Discovering EarthBound 23 Years Late

This SNES classic is still great for franchise newcomers

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live on another planet for a good 20 years or so, return to Earth, and discover the cultural developments you missed while you were away?

A fairly trivial version of this probably happens to most of us nearly all the time. When all your friends, work colleagues, and apparently all sentient beings on the planet are watching Game of Thrones, it’s natural to be compelled to at least sample it to see what all the fuss is about (by the way, I watched the entire first season and didn’t like it at all — go figure).

But imagine a scenario where, say, you’re a massive Disney fan but you’ve never seen The Lion King. It’s such an iconic film that even if you somehow haven’t seen it, you must surely be aware of its enormous impact on pop culture (the fact that it spawned a musical that has now run for more than 20 years straight is definitely testament to that).

Well, I’m a massive Nintendo fan — one of the biggest there is, I’d argue — but until now I had never played EarthBound.

“You’re not a real Nintendo fan if you haven’t played EarthBound…”

Yeah, I get that. I know that’s what you’re thinking right now. But in my defence, I should say that I live in Australia. In 2018, being in Australia isn’t really a disadvantage anymore; we are typically included in all global releases and we occasionally get interesting Nintendo stuff before other major territories. But back in the ’90s, we certainly missed out on some iconic Nintendo experiences.

Doshin the Giant started life on the ill-fated 64DD add-on. Image credit: MobyGames.

So — North America, I’m looking at you — while it’s true that you may well lament missing out on certain gems (Doshin the Giant, perhaps?), a number of games completely bypassed Australia when I was a kid. Super Mario RPG is another game that I remember being upset about, because I read all about it in gaming magazines only to find that it would never find its way to our sunny shores.

There were always options for me to get my hands on EarthBound, of course. I could have imported it from the USA, but that would have been rather expensive and I only have a PAL SNES console. And sure, I could have used an emulator and downloaded a ROM, but I’ve never really been into that kind of emulation (for reasons I could probably discuss in a whole separate article).

Luckily, the best possible option I could hope for presented itself in the form of the SNES Classic Mini, released just last year. Although I bought one when it came out, I only just sat down to play EarthBound in the last few days.