Earthbound: The War Against Giygas!

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TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

Are there any known changes for better or wosre to this new version?

JSnake posted:

For anyone wants some insight into how EarthBound was translated into English, I recently interviewed the game's chief translator. He actually ended up having to rewrite a lot of the text, so the game's writing isn't just from Itoi but from the localizer as well. EarthBound is one of my favorite games so it was really cool to get an opportunity to speak to someone who had such an impact on the game.

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/07/marcus-lindblom-earthbound/

Cool beans, gonna read this with conviction!

# ¿ Jul 25, 2013 02:38

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 22:34

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

Bleusilences posted:

While I liked Earthbound a lot a tried to play Mother 1 and found it a boring slug. Is it just me ?

No, because it's literally a NES-sized test run for the game that would be developed 2 years later and infinitely superior in all ways.

# ¿ Jul 25, 2013 04:06

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

I played Earthbound to completion via SNES in 1995 and then like 10 more times on ZSNES over a decade, and I can definitively declare that Always Play Earthbound

# ¿ Jul 25, 2013 23:49

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

Leofish posted:

I remember the single only time it's happened in all my years playing this game... having a Bionic Kraken drop the Gutsy Bat, steps away fom Gyigas' room. I trudged all the way back to the Phase Distorter to save it, so that I could do the final dungeon AGAIN while SMAAAAAAASHING every fuckin' thing forever.

The game is like 2 decades old, you don't need to spoiler anything much less this.

That said, the Gutsy Bat is the cruelest joke in the game.

# ¿ Jul 28, 2013 21:52

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

Niton posted:

I think it might be this: http://earthbound.nintendo.com/message/

If you're reading this thread, you owe it to yourself to read this. It made me tear up while reading it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_WurTZJrpE

:shobon:

# ¿ Jul 30, 2013 03:50

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

It probably has a minimum Guts-check :haw:

that it can't kill past, a level that Ness would never be below by the time you could be there. Then again, I can't remember if he ever instantly KOs from Flashes because it's so uncommon.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2013 06:40

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

Sampling needs to be licensed and cleared by your legal department, or it is in fact IP theft. Just ask Timbaland who enjoyed having his record label settle out of court for ripping off independent modscene chiptunes like 8 years ago.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2013 16:41

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

4000 Dollar Suit posted:

I tried to love mother 3 in the same way, and while it was a good game, it just didn't come close to me.

Same here. It was indeed a fine game and from the same place, but it simply couldn't live up to the heart of EB. It does sport an impressive level of pathos and emotional depth, but it simply falls short of the legend in all respects. That said, I was still glad to play it with its excellent non-profit translation.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2013 20:29

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

Genocyber posted:

I don't really think Mother 3 is all that much shorter. And I find Mother 3 to be a much better game. It may not be as whimsical, but it has a much better combat system.

Having just played them in sequence, it's a lot shorter.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2013 03:39

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

How is Mother 3's inventory "fixed"? It's barely different from Earthbound and I still spent a lot of time annoyed while shuffling items around and playing "sacrificial lamb" for free slots.

Earthbound's legendary greatness has never been about the combat (except backgrounds and rolling HP). I don't understand the experiences of anyone who is crediting Mother 3 for improved combat because besides the utterly superfluous combo system it's functionally identical. They even got rid of insta-kills.

# ¿ Aug 1, 2013 20:59

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

DarkHamsterlord posted:

Key items go into their own bag, so you don't have to choose between dedicating half of your inventory to useless crap or risking putting the Pencil Eraser and Eraser Eraser into storage and then coming across a statue (until you've played the game before and know where all the statues are). I also want to say each character's bag is a little bit bigger, but I'm not positive on that. It's not a perfect inventory, but it's leagues ahead of EarthBound's.

The key item holder was the sole improvement. It's a function of each game's respective story and does fortunately prevent that pencil eraser incident, which is the only leg up. The bags weren't bigger, 14 slots each including equipment. I don't know what you consider a "league" to be, but that's hyperbole.

In practice, I had the exact same inventory annoyances with both games. The worst part of each, which speaks to how wonderful they are.

TheRationalRedditor fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Aug 1, 2013

# ¿ Aug 1, 2013 21:10

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

Hit or miss Clitoris posted:

Nothing is worse than the inventory in Mother 1, instant message playing it right now and by the time I got to Magicant, I had run out of room for things. At least equipment is removed from the list, otherwise all 6 slots would be filled by them, the ocarina, and cash card.

When I was trying to play it I had to spend more time on that garbage than pretty much every other aspect of the game!

# ¿ Aug 1, 2013 21:19

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

Powercrazy posted:

Well the problem is it's hard to do a 16 hit combo, and if you do, one successfully it doesn't do significantly more damage. Best case against some bosses, you will kill them a round earlier.

Exactly. My system was out of sync so I ended up not bothering after a while and it didn't affect my enjoyment of the game at all. In fact it made me use PSI/debuff skills frequently and that ended up making combat more interesting.

I like the musical aspect they tried to integrate, but I got my fill of rhythmic tapping from Rock Band and Guitar Hero years ago. :shobon:

# ¿ Aug 1, 2013 21:30

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

Automatic Jill posted:

This thread has inspired me to restart a project I thought I had abandoned almost three years ago!

That's some really ballin' solo animation, impressive!

The vocals on that Pollyanna cover bring on mad nausea though. :barf:

A great (well-chosen) song deserves better.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2013 03:11

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

Automatic Jill posted:

Glad you guys like it! I'll definitely post updates when I can- I'm animating a ton of bad guy walk cycles now and it's pretty fun. One guy one Youtube likened the Retro New Age Hippy's walk to R. Crumb and that made me happy.

I actually like it because it reminds me of stuff like this song they put in Kiki's Delivery Service for the English version, which I have huge nostalgia for even though I can see how cheesy the lyrics are now that I'm older. I sort of think of the animation like a Saturday morning Japanese cartoon that was given a different theme song when it was brought to North America, and a whole generation of kids grew up hearing it and loving it even though the original might have been "superior". It just gives me that vibe!

Allow me to clarify that I wasn't slamming the lyrics or the pleasant instrumental arrangement, just the flat, campy, cringe-inducing vocals. I don't mind those words for Polyanna because they're charmingly upbeat in an endearing way. :shobon:

Conversely, have you ever seen the transcribed/translated lyrics for "Smiles and Tears"? Good god, that mess is like 5 simultaneous trainwrecks piling atop each other. A true disgrace to one of the most touching melodies in all of games!!

# ¿ Aug 6, 2013 08:47

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

Automatic Jill posted:

I guess I must have played the ROM hack, but it was still such a slog that I shudder to think that the original was actually way harder. A lot of the game still stuck with me, though- like the town full of children whose parents have been abducted by aliens, and the rather tragic and disturbing backstory of Gigyas. It was worth playing it for historical value, as masochistic as the gameplay often felt.

That's exactly how I found it. Even though the story is technically a little different it's basically an proof of concept for Mother 2, which is objectively better in every possible way. There's an E0 ROM patch with the original translation and double XP/cash. Not as good as the "easy ring" version because it doesn't lower the encounter rate but it makes the ordeal way more tolerable.

# ¿ Aug 9, 2013 07:37

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

Pyroxene Stigma posted:

I've been doing this, I'm still curious to know if you can use the same save state repeatedly and get different drops.

No, you have to reload a screen or scroll reset to shuffle the mob tables.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2013 01:47

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

It's no news to anyone that Bottle Rockets are the strongest weapon in the entire game, but most of Jeff's utility items are definitely the poo poo when they finally get fixed.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2013 08:34

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

That perspective is visually representative of Ness piloting a Starman voltron. If the intention was that he's being stared down by a giant space robot, then it utterly fails in its artistic intent because that reflection suggests he'd be more than half as tall as the starman or larger.

TheRationalRedditor fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Aug 14, 2013

# ¿ Aug 14, 2013 03:32

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

Powercrazy posted:

Yea also throw the fact that Ness is quite obviously smiling in a way that you would if you were piloting a big robot, and I totally think the artist got confused.

Maybe it was supposed to be Dungeon Man!!

Moai Ou posted:

It cost me $1 from the old video store that I'd frequent. Apparently there's only 15 or so known to exist and the last one sold for ludicrous amounts of money. I really need to get this thing in a frame.

Cool memorabilia if it's actually valuable, but that's one of the worst cut and paste clip-art slapjobs I've ever seen on a nintendo-power era promo (total style/quality incongruity and they forgot the clearly visible backpack lol) and if you remember anything about that period you know that's saying a lot.

TheRationalRedditor fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Aug 14, 2013

# ¿ Aug 14, 2013 20:30

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

I suppose that's a byproduct of Mother 2's ingenious penny pinching. All that chaotically vacillating psychadelia and humorous status text is meant to distract you from the fact that no battle sprites animate ever, only PSI.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2013 20:41

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

Yoko should've been the dog. And then the dog should've been put down whenever it was named that by a player.

# ¿ Aug 20, 2013 18:23

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

Smoking Crow posted:

I don't hate Yoko Ono for breaking up the Beatles, I hate her because she makes bad music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaCKKHcpf0w

Ahaha. There are tons of gold videos on youtube of this pretentious attention vacuum making an oblivious embarrassment of herself, but this is the Earthbound thread so Bill Burr saying it all in 3 minutes is like the perfect condiment on reality's rock candy.

TheRationalRedditor fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Aug 20, 2013

# ¿ Aug 20, 2013 21:56

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

Debonhare posted:

For me, the 'hard' part of EB is that unlike a lot of other RPGs, you don't have early, easy ways to revive your party members. Depending on the part of the game, you may get lucky and have a Cup of Lifenoodles on you but otherwise you're trucking it to the nearest hospital (which can be a pain in certain dungeons) or praying that your Secret Herb/PSI Healing gamma works this time.

Your point is on the nose. I can still recall playing for the first time on SNES, and without the luxury of emulator tools those early game areas where enemy ferocity really ramped up (Twoson through Threed) felt really threatening because of all the enemies there were with oft-used heavy hitting attacks, dying was a big deal, and poor newbie Ness and Paula don't even have much more than 150 HP to show for themselves yet. I found the Peaceful Rest valley to have an air of menace because the player goes from having encounters with shrubs to suddenly facing exploding trees and alien robots.

Of course, "abusing" PSI butterflies is the antidote to this, but there's no way a new player is even going to be acquainted with their locations and how to reliably make them reappear.

# ¿ Aug 20, 2013 22:34

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

In my latest playthrough I've made Ness's favorite food Jenkem and I have to say it's paying off in spades

# ¿ Sep 5, 2013 07:56

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

Pyroxene Stigma posted:

Wow, that has to add a new layer of hilarity to the NPC in Moonside who talks about how disgusting your favorite food is.

You nailed it. When I talked to that guy I lost my poo poo. His dialogue becomes a total work of art!

# ¿ Sep 5, 2013 15:23

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

Eric the Mauve posted:

That's correct. The present is decided at the moment you touch the enemy to initiate the pre-battle swirl.

I'm pretty confident it's when the enemy is first loaded into a screen, because in the process of trying to get ideal levels this playthrough I've reloaded enemies again and again and the ones that had a present in one screen ALWAYS had it every single time I killed them before resetting. Is bringing up quick status panes with B really equivalent to a screen reload?

# ¿ Sep 7, 2013 21:02

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

It absolutely is the same without a reset. Monsters will even follow the exact same battleplan over and over, like it's pre-determined before you encounter them.

# ¿ Sep 7, 2013 21:32

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

ETB posted:

It's generating numbers randomly, you just saved that particular string of numbers in your save state. For whatever reason, opening the status window changes it up.

Yeah I know, I'm saying the game seems to fully generate all those random numbers from the moment the enemy sprite appears on the screen!

# ¿ Sep 7, 2013 22:40

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

Ezzer posted:

Not necessarily. From my (extremely) limited understanding of how games use RNGs, there's a single random number it pulls up (the "seed") and from that all random calculations are based on. So the game isn't generating a "bunch" of random numbers, it's generating a single random number upon which the rest of the numbers are derived from, or something, which changes when you open the menu, I guess.

ZOOM!

That's semantic, the point is that the mob's fate is decided the moment its sprite is drawn. Pressing B twice or reloading them with scrolling is the only thing to alter their destiny!

# ¿ Sep 8, 2013 02:58

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

...of SCIENCE! posted:

Plus the pacing is just shot to poo poo. You have an extended prologue split across three years and half a dozen characters that largely has nothing to do with the actual plot and swings wildly from tragedy to comedy, and despite being episodic in structure there are still several points where it drops you into its quasi-open world with little to no indication of where to go next aside from a single NPC or message in a bottle you might not even notice. Which, to be fair, Earthbound could be a guilty of at times.

This is a much of the root why it didn't have any the Earthbound magic for me. It wasn't bad, but it simply isn't legendary. The only nod I honestly give it over Mother 2 is the final dungeon and climactic battle - the parts AFTER the robot conversion of course, as that revelation unique & heartbreaking like so many things in M2.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2013 22:24

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

absolutely anything posted:

The Earthbound community sounds magical

Dehydrated from the searing ambient heat of bitcoin mining, obese man stopped moving!

# ¿ Dec 8, 2013 10:29

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

Whoa that looks super dope!

# ¿ Dec 18, 2013 17:22

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

Zaphod42 posted:

Its the director's weird repressed childhood experience of seeing some kind of crazy japanese tentacle rape murder movie as a young kid and not knowing how the gently caress to process that, filtered through Peanuts and American culture. That's where the Cthulhu stuff comes from.

Parents, watch yo kids Although I guess its those weird tortured creatives which give us things like Earthbound

You can't call your dad with a broken telephone, goon.

# ¿ May 12, 2014 22:58

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

I never have much of a problem getting the Sword of Kings (even in my original SNES playthrough), but I have never, ever seen the Gutsy Bat, emulator tricks and all. It's a piece of poo poo!!

# ¿ May 15, 2014 04:40

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

I feel similarly about it. Mother 3 revels in its excessive pathos, but I never found myself caring about the characters like I did in EB even though they barely talk. To me it came across as trying too hard to be emotionally affecting with too little genuine charm behind it.

# ¿ May 15, 2014 07:27

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

Yes. he and Crono would get along wonderfully

# ¿ May 15, 2014 07:30

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

Pyroxene Stigma posted:

If no one else appreciated this, I want you to know from the bottom of my heart that I do.

I got it, and it was good

# ¿ Aug 6, 2014 05:09

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

Pyroxene Stigma posted:

Really? I loved that track! My favorite strength of that game's OST is how brilliantly evocative it is. Any track, Temple of the Ancients included, immediately sucks you right back into that part of the game.

This track was fuckin' great, what a maroon that goon is.

Earthbound's OST still looms large in my memory, despite how much...'inspiration' it employed.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2014 00:53

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 22:34

TheRationalRedditor: Jul 17, 2000; WHO ABUSED HIM. WHO ABUSED THE BOY.

Blackheart posted:

Speaking of music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXis5KiTiK0

This has some nice bridge in it but I don't think it's really possible to top the sheer concentrated emotion of the original without using the same instrument arrangement at its core.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2014 22:59

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