You and I Have Memories - Let's Play Earthbound

I don't have to tell you Earthbound's great. If you're anything like me you've played it more times than you can recall. It may have spoken to you in a way that's a little hard to define and probably a lot personal. It has this effect on a lot of people. I want to discover what it is that makes this game so affecting. Not a "it's a parody of RPGs" or "it's how Japan views America" surface level approach. I want crack the game open and sift through the pieces. A real deep cut. Find the secret heart of Earthbound.

This Let's Play will consist of opinions and facts. I will do my best so that the facts outnumber the opinions.

But no promises.


Here's some facts for you. Earthbound was a RPG released for the Super Nintendo in the year 199X. Nintendo had high hopes and spent a lot of money to promote it. However, the game bombed. This has had long lasting consequences. Now for an opinion (feel free to skip): I think it's a god damn masterpiece and maybe the best game ever made. I'd like to show you why.

To start, there can be no real understanding of Earthbound without knowing more than a little bit about its creator, director, and writer: Shigesato Itoi. We'll be talking about him a lot in the months to come, but for now, a brief overview.


Shigesato Itoi is a Japanese writer, blogger, day-planner manufacturer, interviewer, TV host, treasure hunter, and all around renaissance man. Oh, and he made some video games. We really don't have an analog to him here in the west but in Japan he's a major celebrity, where the Mother games are considered just one part of his whole. It's important that we get to know Itoi well because so much of Earthbound comes directly from his life and philosophies. He is the mind, heart, and soul of Earthbound. They might as well be synonyms.

Of course Itoi didn't make the game by himself and it would be unfair to ignore all the other important members of the Mother 2 team. So here are some more

Names You Should Know

Satoru Iwata - Program Director. President of HAL Labs and responsible for most of the game systems. He recoded the game from scratch half-way through its production and is credited with saving the project. Is now the CEO of Nintendo.

Kouji Malta - Second Director. Programmer at Itoi's production company APE, Inc. Was in charge of most of the scenario data. Also directed the US conversion of the game.

Kouichi Ooyama - Art director. Responsible for Earthbound's unique look. Went on to become one of the original designers of Pokemon TCG.

Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka - Music. Famous for composing many of Nintendo's classic soundtracks including Balloon Fight, Kid Icarus, and Metroid. Now is the president of Creatures, Inc.

Keiichi Suzuki - Music. Songwriter, composer, and member of the rock band, Moonriders.

Dan Owsen - English Text Writer. Credited with localizing the game. You can hear him say "The last Metroid is in captivity. The galaxy is at peace" in Super Metroid.

That was a dude?

So excited.

Are we picking names? Because I want mother-fucking default names. None of this Beatles shit.

Part 1: Her name was Magil and she called herself Lil but everyone knew her as Nancy



Nintendo is a Hanafuda card manufacturer that have done some other things. I like how the trademark symbol is just a circle. Does it count if the R isn't readable?



Ape, Inc. was Itoi's game production company, created for the development of Mother 1. Itoi has said that it was named for A Space Odyssey: 2001, so you can imagine that the monkey in the logo is about to bash some dude's face with that bone. These days the company is known as Creatures, Inc. and they develop the secondary Pokemon properties.



Halken is a name that Hal Laboratory sometimes used in the 90's. You may know them for their hit game Super Bros Kirby. I just noticed that their logo is a profile of a spring and not some crazy M like I've thought for years. Their name also comes from A Space Odyssey, making for some nice symmetry.


♪The Evil Giygas Attacks (Part 1)

Earthbound opens with a screen filled with static that fades to a shot of a small town main street getting blasted by U.F.O.s.


♪The Evil Giygas Attacks (Part 2)

I don't really understand what's going on with this pre-title intro. It introduces a tone that's never revisited. It does make for some nice contrast when we move into the real title next. The music here is given a special credit at the end as "OPENING ROCK GUITAR M.D. Seeger." There's a rumor that this is actually Shigeru Miyamoto but I can't find any independent verification of it.


♪Title Screen

We come to this real classy title screen. I don't know who was responsible for this but they deserve a medal.


♪Opening Credits

In the grand tradition of video games there's a little demo if we wait on the title for a moment. I don't have much to say about this and I'm certainly not going to make a gif of it or anything ridiculous. The music is worth a listen though. It's a nice chaotic upbeat number that incorporates bits of Fourside. It's the closest thing to Earthbound's main theme, if anything could be considered such. The song is called Opening Credits but the only credit shown is for Itoi and it's a producers credit at that. Weird.


♪Choose a File

After picking a file and text speed we can choose which flavor of menu we want. It's a small thing but I like this a lot. Attributing the look of the menu to taste gives it a little bit of interest. More than just picking a color would anyway, and it sets us up for the off-kilter experience we're going to have.

[Opinion]I like peanut the best.


♪Your Name, Please

Before we get into naming can we bask in the glory of this song for a few minutes? Man it's just so good and catchy and goodness that bassline. I always make sure to groove to it for a few minutes before moving on. People claim the staticy bit at the beginning is a sample of John Sousa's The Liberty Bell, which I can kinda hear if I squint, but they go on to say that it's specifically from the opening to Monty Python's Flying Circus because you can heard the crowd laughing which is just nuts and not in a fun let's-make-our-menus-nut-flavored kind of way.


These are our heroes. They are Ness, Paula, Jeff, and Poo. That's what everyone knows them as and I'm not going to play through referring to them as Pants, Percy, Hobos, and TstFg or whatever cool thing Nich comes up with.

But if you were so inclined you could click that little "Don't Care" option and they could be Alec, Nancy, Dan, and Kato; or Roger, Skye, Henry, and Kai; or even Lane, Jane, Sean, and Lado!

In the Japanese version of the game these Don't Care sets came in themes. Like Hat, Ribbon, Glasses, and Pigtail if you are a very literal sort of person. Or Mario, Peach, Luigi, and Kinopio (Toad) which you might recognize as names from Popular Video Game. There's a set of monkeys (Monkeymaru, Rilla, Oran, Chimp, favorite thing: APE) because the game was made by APE, Inc., and of course The Beatles (John, Yoko, Paul, and George. The dog is Ringo (favorite food: honey pie whoa-ho!)). Interestingly, the famous PK LOVE comes from this set. There's also a set for big name Japanese Boy Band SMAP (Takuya, Goroko, Tsuyoshi, and Shingo). Takuya even started in commercials for Mother 2. Apparently they're something of a big deal. I asked my resident expert of living in Japan, TK Flash, what he knew about them.

All this is irrelevant though. They are Ness, Paula, Jeff, and Poo.

However we still have some other things to name. First is this dog. He seems like he could use something to call him by. And then what is your favorite food make sure it is tasty. Finally, what is Talking Time's favorite thing?

You've got six characters for each, get to it.

Be sure to point out when to get out our scratch-and-sniff trading cards!

Dog: Brian
Food: Pie

Since I'm never going to get around to playing this game myself, this should be quite entertaining.

I never figured out- what the hell is up with Ness piloting a Starman on that US cover?

DOG is a stalwart protector and saves your bacon in the games earliest chapter. He is DOG!

Little known fact is that the tastier the food the more delicious it is. There is nothing more tasty then BREAD.

Your Favorite Thing is obviously going to be the source of these wonderful suggestions, so it BRAINS

That would be his reflection.

dog name: Snoop
food: Grass
thing: Money

I think that was Ness in the reflection of its visor, not piloting it. Starmen aren't any bigger then a regular joe.

Dog: Bacon
Food: Bacon
Thing: BACON

Mostly, I just wanna see Ness use PSI BACON to ruin someone's day.

Dog: Dusty (I had a dog named dusty)
Food: Curry (I love curry)
Thing: Games (this should be obvious)

When we played this game as kids, our favorite food was barf, and we were always upset when the game forced us out of our pajamas.

Uh, I think I'm going to start playing this. I've been trying not to spoil myself for like a million years, so I might as well just play it. I have read a bit about Itoi, however, and he's an interesting cat. He was the voice of girls' father in My Neighbor Totoro, one of my favorite movies of all time. See, we're talking about our feelings already!

Dog: Wolfie
Food: BACON
TT's favorite thing: Navel Gazing

To be fair... the Monty Python's Flying Circus opening theme IS The Liberty Bell.

Thing: Spite

finally, i'll get to see the game that TT loves more than Shin Megami Tensei: Something Something.

I support Spite.

I vote for

Food: Curry (because Japanese curry is so good)
Thing: Spite (especially good in the context of a strong PSI attack)

I vote for anything but Bacon for the dog. I mean, does this forum have no taste at all? Why not PrtNja while we're at it?

Dog: DOG
Food: Bacon
Thing: SPITE

I'm going to tell you why you're going to name the dog Dusty.

Back when my family lived in Alberta, my mom wanted a pet to keep her company while me and my brother were at school, and my dad was away selling stuff to oil rigs. Neither of my parents were cat people, and we had a previous dog that we had to leave behind in Nova Scotia when we moved (it had severe heart problems; he lived out the rest of his days with a friend of mine). After fixing the fence so a pet could run around without needing to be tethered, my parents went to a pound and picked up a mutt (a poodle-terrier mix) named Dusty.

Dusty was - what I'm told - a medium sized dog. He was small enough to sit on your lap, but large enough to take up a chair. He had off-white curly hair, which made him look kind of similar to the Earthbound dog. Dusty was, without a doubt, the worst trained dog ever. It was the worst trained dog because we were the worst at trying to train it. By that I mean, we never trained it to do shit aside from signal when it wanted to go take a poop.

He had the following, endearing habits:

1) Dustyloved coffee. Whenever my mom drank coffee (which was all the time), she would leave a little bit for the dog to drink, because it would get pissy otherwise. We honestly fed him way too much human food because we were horrible at saying no.

2) Dusty loved to sit on chairs when there was company around. He clearly wanted to be part of whatever was going on in a room. We had a decent sized living room, enough to seat 6 comfortably, 10 with some squeezing. One day, we had 10 squeezing. Dusty, seeing no adult chair it could sit on, proceeded to sit on one of those tiny, squish-able plush chairs meant for my sister's young kids.

3) Dusty, despite being neutered, was horny as fuck. My dad had given my mom a teddy bear dressed as a clown one year for something or other. Dusty humped that teddy bear at least once a day. In the living room. Especially in front of company.

* * *

Several years later, my dad was still working in Alberta, and Dusty and my mom were back living in Nova Scotia. My brother was completing his Computer Science degree at UNB, as was I until I figured out that I couldn't hack it as a computer programmer. I had moved back home to figure out my life, with my mom and Dusty. Dusty had - and was - the one constant in my mom's life. He wasn't a sweet dog, but he was family, and I'd like to think that he gave my mom some comfort, what with her family spread out over Canada as it was.

My mom would have a heart attack on February 19th, and pass away. Dusty was beside himself. It wasn't just my mom who loved that dog, it was Dusty who loved her.

About a week later, a sudden snowfall would build a snowbank up behind the garage in the backyard. Upon reflection, this snowbank would have likely built up most years, but for whatever reason, Dusty had never used it to "escape." But that day, he did. Over the fence, out of our lives, the second family member lost in such a short period of time.

My dad suggested that he was tired, and without his one constant companion, he decided to give up. He was certainly old (he was hitting 13 years at that point), but I'd like to think that he didn't find a nice spot to lay down and die. I'd like to think that he found another mom - like mine - who needed a friend to get them through the shit their husbands and kids put them through.

So since then, every time I play Earthbound I named the dog "Dusty". A companion to keep Ness's Mom - whose husband is rarely home, and kids leaving to explore the world - company.

- Eddie

Fine, whatever Eddie said.

Except thing should totally be Spite.

I'm hoping that Loki can change my mind about the game, since when I played it in high school I was somewhat unimpressed (though maybe now I'd appreciate the game more if I gave it another try).

Also, yeah, there's no other choice for the dog except Dusty.

I...god dammit Eddie.

DOG: Dusty

*sniff*

Loki, if you do not name the dog Dusty, you are a terrible human being ;_;

You're quite the powerful speaker, sir.

I'm changing my vote.
Dog: Dusty
Food: Bacon
Thing: SPITE