Video Game Blog 017: Classic RPG Break!

Again I bring you a game that was not on my list for the year. This, as with many games I end up playing, was based on a whim. I did try my best to resist the urge to play this game, although I have wanted to for many years. I lost the battle of focus, deviating once again from my game list to begin a casual play through of Earthbound Beginnings.

Ah, a nice homecooked meal. (Credit: Shigesato Itoi, Nintendo)

This game originally came out in Japan in 1989 for the Nintendo Famicon, under the title Mother. We didn’t get it in America officially until 2015 when it was released for the virtual console and retitled as Earthbound Beginnings. (See, the second game, Mother 2 was released in America for the Super Nintendo years prior as simply Earthbound.) Recently both the games came to Nintendo Switch Online and that’s where I played this version. This is essentially a ROM of the game, so it has the ability to hold save states, a fact that I exploited heavily to keep this game from taking too long. (I died A LOT.) This game is considered a classic by many gamers, inspiring later RPGs such as Citizens of Earth. (Which was a lot of fun too… you should try it if you like quirky RPGs.)

Oh. Oh my. (Credit: Shigesato Itoi, Nintendo)

Earthbound Beginnings is an old-school turn-based RPG with all of the pros and cons that come with that style of game. I had a lot of fun with this game and it did keep me engrossed, but at times the objectives were unclear and the story and mechanics confusing. For instance, you don’t know what stats your weapons and armor improve until you buy them… and you don’t even know which characters can equip them! The spells, which here take the form of psychic abilities, only have a name description, making it hard to know what they’ll do until you experiment with them. I’m used to the later, more user-friendly RPGs.

That said, I did have a blast with this game. It clearly got its aesthetic and gameplay from the original Dragon Quest trilogy, down to having the same style of menus and dialog boxes. And you DO fight a dragon at one point. (Save the dragon for late game. Trust me.) But that is where the similarities end. This is a very unusual game… the first enemy you fight is a lamp that inexplicably comes to life. Other enemies include stray dogs, sentient vehicles, possessed farmers and hippies, and escaped zoo animals. Although there are still zombies, ghosts, robots, and aliens thrown in for good measure. One of the psychic abilities is to “utter dirty words” to lower your enemy’s attack stat. Enemies don’t die, they “become quiet” or come to their senses. The visuals are cartoony and simple. At one point as I was playing, Cocoashade walked through the room and said, “Charlie Brown has to save the world?”

You and me both, avatar Sora. (Credit: Shigesato Itoi, Nintendo)

The story behind the game, although not laid out super clearly, is that the main character (Ninten in the lore of the game, but I named him Sora of course) is a boy with psychic abilities. He’s tasked by his father to explore the world and investigate the strange things that are happening. Along the way he meets new friends, including a girl who also has psychic abilities like him (I named her Rabbit) a geeky kid who likes explosives and a tough guy seeking revenge for the death of his parents.

I love this cat. (Credit: Shigesato Itoi, Nintendo)

As you proceed in the game, you gather more teammates and have to struggle to get them up to speed. (There was a lot of grinding, which you would probably expect from an RPG.) You can use an Onyx Hook to travel to the world of Magicant, and this is where the main objective of the game is finally revealed. You have to gather all the parts of Queen Mary’s song, which she heard in a dream. (I think I already had three of the pieces before I knew what they were for.)

Magicant is a good place to level up and buy equipment (and it’s the home of the swimming cat), but it does take quite a bit of walking to get back home.

This dragon was pretty tough, even after I leveled up. (Credit: Shigesato Itoi, Nintendo)

The game has simple objectives, but as I said before, the next steps in the game are not always clear. For instance, I wandered around a graveyard for a very long time before I realized you could step into a gravestone. To get out of the other world, you have to find a specific well and traverse a maze. There were also a couple of times you had to use your telepathy to read the minds of people or animals in order to continue on, but that was something you were expected to figure out on your own.

The world map is enormous and it’s easy to get lost as you wander around getting into random battles. Some of the enemies were massively overpowered. I imagine this game would be somewhat frustrating to play straight, without the save states.

At least you’re aware of it. (Credit: Shigesato Itoi, Nintendo)

Pros: This game has simple mechanics. A cute design. Great and seriously catchy 8-bit music. The game is off the quirkiness scale… you have to find a singing monkey to learn its tune, a swimming cat helps you get more powerful, and nothing is really explained. (At least as far as I got.)

Cons: The amount of random encounters gets ridiculous. At times I was attacked every step. As I mentioned before, sometimes it wasn’t clear what I had to do next. The vagueness of the story and the item descriptions hinders the game a bit. There is a lot of backtracking involved. There are bread crumbs you can use to warp yourself back to the place you laid them, but this seems to get messed up when you go to Magicant. The inventory is severely limited, forcing you to swap items between characters or put them into storage with your character’s sister. (Which usually requires walking all the way back home.)

Dawwwww! (Credit: Shigesato Itoi, Nintendo)

For all its faults, I’m having a lot of fun with this game. (Yes, having. I’m not done with it yet. I’ve been having trouble finding the time to play lately.) Much of the charm in this game is in its simplicity. The awkward translations, the vagueness of the plot, the quirky monsters and silly situations, the chiptunes musical score. It’s a fun game to put on for a while to relax, fight some monsters, and advance a little in Ninten/Sora’s adventure.

I know this is going to make me sound old, but there was a quality to these 80s and 90s games that was lost as technology advanced. Due to hardware limitations the devs had to get really creative with the sprites, music, and content of their games. Don’t get me wrong, I love the more complex modern games (I still play Animal Crossing New Horizons daily) but sometimes it’s nice to play one of the older games and revel in some nostalgia for a simpler time, a simpler gaming experience. This game scratched that itch for me.

It’s a bit difficult due to its primitive design and lack of clear objectives, but it’s still a lot of fun and I in no way regret deviating from my game list to play it. After all these years it still holds up as an entertaining and memorable RPG. I can’t wait to finish it and play the sequel.

Before closing this out, I’m going to leave you with a few more of my adventures!

Thank you for reading my little review of Earthbound Beginnings. I appreciate you all! I’ll be back soon with more randomness! (And maybe I’ll get back to my game list.)

The end! (Credit: Shigesato Itoi, Nintendo)