s favorite thing at the beginning of the game. My Ness super move was named PK Pussy, because what else could a growing boy be thinking about constantly? I also thought the fact of Ness’s horny adolescent thoughts generating his psychokinetic powers to be amusing (please tell me it’s amusing too, or else I just come off like a sophomoric misogynist).

Paula is the first party member to join Ness on his quest. She’s a seemingly frail little girl that is anything but in battle. Besides being armed with a frying pan, Paula is the team’s most valuable psychokinetic power user in terms of offense. She has the power of PK fire, freeze, and lightning at her disposal, and each element increases in power as the game progresses. Her psychokinetic moves prove to be much more useful than Ness’s because her moves can target specific enemies. This makes her more than essential in dealing with the sanctuary guardians. She also has a unique prayer feature that does various things to the party with some positives and negatives. Most times, the gamble isn’t worth it. Paula is an offensive powerhouse but is also the most brittle member of the team. It seems like most enemies will take advantage of this as they will target her, resulting in her quickly dying. It is imperative to keep Paula as healthy as possible because of how useful she is in combat.

Jeff is a boy who attends an all-boys school in the snowy northern town of Winters. He’s the son of the brilliant Dr. Andonuts, whose only musing about his son is that he sometimes wets the bed. As much as this embarrassing factoid might be true, the player will come to know Jeff as the technical wizard who specializes in fixing machines and using tools in combat. He’s the only playable character with zero psychokinetic abilities, so he has to compensate in other areas. A less experienced player would write Jeff off as a useless character. Not having any psychokinetic power among those with extraordinary abilities would make him seem underwhelming. His blasters are also the only weapons that do not make critical hits. The trick to maximizing Jeff’s utility is to make enough room in his inventory for bottle rockets, items that can do a serious amount of damage to one enemy. One has to make frequent trips to a bottle rocket dealer, or else Jeff pales in combat. I just wish I knew that when I was stuck with just him and Ness in Moonside.

Poo is the crown prince of the far-off nation of Dalaam, which looks like somewhere sandwiched between China and Nepal. The last part of his training before he joins Ness involves a disturbing ritual involving a spirit revoking all of Poo’s senses, rendering him practically dead. This test of selflessness and hardcore discipline is indicative of Poo’s character and his fighting style. He’s the only party member that does not brandish a weapon, nor does he require any type of armor. He instead fights with only his fists while wearing his robe. He shares the same psychokinetic powers with Ness and Paula but executes a little underwhelmingly comparatively because of how underdeveloped he is once he joins your team. Once he learns the psychokinetic juggernaut move “Starstorm”, he becomes the team’s wild card.

Ultimately, there are plenty of positive aspects to Earthbound’s gameplay. Its uniqueness complements the quirky nature of the game’s presentation and narrative. The bad aspects of Earthbound’s gameplay are so infuriating and tedious that it almost dilutes the positive aspects. I wouldn’t say that these aspects of Earthbound’s gameplay are faulty due to them being dated. I’m not sure if these were acceptable at the time anyways. As I’ve mentioned before, Ness does not have total precedence over all of the other party members in combat. This is not the same case once the player gets a game over. In this instance, Ness will return with full health, but the rest of the party members will still be dead, floating around Ness as incorporeal ghosts with halos on their heads. The only way to revive them for most of the game is to visit a hospital, but these are not conveniently placed everywhere. If the party dies in Dusty Dune Desert, for instance, Ness has to walk to either Threed or Foreside to revive his partners. He still has to rest at a hotel because restarting after a game will not replenish his PP. After all of this tedious backtracking, he can tackle the obstacles in the desert again. Eventually, Ness and Poo can revive party members with a psychic move, but the player will have to figure this out because the game doesn’t tell you what this move does when they acquire it.

This ordeal will happen several times throughout the game because the enemy encounters are merciless. For being still images in battle, they are ferociously sprightly in the field. The player cannot avoid enemies on the field no matter how hard they try to swiftly dodge them. The enemies move at practically twice the speed of the player, and trying to avoid them will only result in screwing the player over by giving the enemy the advantage in battle. Earthbound has an unfortunate mechanic in which the player can get an advantage in battle by sneaking up behind the enemy on the field. Conversely, the enemy can get the advantage by moving up behind Ness and his friends. Considering that the enemies are twice as fast as Ness and his friends, what do you think is the likely outcome of this on most occasions? The enemies move so quickly that they always have an advantage on the field, and no amount of skip sandwiches can change this. The game also won’t let the player run away from a battle, no matter how bruised and battered they are. In most RPGs, the game would let the player run away with no questions asked with only a few circumstances preventing this. In Earthbound, I’d say the success-failure ratio with running away is 70-30. Those aren’t exactly great odds. The areas with the sanctuary guardians are especially vexing because of this. By the time Ness and his friends encounter the guardian, they would’ve used up most of their PP and healing items dealing with the inescapable enemies. Every sanctuary guardian fight is especially tense because of this, but the reason for this is totally unfair. Once Ness becomes over-leveled, the enemy encounters are skipped entirely, and he still gets some experience. This is truly the only way to get past enemies. If this is the game’s clever method of forced grinding, I’m not amused.

The tedium of the game doesn’t stop with combat. Some of the more tedious aspects are in the overworld. To save the game, Ness has to call his dad on a phone residing in most hotels. If you haven’t played this game before, I will give you a disclaimer to only pick the fast text at the beginning of the game. This is not to skip on the game’s witty dialogue but to make the saving process quicker. Ness’s dad will ask the player if they want to save but then goes on a tangent about how Ness must stop working so diligently. Every. Single. Time. It’s even the same series of dialogue each time the player saves. Fortunately, Ness’s dad makes up for these mind-numbing interactions by providing Ness with a steady flow of cash he can access through an ATM. Because Ness’s dad is always working and the amount of money he sends, is he a stockbroker or something? The player will also have to make frequent calls to Ness’s mom because of an unfortunate mechanic in which Ness gets homesick and can’t fight. At least the conversations between Ness and his mom aren’t usually the same.

The inventory system in Earthbound is the epitome of tedium. I have never seen an inventory system so inexcusably faulty in my entire history of playing video games. Each party member gets twelve different slots in their inventory for twelve different items. The maximum load for each character doesn’t sound limited initially, but everything ranging from weapons, equipment, consumables, and key items takes up space in the same inventory. Throughout most of the game, I never had room in my inventory for any of the characters. Items are scattered all over the place, and even the enemies will often drop items after being defeated. There is never enough room for all of the items. Some key items will only be used once, but the player can’t sell them once they’re done. The player has to call a delivery service via the phone and call a guy to pick up a minuscule three items to store. Buying items and storing them were always a complete drag, and I feel as if this could’ve been a lot less taxing if the developers made a few minor improvements.

Between the quirky oddities and the tedium of Earthbound lies the game's substance: the themes of the wonderment of childhood and the eventual passage into adolescence and adulthood. While Earthbound was deemed for everyone by the ESRB, I think the substance of Earthbound’s themes can only be appreciated by someone who now has the hindsight of childhood in retrospect as an adult. It’s along the lines of the famous Oscar Wilde quote claiming that youth is wasted on the young. The story and presentation of Earthbound are wacky and full of whimsy. Still, we only describe the game with these adjectives because we have the adult capacities to fully articulate this. Earthbound is not specifically for kids, but it is written and presented as if it was written by a group of kids that are just playing as kids do. There is no sense of structured narrative when kids play. They just conjure up as much wacky shit as humanly possible because they think the scenarios are fun. The minimalist combat also provides further depth to playing as a child because none of what they do is literally displayed. One can’t help but figure that once Ness and his friends sprinkle a bag of Dragonite on their heads that they merely pretend to grow into a dinosaur and breathe fire instead of literally doing it. It’s all pure imagination, something definitely present in Earthbound’s erratic narrative. The game is a testament to the playful nostalgia of youth.

The game is also a testament to how impressionable children can be and how terrifying the world is because of it. Earthbound’s creative director Shigesato Itoi was infamously traumatized from walking into the wrong movie as a child and seeing a graphic murder scene on the big screen. This trauma inspired him to create Giygas, the main antagonist of Earthbound. This is where the dark surrealism of the game kicks in. Describing what Giygas is isn’t exactly feasible. He is essentially supposed to be an ambiguous force of evil and corruption. The Mani-Mani statue in the game is a tantalizing force of evil that corrupts individuals. It’s supposed to be a tangible representation of Giygas, but the statue's evil is not as powerful or concentrated as Giygas himself. After visiting all eight sanctuaries, Ness goes to an ethereal realm called Magicant, where all his childhood memories and desires reside. Like Poo’s final ritual, Ness must explore his collective childhood while wishing a bittersweet goodbye to it at the end to give him the strength to defeat Giygas. Magicant is like a psychedelic bar-mitzvah. It’s Ness’s rite of passage to adulthood that is necessary to defeat the evils of the world. His impressionable, childlike self has to be left behind to overcome the odds.

Once he does this, Ness and his friends have to travel to the future to defeat Giygas, putting their earthly bodies behind and journeying to the center of Giygas’s power in robot suits. Remember when I said the trek up to a boss was grueling? The run-up to Giygas is one of the most vexing excursions I’ve ever faced in a video game. Prepare wisely. Once Ness gets to Giygas, his neighbor Pokey is revealed to be a servant to him. This brat has always been on Ness’s tail for the whole game, trying to outdo Ness at every step. He was once a neighbor kid, then a multi-millionaire, and now he’s a step closer to becoming a transcendental being of pure evil. His journey is reminiscent of how adulthood can corrupt a misguided youth and turn it for the worse. The fight against Giygas is absolutely nerve-racking. His design is creepy, his presence is ominous, and his massive attack power. As the fight progresses, Giygas’s presence only becomes more hectic. Appropriately, the only way to defeat Giygas is to pray as Paula, collecting the wishes of everyone to incite a miracle, including a fourth-wall-breaking moment in which the player prays for them to succeed. It makes sense considering this is exactly what I was doing when fighting Giygas. It was an incredibly anxiety-inducing fight.

After overcoming the seemingly impossible odds by defeating Giygas, Ness and his friends return home in their bodies and go off in their separate ways. Ness returns home to his mother and is treated to his favorite meal (which you also get to choose. Yes, I went with the canon steak and not anything dirty). The ending is a relief and a bittersweet victory for the children. After the experience, something was at the back of my mind. What is the significance of the series titled Mother? As I see it, motherhood is deemed a symbol of purity and warmth. No matter how old you get, your mother will always see you as her baby. Ness might have shed the skin of childhood to tackle the presence of pure evil, but he returns home to his mother after a long journey as a place of comfort from the evils of the outside world from corrupt adults. It is the purest symbol, and it’s the base of all humankind no matter how far one strays from their roots with age or experience.

I fully understand the appeal of Earthbound and can absolutely see why the series has persisted over the years with a cult fanbase. I wanted to love the series as much as most people do, but I could not ignore all of the undesirable aspects of the game. While it was a consistently interesting experience full of whimsical mirth, the tedium grated on me so much that I frequently had to persist through the game instead of genuinely enjoying my time with it. The strengths of this game are so stark, and there are so many of them that it made the experience constantly invigorating. However, all of the bad aspects, like the lack of enemy leniency and congested item inventory, made me shake my head with irritation. Earthbound is a mixed bag, and maybe that’s what is retaining the point of its cult status. I will say that no matter how aggravating the game became, it was unlike any other game I’ve played. Nintendo still had something special.