@chrisbg99

2 years ago

I remember being 12 the summer of '95. I had never heard of EarthBound. I didn't play RPGs. But that summer the June '95 issue of EGM came in and I happily read through it when I came across the 2 page spread review for EarthBound. The actual review of the game didn't really sell me on it but the screenshots of the game and the description of its odd sense of humor got my attention. At that point I really wanted to play it. That summer I was visiting my Grandpa in Fargo for a few weeks and he would let me rent games for the SNES he had for us when we visited and sure enough EarthBound was for rent. I rented it and while I didn't beat it in the rental period (got pretty close though) I was entirely enamored with it. I can't say for sure when I'd get my own copy, might have been later that year or the next but I did and it quickly became one of my favorite games. Throughout high school I'd replay it on a fairly regular basis and it was one of my favorite games of all time already. Then in 2002 after sending the SNES home ahead of coming home from my first year of college, my brother decided he could give away the SNES collection. Along with EarthBound. For a few years I didn't have a SNES any more, I wasn't big into emulators, so EarthBound sort of faded away. Then in 2006, I believe, I started collecting the SNES and restarted my collection. One day while in Jamestown, ND with my parents and sister for my sister's wedding prep, I ventured off and found a local used game store in town and came across a loose copy of EarthBound for 60 bucks. I knew I had to have it and thus I did. When I finally got home I was so excited to finally play it again after a 5 years I must have blasted through it in a weekends time. In the subsequent 15 or so years EarthBound has become my absolute number 1 favorite game ever. I bought shirts, knick knacks, and other things. I even got a tattoo based on the Starman insignia on my chest. I've watched EarthBound go from a still relatively underappreciated game to one that is largely celebrated to the point where I think it has started to get a tad oversold and that has caused some backlash against it. But as it stands I just love that it found a new generation of fans and I enjoy finding streamers who are playing EarthBound for the first time and seeing how they react to the game now. I love retrospectives like this as well because EarthBound has fairly interesting development history. Just knowing that if Satoru Iwata hadn't came in and saved the game we might have never even got it released in NA because it certainly wouldn't have been ready until it was too close to the N64's launch for Nintendo to bother. And one final comment, I too love Pokey Means Business. EarthBound as we all know has a pretty varied and unique sound to it but even Pokey Means Business stands out in the soundtrack with its metal sound as opposed to much of EarthBound's jazz/R&B/early rock 'n roll sound. Probably one of the only tracks in the game that sounds aggressive.

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