Earthbound is a role-playing game about the end of the world. Many video games are. Of course, the format (RPG) and goal are about where similarities end Earthbound feels like Dada-art, mocking and satirical and deeply weird

Earthbound is set in a suburban dystopian apocalypse. Enemies are visible and loiter outside arcades, pizza joints, hospitals. Sometimes, when the player (playing as a red-capped boy named Ness) talks to a hippie, they talk to a hippie. Other times, they beat the hippie to death with yo-yos, a la The Baseball Furies. I’m not the only one who suspects that people on the street aren’t always who they appear to be Of course, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you (Most of the time, they’re not after you)

In 1994 and 1995, I encountered advertisements for Earthbound in copies of X-Men , The Silver Surfer , Spider-Man. Some were just a picture of a baseball bat with the title of the game In copies of Nintendo Power there were scratch and sniffs that deliberately smelled terrible with the slogan, “This game stinks” The advertisements did not encourage my purchase In America, the advertisements didn’t work much at all I didn’t meet anyone who played Earthbound until the late aughts Also in 1994 and 1995: Green Day released “Dookie” For my first concert ever, I saw Green Day late in ‘94 Bill Clinton gave his first state of the union address “Schindler’s List” won Best Picture I still haven’t seen that film I have, however, been to Auschwitz The Rwandan Genocide began We were told about this in school At the time, I didn’t know where Rwanda was Kurt Cobain killed himself Even at 13, I was neither surprised nor upset at his suicide The man titled a song “I hate myself and want to die” Depression isn’t normally so overt Sarin gas attack in Tokyo subway system I began high school In addition to the atrocious marketing plan, see bullets C-i through C-vii for reasons I missed Earthbound Incidentally, I tend to not read superhero comics anymore I do, however, contend that Ness and his companions would qualify as super heroes They have psychic powers, machine-building acumen, martial art skills and BAAAASHING prowess Maybe Power Pack? All metaphors break down eventually

Often in RPGs, the player names the main character. I usually choose the default name When I don’t default (and am not playing as a woman), I often use Nuje Regat Nuje is Mike with home key typos Angel is the third choice My favorite X-man is Angel My freshman roommate used to mock my Angel fandom “Don’t make me do it. I’ll flap my wings. I’ll fly away.” After naming Ness, the computer prompts naming Ness’ teammates: Paula Jeff Poo Poo? What’s that about, Nintendo? In the original Japanese, it’s Pu Dragonball Z characters are named after food, so maybe this isn’t that weird The game then asks for: Dog’s name Favorite food Favorite thing This oddly in-depth naming convention is a hint that Earthbound is a mind trip Speaking of names, Earthbound is the English name Its Japanese name translates as Mother 2 I’ll come back to that

The story begins with a meteor crash. Ness’s next door neighbor, Pokey, wakes him to ask for help rescuing his brother, Pickey. Ness helps and meets a talking bee-thing named Buzz Buzz. Buzz Buzz tells Ness about the arrival of Giygas, a supreme monster who will destroy the world. It’s an info dump of a meeting. The writers did not care about subtlety The primary English localizer, Marcus Lindblom was given “ license to be as weird as I wanted to be and I certainly took advantage of that in a lot of places” After the intro, Ness goes off to save the world with his mother’s blessing What? No curfew? When I was 16, my implicit curfew was “be home before we wake up” Somehow, I failed in keeping that During the quest, Ness and company fight evil trash cans, evil puppies, evil hippies, piles of (evil) vomit At one point, Ness and company hallucinate an entire evil town, Moonside, a reverse, LED-colored version of Fourside That world is actually just a storage room The segment reads as an acid trip We’ll come back to acid trips

The battle to save the world takes place in everyday towns. They might be morphed, skewed towns, but they’re recognizably streets and homes. Cars drive past. People work. If I were to ever have a world-saving adventure, I’d want it to be like this Modern conveniences—plumbing, Thai food delivered, Uber—and still glory, adulation, validation I wouldn’t want to live in a fantasy, swords-and-sorcery world Nobody writes about all the dysentery before modern plumbing Sometimes I fantasize about the far future Among other luxuries, plumbing would be tremendous in the future At some point in my fantasies, I always remember that if I were to travel to the future, everyone I knew and loved would be so long dead, they wouldn’t even be memories I never feel so lonely as when I daydream about everyone I know being one with the earth Earthbound has future robots. Also cavemen Chrono Trigger had both populations as well, but the two groups were at least separated by 65,002,300 years Earthbound has robots and cavemen separated by a continent Locational logic isn’t a strong point Sometimes, when I’m getting ready to sleep and I start thinking about future-Mike and how everyone is dead, I want to cry “ There are many difficult times ahead, but you must keep your sense of humor.” Good advice, hard action item A talking head NPC from the town of (literal) talking heads imparts that wisdom after Ness drinks a cup of vision tea Again with the psychedelics

An RPG trope is status attacks: poison, sleep, berserk, etc. Sometimes in Earthbound , both enemies and friends start crying, and as a result, they refuse to attack. I was incredibly depressed for the past two years I even got married while depressed—that was a fun day, but I started reading Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home a few hours beforehand. Spoiler: Fun Home is not fun I found my mood plummeting I switched to X-Men instead It helped I was in a very good mood by the end of the wedding But for that two year period, while I was in the throes of depression, nothing I said or did had any meaning If I had been battling enemies—even Mini Barf or its master Master Belch—I’m pretty sure I would have just cried, maybe rolled over on my back Earthbound “… is a game that isn’t afraid to make you feel lonely. Miserable.” ( source) Leigh and I have been watching the third season of “You’re the Worst” The female lead’s storyline is all about her crushing depression I finished the third season of “Bojack Horseman” not long ago That entire show is about Bojack’s crushing depression Leigh doesn’t love when I watch depression shows She worries I love my wife I also love Earthbound , but Leigh thinks it looks stupid There’s no lesson in that

I’m happy that romantic love isn’t relevant in Earthbound . Not all media needs a love story Ness’s parents seem to be divorced If they aren’t divorced, Dad sure isn’t present It seems an honest portrayal of many people’s lives The player calls Ness’s parents periodically—his dad saves the game’s progress Dad will sometimes call Ness There is an internal clock that keeps track of time spent playing in order to shame the player into taking a break Which is … nice, actually The player calls mom because Ness misses his mom Talking to mom improves Ness’s fighting We should all be so lucky

Earthbound was called Mother 2 in Japan. It’s called Mother because of the end game The heroes are put into robotic bodies and “sent to the past where Gigyas is weakest” because Gigyas is too powerful to defeat in the present Gigyas looks like a sonogram and doesn’t “attack” as such The implication: Ness and company are inside Gigyas’ mother when they defeat (i.e. abort) him That’s dark It’s #2, because it’s the 2 nd in a series The original was never released over here, for reasons I’ll buy Mother 3 if it ever comes out

Buying the original SNES cartridge of Earthbound costs over $100. I used to buy old video games and systems on Craigslist and sell them on EBay Sometimes I’d find very expensive games mixed in with a bunch of crap Once I went to someone’s house to buy an XBox There was literally dog shit on the carpet and a cloud of cigarette smoke There were two women, mother and daughter, chain-smoking in tank tops When I asked to test the system, the daughter started playing Super Mario 3 on it “That’s weird,” I thought “Pretty sure XBoxes shouldn’t do that,” I thought When I got home, I realized it was hacked, and loaded with every SNES game I played Earthbound on my hacked Xbox that I still own I stopped buying and selling video games not long after that encounter I wrote a story about why I stopped It’s not terribly obtuse No need to read between the lines

I make lines and lists to assert control. I’m chaotic by nature and have trained myself organized Earthbound is chaotic—take this sequence: Heroes arrive in the town, Summers While wandering, they discover the elite Stoic Club that they can’t enter To enter, they need to make a reservation, but the phone isn’t listed A random NPC gives the phone number Inside the club, they’re told about a woman who makes magic cakes (?) Eating a magic cake causes the scene and POV to switch to Poo, heretofore unseen and unmentioned Poo is a prince and a martial arts expert who undergoes training The training includes a vision sequence of a giant floating head who breaks his arms and legs, gouges out his eyes and lobotomizes him But not really After training, Poo teleports himself to Ness and says, “ My name is Poo. I am the one who will fight beside you.” And then, of course, the option to feed a museum director a cookie becomes available This seems bizarrely nonsensical Of course, I can trace the entire course of my life to 10th grade Geometry Terrible teacher = no understanding Scored a 1290 on SATs With a 1300, would have gotten a 10K scholarship to different school At school I went to, met a friend on the first night That friend invited me to alternative spring break senior year There, I met Americorps members During my second Americorps year, did event organizing as a small part of my job Got a job doing events at a university in Baltimore To get a promotion, needed to go back to school During second undergrad, took a creative writing course Look at me now Life is weird Maybe the unreality of Earthbound’s logic is the most real thing in it No wonder I lose track of what’s going on, the world is full of chaos I have control issues that manifest in odd ways My friend Ashley once said that, “You know everything about me, and I only know what your favorite books are.”

I met with a Barrelhouse editor a month ago. She read some unpublished fiction and said, “It’s good, but you need to lose control and dirty it up.”

My Cartridge Lit editor asked me to loosen up, more like my list essay for Fallout.

My editors were not the 2 nd or even the 3 rd person to tell me to loosen up. My therapist also wants me to loosen up I’m surprised therapists aren’t enemies in Earthbound