Chronicles of a Sleepy Rabite

While I don’t main him in SSBB, I love Lucas to bits and I think he’s adorable. The PK powers got me really wondering how Earthbound was, and I finally took the plunge and started playing it.

Let me back up a sec: I never played Earthbound. (I never played Super Mario RPG, either, but that’s a story for another day.) The North American advertisement campaign really, really turned me off, what with its “smelly pages” in Nintendo Power and its potty humour, enough that I completely boycotted the game and absolutely refused to play it (or even talk about it) until very recently.

Anyways, my love for SSBB got me curious about Earthbound, and since Mother 3 isn’t available in English (yet), I decided to try Earthbound.

Things I hate about Earthbound:

• The graphics. I don’t know why I’m bitching about this, since I played Paladin’s Quest like twenty zillion times and the graphics in there were asstastically bad.

• The inventory system. Oh GOD, what were they thinking?
• The music is questionable. I like exactly one theme so far.
• The backgrounds are painful to look at. I think the development team was obsessed with lava lamps or something.
• The six-character limit at the beginning of the game. Yeah, I know it’s petty and ASM hacking was virtually unheard of at the time, but I really wanted to make “poutine” my favourite food.

Something is obviously drawing me into the game, however, because I’ve spent the last four days playing it (including a three and a half-hour stint last night).

… *cough*

Things I like about Earthbound:

• It’s a freaking Dragon Quest game on crack. I mean, there’s “Look” command, there’s a “Talk” command… I mean, come on. It’s Dragon Quest!

• I thought the money system would be annoying, but I actually like it.
• I like Ness. I just want to glomp him when he gets homesick.
• The localization is ace. It feels very natural and it’s not at all typical of the choppy translations from that era.
• The level grind. Yeah, I’m nuts, but the whole “I’m way too weak for these monsters *grind* *grind* *grind* *grind*” reminds me a lot of Ys for some reason.

I’m at Jeff’s solo part of the game, now. I hear there are roaches later on in the game, so I’m not looking forward to that, but hopefully that part’s short like it was in the Breath of Fire games. I’ve seen one potty humour joke so far, and I’m hoping that there isn’t too much of that, too.

So, yeah. Please refrain from the “I told you so”s. I’ve changed in the last few years and I have a more open mind with regards to some things, and I maintain that I wouldn’tve played this when it came out… but I’m enjoying it so far.

P.S. Yes, this is Lucas’ icon from the SSBB icon challenge. I haven’t done much with that in a while due to my computer being stupid. I’ll update the list when I have a chance…