Tag: Earthbound

Today I finished Earthbound for the second time overall (but first time in years). In the final battles, you have to fight both Pokey and Giygas.

I always thought it was ridiculous that Pokey, the annoying kid next door, could so quickly become aligned with the most evil force in the world. Then again, I suppose it’s no more ridiculous than another young boy (Ness) becoming the most powerful fighter in the world.

Earthbound’s ending does almost everything right. It has the happy ending, peace is restored, and the characters return to their hometowns.

But most importantly, you are free. All the enemies are gone, but you can still go anywhere in the world that you want. You can explore. You can reunite with characters you haven’t seen in a while. There is new dialogue, as characters will react to you having saved the world. You can even get any of the photos that you may have missed. Every RPG and adventure game should do this! Sure, lots of games revisit the characters and maybe show what they’re up to now, but you don’t have the freedom to go anywhere and explore at your own pace.

The ending seems to do everything right…but not quite. There is one problem: You can’t save your game. You may be free to do anything else, but you can’t save your progress and finish up later on. Sure, it’s almost unheard of for a game to let you save during the ending. But this is no normal ending. A normal game ending is typically non-interactive and lasts maybe 5-10 minutes. In Earthbound’s ending, you are still playing! According to Starmen.net, it can take over two hours to go back and talk to everyone! And that’s a long time to have to go without saving. So it may not completely perfect in my mind, but it is still a great ending that more games should emulate.

At any rate, once you are done visiting with everyone, you can return home. Then you and your mother will look through the pictures taken by the cameraman throughout your journey. And of course the credits will roll as well.

---

Next up, I plan on getting back to Batman: Arkham City: Armored Edition for Wii U. In the meantime, check out my video of Wii Fit Plus. It’s a collection of my many fails while playing the obstacle course. It may seem funny now, but those hits weren’t so funny at the time!

---

In Earthbound tonight, I started out from the Lost Underworld. It’s a world where dinosaurs still exist and my characters are tiny on the world map.

I made my way through the fire spring and defeated the carbon dog/diamond dog to obtain the 8th and final melody.

Ness then had a flashback of being a baby, when he first started using his psychic powers. Ness then appeared alone in a strange place. It’s revealed that he is in Magicant, which is a land that exists inside Ness’s own mind.

While there, Ness sees people and objects from his past. From Master Belch to a snowman he once built as a kid.

I explored Magicant for a while and then saved my game. This game just keeps getting weirder and weirder.

I am getting close to the end now, and once I beat the game again, I plan on rewriting my review of the game. A lot of my older reviews are a bit too short, and there’s no better time to reevaluate a game than after completing it a second time.

Just a quick update on Earthbound. A lot has happened since my last post about Earthbound. I went to the resort town of Summers and then the desert town of Scaraba. I met a new character named Poo, who joined my party for a while, and then left. I met the Dungeon Man (also known as Brick Road), entered his body, and got him to join me for a bit. But he couldn’t follow me into the swampy land of the Deep Darkness.

But Poo did rejoin me, and he helped me defeat Master Belch again. I then reached the curious village of Tenda, which is where I’m at now.

I currently have six of the eight melodies I need, and I’m on my way towards the 7th. So I’m starting to get close to the end.