When I first read about this months musing, I was excited to have a chance to express how I thought some of my favorite games could be improved. Then after a bit of thinking about the topic I realized that it wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought it would be. First, I needed to decide which game I was going to talk about. I wanted to pick a game that I actually loved, not just a great game, but one I have fond memories of, one I spent a significant amount of time playing and enjoying. The first two that immediately came to me where Chrono Trigger and Earthbound, these two masterpieces where the games that defined my childhood gaming experience. I decided that Earthbound was my most loved game, and so I would look long and hard at how I feel it could be improved.



Easier said then done. I started to think “Who am I to change someone else’s vision?” When a game is developed, or any type of art for that matter, the finished product tends to be a culmination of efforts brought together to realize a vision. If I start making demands on how the art should be changed, then what was the point of the vision in the first place? Now, an argument can be made that some games are shitty and fail to realize whatever goal it was that it was striving for, and this is true. But, when you start talking about art that has become an icon of a time, such as Earthbound, you start treading the line of insulting a proven artist, it would be like telling Thomas Edison how to improve the light bulb, with no knowledge or experience in the art.

With that said there are a few things that I believe the creators of Earthbound could have done differently and still achieved the vision that they were hoping for.

1. Weak Family Storyline

One thing that always kind of bugged me about Earthbound was the weak linkage of Ness’s family. Ness awakes after a horrific meteor crashes just behind his home. Ness’s age (13) isn’t revealed until the end of the game, but from how the game is designed and how the characters develop makes you think that Ness and his friends are children, just old enough to be using a yo-yo, ride a bike and carry around a teddy bear. With that being the assumption you are forced to make, you would think that Ness’s mother would be more protective of her son and not allow him to wander the hillsides at night right after a strange crash just shook the surrounding land. But all she does is bend to his silent will; I guess because of the look on his face and lets him rush of head first into danger. I guess the game would not have lasted long if she just locked them all inside and you were not able to leave the house the whole game.





The other part of the weak family story line is the absent father. Through the entire game you never meet Ness’s father. He is just this benevolent beneficiary that sends you money as a pat on the back for beating up evil dogs and crazed cult members with an affinity for the color blue. Even in the game credits Ness’s fathers name is replaced by a telephone. I have read that this is supposed to be a reference to the designers’ plight in work-centered Japan, but this game is supposed to be a satirical look at American Culture, not Japanese.

How would I fix it?

Make the family a more central part of the stories introduction. I think that Ness’s mother should have told Ness to stay inside but he should have snuck out of a window or distracted and snuck out some other way. Also, introduce the father. This game is a story of a kid saving the world from an evil being. Ness’s family should have been a driving force in his desire to do so, rather than just doing it because of the demands of a futuristic bee. Maybe Ness’s father could have appeared during the ending of the game, after Ness returns home to be with his family.

2. Combat

Like Chrono Trigger, Earthbound does not use the random unseen battle attacks used in games like FF7. Unlike Chrono Trigger though, Earthbound uses a first person perspective for all of its combat. The problem with the way EB used the FP combat was that it was boring yet overly busy at the same time. When a character would attack an enemy or vice versa, the only thing that would happen is the screen would shake, you would hear a noise and a small short animation would show on the screen indicating an attack had been made. This of course was not the case with high level magical attacks though. During all of the battles there would also be this trippy colorful background swirling behind the enemy, maybe to distract the player from the fact that the enemy never moved and was not animated at all.





One other thing that I always found peculiar was the way the world on screen could affect the enemies in the surrounding areas. What I mean is, you could be walking though the hills and forests on your way to rescue Paula from the cultist, and as you walk around the bend, you spot one of those tree enemies that burst into flames once beaten and deals a butt load of damage to your crew. Now you realized that you are low on hamburgers and PP so what are you gonna do? Easy, just turn around and walk away for a bit until the enemy is off screen and then walk back and poof the enemy would no longer be there or would be replaced by some other type of enemy. Now this didn’t always happen, but it became a way to navigate hard areas with ease.





How would I fix it?

It is rarely a good thing to compare one game to another, or to say that a game would be better if it were more like game X. But in this case I think EB could have been improved if it had used a combat system more like that used in Chrono Trigger. CT animated all of its battles and attacks. This made the combat in CT much more engaging and entertaining. I would have loved to see ness swing a yo-yo around or Paula smash a snail with a frying pan

I am not sure how I would change the whole random world enemy disappearing act. Maybe the game makes up for it by making all of the enemies run away in fear once you reach a certain level, that way you still have the option to kill things for XP rather than have the area clear of enemies since you killed them on your first trek through the area.

3. Pokey

Ahh Pokey, good ole’ pig faced brat Pokey. Pokey is the older, yet much more immature son of your next door neighbor. He is one of Ness’s “friends” yet you two don’t ever seem to get along. Now, I love Pokey’s character, I think he is a great nuisance to drive Ness forward in his quest to destroy Giygas. What I don’t like about Pokey is how the game treats him as if he was an adult. Throughout the game you run into Pokey in a number of places. After witnessing the meteor crash and Pokey being useless in combat, you next find him later on as a member and High Priest of the Happy Happyist cult. Then after you prevent the inevitable mass kool-aid suicide you run into Pokey again in Fourside working with his father for Mayor Monotoli. He then steals Mayor Monotoli’s helicopter when confronted by Ness.





Does any of this seem odd to anyone else? What kind of people would choose a 13 year old kid, (I am assuming 13 by Ness’s age, but whether or not he is exactly 13 is irrelevant, he is a young teenager as far as you know) to be the High Priest of their cult? What kind of teenage kid knows how to fly a helicopter? Did he jack into the Matrix or something? Later Pokey becomes the right hand of Giygas himself. Now maybe Giygas was the one making it possible for Pokey to do the things he was doing, but why would a super evil being like Giygas who intends on destroying the galaxy choose a child to be his aid?



How would I fix it?

I am not sure there is a lot that can be done about the way the Pokey character was designed without changing the whole storyline of EB. Pokey does say that Giygas was leading him the whole time and that he only serves the “strong and able”, but if that was true, why once Giygas is destroyed would he flee? If Giygas was controlling Pokey why would the control not break once Giygas is no more? Maybe it is his lust for power, maybe it’s explained in Mother 3, I don’t know. I just think the whole 13 year old in control of all these powerful things on an escalating scale, from a cult to the right hand of evil, isn’t very understandable. Then again neither is another bunch of teenage kids with psychic powers visiting magical sanctuaries in order to defeat a super evil, but I digress. Maybe make pokey older than the rest of the kids in EB with contempt towards them because they refuse to hang out with him or let him in their club. That would seem to make more sense to me.


This is the longest post I think I have made to date on Destructoid. With all of the things being said above, let it be known that I think Earthbound is a great game that has and continues to offer players and different yet amazing RPG experience.


Dam Tease!!


What are your thoughts?