(355 KB, .zip compressed) - 48 MegabitsIn the words of its creator, "[Arn's Winter Quest] has been a labor of love for me for two months, and rivals those hacks such as Hat Quest and EarthBound 2.5: Electric Boogaloo Joint Jive. It has a lot of fun inside jokes, an incoherent story, and all new battle graphics. This hack is basically linear Dragon Warrior with a bunch of humor thrown in, so if you like fighting and you like funny and you like very hard viewtiful fun time hacks, then don't play this hack because it'll satisfy your cravings and your head will probably explode."

Arn's Winter Quest: Gway Edition is a game. Like most EarthBound hacks, you walk along a fairly linear path, level up along the way, and enjoy a story that is vaguely funny. There's not anything particularly interesting to note, except for a couple things. Allow me to put them into a list, because I love lists so much. And yes, I did marry them.

1. Fun! AWQ: GE doesn't make you have fun in the way that you marvel at the amazing amount of work that went into it: it makes you have fun because it crams in down your throat. Arn's adventure repeatedly pokes fun at itself, and never lets the Irony or Pun fall below fatal levels. If you hate incoherency and fast-paced speech that you can't even read, then you'll hate this game. That's not the only reason to hate it, though...!

2. This is a palette switch. AWQ: GE fights with heavy artillery weapons such as orginality and atom bombs. The game's path definitely has places from EarthBound, but you're thrown around so much you really have no idea where you're going to go next. Will you be tossed into the fire springs, or into Scaraba? We decide! I guarantee that the only places that lead into places you're expecting are Magicant and that one pyramid. But it's a palette switch, so it's okay.

3. When's the boss gonna die? ... YOU GAVE THE SECOND BOSS 1600 HP!? The third reason to love or hate this game is that it has a blistering difficulty level. I literally mean that. This game will cause you to break out in blisters on your hands due to the raw amount of times you will fight the same boss and he will hit you with an auto-kill. I've never been to hell, but I'm sure if I ever go there it will have a new name: Arn's Winter Quest: Not Funny Edition. And it will be made by Gau. And all the enemies will be drawn by GuyInSummers.

They will be colored by Joe the Talking Toilet.

4. Hey, where's my sofa? The fourth reason to give me all your money is that I just stole all of the appliances in your house. Even your cat. Especially your cat.

The official forum topic for discussing this hack can be found here