Subpar graphics doesn't always mean a bad game.

User Rating: 10 | Mother 2: Gyiyg no Gyakushuu SNES
By qorktinik2 | Review Date:
I first played this game 2 days before my junior year of high school and for the longest time, I had thought that RPGs had to be set in a medieval world with dragons and wizards and all that crap. Now I know better. Earthbound is an RPG where you play as Ness, a 13 year old with psychic powers who must save planet Earth from aliens and their leader, Giygas. Earthbound takes place in a modern day society, instead of fighting ogres and slimes and other generic RPG monsters, you're fighting ordinary animals and certain human enemies like hippies, disgruntled women who attack with handbags, crooked cops, teenage punks as well as aliens like Lesser Mook, Wooly Shambler, Spinning Robo, Smilin' Sphere, among others, and truly bizarre enemies like the Tangoo, a snake with a human head that puts you to sleep with his flute, Scalding Coffee Cup, a cup of coffee that spills piping hot coffee on you and your team mates and the enemy that everyone loves to hate, Ramblin' Evil Mushroom, who inflicts a status ailment called "mushroomized" which places a mushroom on a character's head, causing them to act strange, among other enemies. Like I mentioned in the headline, this game's graphics are bad, but you know what, I don't care and neither should you. Beauty is only skin deep anyway. Another good aspect of this game is it's humor, it makes fun of RPG cliches, like Onett and it's desire to achieve the world record of more roadblocks than any other town is basically the game's way of making fun of the fact that sometimes, something will block your way from going into a certain area until you achieve something later in the game (something that's very commonplace in RPGs). There's some bathroom humor, literally:

"Don't bother me. I'm...I'm thinking."

"Uh, no, I'm in here, don't try to come in here, especially if you don't need to use the bathroom."

Sometimes characters break the fourth wall, like the chief of police in Onett talking about how he loves Earthbound but can't seem to beat it and one of the gangsters at the arcade telling you to come back after you beat Earthbound if you tell him you want to join the Sharks gang. One thing about this game that I love is the fact that in Onett, you can get a Hamburger out of the trash can and eat it. The gameplay is simple, the way you fight enemies is similar to games like Dragon Quest but when you take damage, you don't lose all HP right away, the way you lose HP is similar to an odometer, if you lose more HP than you have, that doesn't mean instant death, unlike most RPGs, if you beat all enemies or heal the character before all their HP is gone, they survive. One downside is the lack of optional side-quests but I can easily forgive that given how fun this game is. This is about a 30 hour game so you can beat it in about 2-4 days, depending on how much video games you play in a day. And it's not a hard game especially compared to games like Final Fantasy 6. The music in this game is just flat-out awesome. The soundtrack contains over 130 tracks. For those of you that don't like the idea of listening to the same battle music EVERY TIME YOU ENTER A BATTLE. You're in luck, this game has 10 different battle songs and the song that plays depends on the enemies you fight. This game pretty much inspired the creation of my game Clique War as there are certain aspects of my game that borrow elements from Earthbound, my way of paying homage to one of the greatest RPGs of all time. It's just a shame I couldn't get my hands on the cheat book that came with the game back in the day, it came with scratch and sniff stickers that had bad smells. Issues of Gamepro contained a few samples, Carbon Dog, Master Belch, and a pizza with all the toppings where a few of the things I got to smell. For some reason the Mother series (this game being known as Mother 2 in Japan) was not and still is not popular in America, probably because of the bad graphics which is a shame but it has a cult following in America. The cheat book was a way to heighten the popularity of the game when it came out in the states but even then it didn't sell well on it's release. If you can find a copy of this game (as I understand it, it's rare these days), definitely buy it, it's worth every penny.

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