Terry Plays

Fourside, Part 2: Moonside and the Horrors of the American Dream

With Paula still kidnapped, Everdred tells Ness and Jeff to check behind the counter at Jackie’s Cafe. When they do, the boys are transported to Moonside.

Although Fourside is almost a clear representation of New York City, I’ve heard Moonside construed as a stand-in for the Las Vegas Strip. It makes sense, considering the garish neon sensibility and the trek through the desert to get there.

I think Moonside acts as a more overt representation of the seedy underbelly of the big city at night, and how strange and terrifying it can be for two boys from a midwest suburb and an English boarding school.

People lie to your face and purposefully misinterpret your responses (Yes becomes No and No becomes Yes). Invisible boundaries signify a complete ignorance on your part as to how to get around. The only way to find your way out is to trust complete strangers to teleport you with the click of a camera shutter about the city. Enemies roam the street represented by flickering flames, illuminating but still unknowable, untouchable.

I say “illuminating” because, like bad guys in other parts of Earthbound, they seem to indicate the nature of their environment.

Two of the four occurring enemies here are the Enraged Fire Plug and the Robo Pump, two ordinarily useful devices that make for a deadly combo – the fire hydrant deals crushing damage with a jet of a water, and the gas pump explodes after three rounds. These are symbols of American urbanization and the conquering of inconvenience and danger through infrastructure! Why are they killing us?

The other two enemies here are the Abstract Art and Dali’s Clock. They represent the kind of hip beatnik style I referenced earlier, the kind of things a cultured urbanite would at the very least be aware of. Though not as overtly dangerous as the other two, the art can hypnotize you, and the clock can freeze time, very creepily muting the background music while wailing on you.

Moonside is a city of conflicting identities. A haven for ideas and advancements for society, but also a place with dark alleys where society cannot defend you from knowledge you are too young to understand. A place of cultural understanding where nothing is what it seems and the truth is obfuscated by flashiness and idol worship.

Literal idol worship! The goal here in Moonside is to make your way through the not-quite-visible maze of the city to reach and destroy the Mani Mani Statue. In order to do that, you have to teleport around for a while until you are greeted by an invisible man with a unibrow and a gold tooth. The guy blocking the path to Mani Mani thinks this guy is so cool that he just has to leave his post and go get a drink with him. Adults are fucking weird

When you do defeat the Mani Mani Statue, you’re brought back to the warehouse behind Jackie’s Cafe, next to the battered idol. A mouse tells you that you were just walking around the warehouse with a glazed expression. Moonside was evidently an illusion created by Mani Mani.

That’s where the explanation ends. It’s unclear whether Moonside is an immutable fantasy world that Mani Mani has dominion over, or if it was a vision experienced only by Ness and Jeff. Is Moonside simply a manifestation of Ness’ fears and paranoia about the world he’s trying to save, projected by Mani Mani to protect itself?

Moonside acts as a neat little preview of the psychological bent Earthbound is only too eager to take from this point on.

Something that always struck me is how the Moonside theme reminded me of this unnamed song from Silent Hill, which was released about 4 years later. Some of Earthbound’s more intense music does have a similar foreboding quality to Silent Hill’s earlier songs, though there aren’t any apparent commonalities between the sound staff for either game. It stuck out to me, because both Moonside and Silent Hill are fucking weird. There are some clear nods toward Twin Peaks in the Silent Hill song, so I wonder if Moonside has similar inspirations.

That may not be so, because Moonside’s theme is based on a riff from Ric Ocasek’s “Keep On Laughin'”. From this point on, Earthbound’s music starts having a lot of interesting inspirations.

Fourside, Part 1: Death is Only the Beginning

Paula is gone. AGAIN.

When you come back from your spelunking adventure, the four-story (Wow!) Fourside Department Store is open for business. And it has everything you need! Every kind of healing item up until this point, and on the very top floor there’s brand new weaponry to equip – FINALLY! Certainly the best part, in ANY RPG, of coming to a new town is getting the newest gear.

And then, once you descend each escalator back to the ground floor and make your way toward the exit, the lights flicker and some… THING sweeps through your party and snatches Paula away. As the lights flicker again, every NPC disappears, and a voice over the intercom summons you to the office at the top floor.

So now a place that was once a haven of supply and demand is now one of the most devious dungeons in the whole game.

Paula is gone. She is the most versatile striker of the team, who can direct strong attacks at single targets or whole groups, and she was the only member with elemental skills. But you can’t use those anymore because she’s gone.

Also because she’s gone, all of Paula’s items are gone. PROTIP: Before this point, take important items away from Paula – explosives, Teddy Bears, and especially the electro-reflective Franklin Badge. In fact, if you have space, load up on Teddy Bears and Bottle Rockets. Probably shoulda mentioned this sooner!!

The enemies here are fucking tough. There’s a huge spike in difficulty here, so I hope you bought the best stuff before the blackout. Most enemies have a “regular” attack and a “strong” attack, but it seems most of them use their strongest attacks all of the time. The Mystical Records can heal each other with Lifeup, too. If you have the Franklin Badge, that should at least protect you from the attacks from the ambulating bass guitar pretty well.

The assortment of enemies could be a nod to the style of hip urban beatniks. Y’know, listening to their records and going to their clubs and playing their upright basses and drinking their scalding hot coffee? Y’know? The selection of enemies here seems too specific not to suggest something.

The environment works against you. While riding the escalator, you are robbed of control until you reach the top or bottom. This restricts your ability to scroll enemies away.

What do I mean when I say scroll enemies away? Well, if you have enough space, and you see enemies in the distance that have not noticed you yet, and you don’t want to fight them, all you have to do is walk in the opposite direction until the enemies scroll off-screen, plus a few more steps. When you walk back, the game will have basically “reshuffled” the enemies. Depending on the location, sometimes this technique will result in a different set of enemies, and sometimes you can make enemies disappear altogether.

Since each floor in the department store is connected by an escalator, there is no opportunity to reshuffle the enemies off-screen. So each time you ascend to a new floor, it’s very likely you’ll be bum-rushed by whatever the game wants to throw at you. So be prepared each time you step on the escalator.

The big boss on the top floor, who’s been taunting you over the PA periodically, is tough but simple, and if you let loose everything you have at him before he does the same to you, he should be taken care of pretty easily.

Being an alien, he clearly works for Giygas, but on defeat he says, At this moment, Paula should be… Monotoli… Gwaaaarrrgh!!, then dissipates.

Monotoli, based on NPC intel, is a Trump-styled self-made billionaire who seems to essentially run the town. Indeed, there is no city hall, but there is a giant skyscraper that says, “Monotoli” on it.

Investigating the Monotoli building will only lead you to find… Pokey! Apparently, he’s now Monotoli’s political and economic advisor. He insults your taste, and then has you escorted from the premises – again, another one of those rare, uncomfortable times that control is robbed of you. Fucking Pokey.

So, it seems you can’t just walk in to the office of the most influential man in Eagleland. However NPC investigation will reveal that Monotoli spends a lot at Jackie’s Cafe – an unusual dive for a man of means to patronize. The patrons at Jackie’s are pretty tight-lipped, but one will tell that she hears some kerfuffle outside.

When you go back outside, Fourside’s upbeat music has been replaced by something creepier, and you’ll find… Everdred, lying prone in the alley! He reveals that he stole the Mani Mani statue from Carpainter in Happy Happy Village – likely with the hopes of pawning it somewhere for a chunk of change – but he was hoodwinked and robbed of the statue by none other than Monotoli. The statue is likely the source of his newfound influential power.

This is a very scary moment. Everdred has been very good to us, and we know how clever he is, especially when it comes to dealing with greedy behind-the-desk overseers. And yet Monotoli STILL got the upper hand on this guy. Clearly, Monotoli isn’t like the other politicians and businessmen we’ve run into. He’s clever, he’s rich, and he’s evil.

What adds to the gloom of the atmosphere, aside from the music, is that you have to push through a crowd of onlookers to get to Everdred; mostly one guy you can actually get to move out of your way if you give him something to eat. Though they don’t seem to hear the conversation, it’s a pretty intimate moment to share out in public surrounded by strangers.

Once Everdred tells you everything he knows, he asks if you’d like him to repeat what he said. This happens in the game whenever you’re presented with a chunk of plot information, as with Buzz Buzz’s final words.

Though paralleling Everdred with Buzz Buzz reminds me of a certain mystery. This sprite.

Its Everdred’s angel – the same kind of sprite that replaces characters in your party when their HP hits 0 and they need to be revived. This sprite is never used, but was found amongst other junk data in the game. This sprite leads to two possible conclusions.

1) At some point in planning, Everdred was supposed to die here in the alley. Just as with Buzz Buzz, an important NPC would die after telling you something very important. This would represent a big shift in scope, as it would lead to the first death of a human being, and would represent Monotoli as a reprehensible monster. If Everdred did not die in the alley, it’s possible his sprite would appear during the game’s credits. But I guess that was too much of a downer.

2) Everdred was meant to be a playable character at some point. This is not a popular opinion, and there is no other data supporting this possibility, but there is some context. Only members of the player’s party have angelic sprites; all other NPCs flicker or fade from existence if they’re killed or otherwise defeated.

Looking back at Mother 1 (Earthbound Zero), you can see that all of the playable characters in its cast were the basis for the playable characters in Earthbound – kid in red ball cap, cute blonde girl in pink, dorky smart kid with glasses. There’s also a fourth party member who joins for a period of time: a muscley, snarky gangster with sunglasses named Teddy, who is older than the rest of the kids.

While Everdred is a much older, possible dirtier version of Teddy, it’s pretty easy to see the connection. Most people say that Teddy was the basis for Frank Fly, which certainly makes sense. Even if the idea was discarded early on, I’m almost confident it was a possibility at some point during production. It seems Itoi has a weird respect for shady gangster tough guys.

Anyway, Everdred doesn’t die. What he does do is recite his “last” haiku poem.

When on your way out
Be sure that you say goodbye
then lock the door tight.

He urges you not to follow him as he stumbles away.

But before he goes, he tells you to check behind the counter in the cafe.

A Troll Too Far

Once again, the Runaway Five are in debt. They owe the Topolla Theater in Fourside a million dollars. I still don’t really get how performers get so mired in debt. I guess they just don’t read their contracts?

The manager suggests that you’d have to find buried gold to settle that kind of debt.

Say, didn’t we just meet some miners in the desert? Does that mean… we have to go back there?

I think this is the most noticeable mistake in pacing in all of Earthbound. After arriving in the fabled city of Fourside, a location entirely different from another town up until now… the only way to progress is to LEAVE this magical new place and go back to Dusty Dunes Desert, which you just finished scouring.

Unlike the Pencil Eraser troll from earlier, this double-back can result in quite the lengthy and possibly arduous detour, and it’s repetitive. It feels like only so long ago that we just took a bus and busted the Runaway Five out of a bogus contract.

However, like the Pencil Eraser troll, this whole scenario is basically the set up for a joke – one of my favorite long-form gags in the whole game.

When you head back to the desert, you’ll find that the miners’ dig has really come far, but they have to stop digging because they unearthed a maze filled with hostile critters, including five monstrous moles.

The first mole you find in the labyrinth introduces himself as one of the five master moles of this hole, and declares that he is the third strongest. It seems like coincidence that you happen to find the most average of all of the moles. When you challenge the next master mole, it says,

I’m really the third strongest master. I’ll destroy you now!

Uhh. I and then the next one says,

My strength falls between the second and fourth strongest masters. Do you
wanna test me?

And,

I’m truly the third strongest master of this hole. I’ll demonstrate the power of being third to you!

And then,

Ha. You’ve fought the strongest master of this hole, the second strongest master of this hole, the fourth strongest master of this hole, and the weakest master of this hole! I’m truly the third strongest master of this hole. Now you see the true advantage of being third!

I love how all of these terrifying moles – they are pretty scary, their big sprite charge at you when you get close – revel in their average-ness. And yet, as average as they are, they’re all too dumb or lazy to realize who really is the most third of them.

The dungeon itself is rather devious. As long as one of the master moles still stands, baddies will keep swarming throughout the hole. Not only to you have to defeat them all, you have to find them in the genuinely confusing underground labyrinth, doing your best not to cover old ground. It’s a very old-school, dungeon-crawly sort of dungeon, a battle of attrition as you slowly burn through all of your PP and restorative items.

My friend Mike watched me play through this dungeon, having heard of Earthbound but never having seen it in action.

“Looks pretty boring,” he said.

It was a harsh thing. The whole point of this blog is to point out why Earthbound is technically a rather good game. And yet, I couldn’t immediately disagree with Mike’s assessment.

The truth is, this is the part of the game where you might start asking yourself, “Am I playing a boring game?” Now, part of it is because you’ve had the same resources available to you for awhile: the same three characters, the same combat items for Jeff, roughly the same PSI skills. Go-to strategies have solidified by now, and one battle tends to go the same way as another. The tenacity that Ness needed to win his fights when he was alone is not quite so necessary.

A big part of it, though, is that as clever and funny as this dungeon is, it suffers a surprisingly dull and annoying assembly of enemies. Not only are they largely color swaps of old enemies, most of them appear by themselves or with weaker enemies, obviating the need for strategies more complex than basic attacks and PSI Freeze. The real difficulty comes in the sheer amount of times you’ll be poisoned by these enemies, forcing you to hold back on Ness’ PP.

Read that last sentence again without giggles.

So, yeah. It’s a real shame that such a clever dungeon design and such a great joke has to be bogged down by a sudden lack of variety and repetitiveness.

Once you’re down, though, you’ll be rewarded with a giant diamond for your efforts, with which you can pay off the Runaway Five’s debts and finally explore the rest of Fourside.

And then: shit gets real.

Everybody hates Dusty Dunes Desert but me

When you defeat Master Belch and liberate Saturn Valley, you can take the bus to Fourside, where the Mani Mani Statue has apparently been taken.

But before you reach Fourside, your bus hits bumper to bumper traffic in Dusty Dunes Desert.

Click to embiggen

Most people hate Dusty Dunes Desert because, as video gamers, they know there’s some way to trigger the traffic jam to end. The most logical thing to do would be to let time pass by and go to sleep – the old drug store nearby will let you sleep on the floor for a fee.

But when you wake up, the traffic jam is still there! It’s a forever jam!

So clearly there’s something you’re meant to see or do somewhere in the vastness of the desert. So it’s time to strike out.

If you click up on that image provided by Starmen.net, I can give you a little tour.

Above the drugstore, there’s a shady guy who sells weaponry. Clearly some ex-CIA guy or something hawking confiscated goods. I think it’s a pretty clever way of providing Jeff with firearms and explosives.

Above that guy, there is a hole in the ground. A monkey sage lives there, clearly some kind of parallel to the dalai lama or the Saiyuki legend. He doesn’t do much, yet.

At the top left of the desert, beside the water and the present with the Cup of lifenoodles (very valuable, the first item capable of reviving fallen characters), there is a single black pixel – this is a talking sesame seed. It will express its desire to see the white sesame seed again, to apologize for some unnamed wrong in the past.

The white sesame lies directly southeast, past the oasis with the present containing a Skip sandwich DX, by the impenetrable bank of rocks by the highway. It stresses the fact that it still loves the white sesame seed. If you go back to talk to the black sesame seed, it barely believes that the white sesame seed still loves it, and cries (actually its says, “Weep, weep…”)

I have to stop right here to talk about this.

What I love about the sesame seeds is how easy it is, because they’re so small and featureless, to consider them as a microcosm for the complexity of human relationship.

Consider how gender neutral they are, even thought the black one is called “he” and the white one “she”. It’s easy to assume that the black sesame seed is male – black being the “bolder” color, and males usually being the gender that has to apologize for past transgressions.

And yet, when you deliver the white sesame’s message of love back to the black sesame, it weeps in an open show of emotion.

It’s also possible that you might find the white sesame first, in which case you would deliver the black sesame’s message back to the white one. The white sesame, after finding out the black sesame is okay, says, stoically, “…Hmm, I see.”

We never find out what went on between them, how they truly feel about each other presently, or what will happen to them in the future. Despite their size, we are not given the option to physically reunite them. They stay where they are, destined to drift on the grains of desert sand like ships at sea.

Ships in the night. Sesame seeds in the desert.

This is the boldest depiction of romantic love in Earthbound, and the dangers thereof. Like many serious things in this game, it is swathed in absurdity.

Itoi, you will find, is very good as concealing crises within silliness, making you forget how dire a situation may actually be, and then suddenly, when you least expect it, make you realize the gravity of everything all at once.

These sesame seeds are like a magic trick. There’s a pledge and a turn, but there is no prestige. It’s too early for that yet.

Where were we? Oh yeah. Northeast of the last oasis, near the present with the Double burger in it, is a Contact lens. I’ll tell you now that there is a man in Fourside who is missing this Contact lens. If you return it to him, he’ll reward you with a single, consumable, combat item: a pair of stinky socks, which will stun an enemy for one turn in battle.

South by southeast of the Contact lens, you’ll find a shack acting as the HQ for a pair of miners, the Geldegarde brothers. They haven’t found anything yet. Funnily enough, they’ll let you sleep on their busted couch for free. Beats paying for the wooden floor at the drug store!

One of the miners will ask you for something to eat. Be kind. Once you give it to him and spend the night in their shack, the traffic jam will be gone.

If you head east around the rock bank and then south, you’ll end up back on the road. (PROTIP: You can get suntroke in the desert if you spend too much time out there, but you can’t get sunstroke on the road!) If you follow the road west, you’ll come across a broken slot machine. However, if you want to play slots anyway, the three guys dressed as mariachis will spins in circles for you, simulating the actual game.

I’ve spent a lot of money here and only won once. I won a can of fruit juice. Evidently you can win a PSI caramel, which is pretty good, but not worth the time, honestly.

Not much further west of the three amigos, there is a present with a thousand dollars inside.

There are great items throughout the desert, including a Big bottle rocket and a Sudden guts pill. There are also two piles of bleach buffalo bones, one which says,

(…I’m just a pile of bleached bones. I can’t talk.)

And another which says,

(Even though I’m just a pile of bones, I can talk and I’m lonely out here in the desert.)

So I don’t get it! Look at all of these things I pointed out, all in one area, without transitions. Why do you guys hate Dusty Dunes Desert?

Oh, well, it could be all of the baddies. They’re really tough around here. They do a lot of damage, and some even poison you!

But the rewards are so worth it! Not only will you get a lot of neat items and experience points, you’ll get a lot of experience. The sesame seeds are worth the price of admission alone!

Though if you ARE having a tough time, and you wanna level up quickly,

look for this fucker:

If you find him, he will give you ten times the experience you would get in any given battle. He’s very elusive, but if you get the drop on him, you’ll kill him instantly. Here’s one way to do it.

Once the traffic jam has dispersed, you’re free to take the bus (or walk, actually, though it takes a while) to Fourside.

But don’t get too comfy.

Not Lackin’ Any Meat

It’s tempting to say that Earthbound has no cut scenes, because that’s not really true. But it robs control of the player very rarely, and only in specific instances.

• Introducing a new playable character (in the cases of Ness and Jeff)
• Carrying the player to a new location (when traveling by bus or the Sky Runner)
• When there’s a musical concert going on
• Otherwise showing the passage of time.

For the most part, events in the game are limited to dialog, which the player can advance at will, or battles, which require direct participation.

When the control is denied at any other points, usually these points are unusual and require our attention. And they stand out! As when Captain Strong leads you into the back room to get pummeled by cops. Or when you get captured by zombies in Threed.

Even some time sensitive events that you think would require some sort of cut scene – a beginning to end pantomime depicting a particular event – are instead presented simply through the suggestion by the placement of NPCs.

When you defeat Master Belch and liberate the Mr. Saturns of Saturn Valley (Belch was in charge of the zombie-siege of Threed, and the Saturns were slaves in a Fly Honey factory… Take my word for it), rather than cutting away to show some sort of exodus or mass escape, Ness and gang simply exit Belch’s lair and find Mr. Saturns lining the pathway, as they each express their gratitude for their freedom.

The layout of the Saturns kind of act as a static Zoetrope; each Saturn stands alone as an individual, but as you walk past them, they also representing a Saturn (or multiple Saturns) in motion, escaping from captivity.

The movement of many characters is made apparent without the use of complex programming, the denial of control, or the loss of meaning. As a result, the player keeps playing, meaning more game and less cut scene.

Earthbound’s not lackin’ any meat!

More about Dad

Ness’ dad is only ever present through a telephone. This is apparently representative of Itoi’s assertion that Japan is so work-centric you can never even see your children. I’d believe it!

Despite this, it’s likely that Dad will be the single character in the game you talk to the most, as he saves your game. Like many good fathers, his duties are vague and unknowable to a young mind, but incredibly important.

Every time you call Dad to save your game, he asks if you’re ready to stop playing and hit the hay.

If you don’t take him up on the offer, he says,

Ness, you like to work hard, just like your mother. But, I don’t think it’s good to work too hard.
(Click! Beep-beep-beep…)

Ness’ dad telling me not to work too hard is basically the reason the rest of my school career turned out the way it did. If you say Yes to his suggestion, he says,

We’re a great team, aren’t we? Well, you should turn the power OFF instead of just pressing RESET. All right?

And then the game just stops. The background music continues, but you can’t close the dialog box, you can’t move, pause, or do anything. All you can do is turn the game off, like you told Dad you would.

I never realized it until this current playthrough, but in turning off the game, you are hanging up the phone. That’s why there’s no Click! Beep-beep-beep at the end of that sentence!

I’ve gotten into the habit of whispering “Good night” when turning the game off.

Another funny thing Dad does is, once you have the Receiver phone from Apple Kid, he will call you if he thinks you’ve been playing too long. After a long period of time without saving, even if you’re in the middle of a dungeon, Dad will call and ask if you think you’ve played long enough.

Mostly, it’s just a reminder. He won’t save your game in the middle of nowhere, but he does tell you to get somewhere safe and get some rest.

What’s REALLY funny is if you play for a long time in one sitting, and then Dad calls while you’re playing as Jeff.

Hello, it’s your dad. You’ve been out there for a long time now… It may be none of my business, but don’t you think it would be a good idea if you took a
break?
Yes
>No

Ahhh… and this would be…? So, this isn’t Ness. Oh well, it’s okay…
Anyway, don’t strain yourself on your journey. Good luck… whoever you are.

Jeff’s “Family”

When Ness and Paula make it to Threed, they find it’s overrun by creepy Halloween ghouls. Ghosts, zombies, zombie goasts, living marionettes.

When they try to investigate the meaning behind this monster mash, they’re ambushed and thrown into a creepy underground dungeon with no way out.

That’s when Paula uses her telepathy to contact the only person who can help.

Jeff is awakened from his sleep by the psychic call from across the ocean. Much like Ness and the meteorite, Jeff’s call to action comes in the middle of the night, interrupting what should be a regular night in his regular life at the Snow Wood Boarding School in Winters, a perpetually snowy town in Foggyland – a clear representation of the UK.

He gets up, totally dressed in his school uniform, and heads for the door, when he’s halted by his friend and roommate Tony, who comes with him.

Everyone else at the boarding school is still awake, gathered in a common area, talking. It seems like Jeff and Tony are those kids. Introverted. High maintenance. On the spectrum?

Seemingly the only teacher at Snow Wood, Maxwell, provides Jeff with a machine to open the lockers in the locker room so he can gather equipment. Indeed, the machine can open any lock. Man! Presumably, Maxwell can trust a good kid like Jeff with this sort of thing.

Tony, without asking why Jeff has to leave, helps his friend scale the gate of Snow Wood.

I don’t know where you’re going or why…But remember, we are best friends forever.

A lot of people have made fun of Tony, with his dopey hat and his perpetual O face. His relationship with Jeff doesn’t quite read as a bromance, so people assume that he’s gay. And, since the game’s release, it turns out that he is! According to Itoi, in so many words.

So it’s true. It seems that Tony loves Jeff, whether or not he knows it. And Jeff is leaving behind the one person who loves him to go somewhere he doesn’t know to do something he’s not sure of.

As Jeff journeys south, he passes a drug store that sells weaponry for Ness and Paula. There’s a shortcut that is blocked by an iron pencil statue. There’s a glowing light in a cave that says, Only Ness can absorb the power of this place. Even so close to home, so much is around to remind him of his destiny intertwining with Ness’. And telling the player, “Look forward to coming back to this place!”

Finally, you make it to the southern laboratory, and finally meet Jeff’s estranged father, Doctor Andonuts, who doesn’t even recognize him at first.

Uh, those glasses look good on you. How about a donut?
>Yes
No

Well, I was only offering… I’d also like a donut right about now.

He lets on that he, too, had been contacted by Paula for the purpose of getting Jeff to Threed. He mentions his Phase Distorter which is incomplete (remember that!!!!!!), but ultimately offers his Sky Runner.

What do you think? Isn’t it neat? Get in! Let’s get together again in 10 years or so.

Jeff boards, and it automatically takes him to Threed, flying over a few locations that Ness and friends will visit in the future – revealing the locations of treasure in a certain desert.

Jeff’s role, aside from being the guy who uses bottle rockets and wins boss fights, is being the loner. He doesn’t come from a loving family like Ness and Paula. His father never visits, even though he’s not far away. The only encouragement he gets is from a teacher (Maxwell, not the Doctor, saves his game data). He only has one friend, and the both of them are kind of losers. The bubble monkey, who accompanies him south from the drug store, abandons him to pursue the love of a lady monkey.

Ness is a good kid, and most definitely a swell avatar for the player. But the truth is, most kids who play and love Earthbound are probably more like Jeff. Reclusive and unpopular, not especially talented in most things, but deep down quite proud and real fucking smart.

We have seen the family lives of Ness, Paula, Pokey, and now Jeff. The most important lessons that Jeff teaches are that suffering an awkward adolescence will provide you with the self-knowledge to become a better and more dependable person in the long run,

and that your family, big or small, are the people who love you.

EDIT 12/19/14: This sums it up nice.

Low-life scum and gullible musicians save the day

Everdred runs Burglin Park, the open-air market in Twson. It’s suggested that he’s something of a mobster, and NPCs explicitly state that he’s tied to kidnappings and burglaries, and not someone to mess with.

When you tread deeply into Burglin Park, Everdred jumps off the roof of his own house and challenges you to a fight. His actions in combat include stealing consumable goods from you, knitting his brow, and biting you.

Once Everdred finds out how tough you are, he tells you about Paula‘s whereabouts. Evidently, in the Japanese version of the game, he lets on that he owns the cabin that Paula is being held in. Everdred rents out a cabin in the wilderness to people without scruples.

It’s unclear precisely why he informs you about Paula’s location – and he also suggests that he heard you were looking for her. And he asks you to bring her back here when you find her. Jesus, what does he want?

When you do bring Paula back to Everdred, he is impressed, again suggesting he has informants about town.

I heard that you’ve been pretty proud of yourself since you saved Paula’s
life… I was going to ask you to be my partner, but I know you’ll refuse. It’s
written all over your face. If you accepted, I was going to give you some
money. Actually, I can’t keep the money now anyway. Let me give this to you.
It’s 10,000 dollars. Use the money any way you like. You cannot refuse my
generosity. Just accept it.

Ha ha! Okay. And then you receive an item called Wad of bills. What do we do with this money? Hey, y’know who else wanted to see Paula? That band at the theatre: the Runaway Five!

While you’re backstage, you find out the band is indebted to the owner of the theatre, Mr. Poochyfud. I dunno how talent booking works exactly, but I guess the Runaway Five sells a lot of tickets, and that’s why the owners wants them to stay.

But guess how much their debt is? $10,000! When you give Poochyfud the wad of bills, the Runaway Five line up to express their gratitude, then they pile into their bus to go to Threed.

Oh, but you can’t get to Threed. The tunnel is inhabited by zombie goasts.

Our tour bus is too loud for any ghosts to bother us, say Lucky of the Runaway Five. The coolness and funk emanating from the bus does indeed repel the ghosts in the tunnel to Threed.

We almost see the same relationship between Everdred and Poochyfud as we did between Frank Fly and Mayor Pirkle back in Onett. Everdred and Frank are both the guy on the street with bad reputations, and Poochyfud and Pirkle act as “the guy behind the desk” who restricts progress for other people.

Like Frank Fly and Carpainter, Everdred acts against his reputation after he’s defeated in a fight. Fighting Ness seems to bring out the best in people. Must be something about the purity of combat with the Chosen One that makes them see the truth.

But Everdred almost anticipates being on amicable terms with Ness from the top, introducing himself by saying, “Why don’t we chat later-after we’ve locked horns!”

It’s not clear if he’s truly changed at all because for every nice thing he does for Ness, he also gets something in return. By helping you find Paula, he’s also clearing his name in regards to her disappearance. By giving you $10,000, he is also getting rid of money that is clearly dirty.

And who’s only too happy to take the money? Why, Poochyfud, the unscrupulous owner of the Chaos Theater. And that is how organized crime helps save the world.

So you came to Twoson to smash the cult to find Paula to impress the guy to get the money to pay the debt to free the band to get to Threed.

What’s great about Twoson is that, we get to see how quests start neatly dovetailing into each other. The reward for the previous objective becomes the means of overcoming the next objective. Every event and character in the game is tied together simply by doing the next thing you need to do to progress.

Paula, a woman far away

Paula is The Girl in every sense. She’s feminine and well-loved like a young Miyazaki heroine, she wears pink like Princess Peach, she wears a bow in her hair like Ms. Pac Man, and she uses a frying pan as her weapon of choice.

I’d like to think the frying pan was an ironic choice – like, they knew how funny it would be. I’m also confident that Paula’s use of a frying pan would lead to Princess Peach being able to use a frying pan (among other things) in Super Mario RPG, and then again in Super Smash Bros. Melee.

Paula was raised by loving parents who also run the preschool in Twoson – how community-oriented they are! Paula seems to lend a hand at the school as well, which goes to show how she grew to be so kind and likeable.

Like Ness, we discover that Paula also has psychic powers, her specialty being telepathy. When you first rest at a hotel after completing Giant Step, Paula will contact you and request your aid.

Despite her talent and resourcefulness, her parents actually seem pretty dopey! After Paula’s kidnapped, her father doesn’t realize she’s missing until you ask to see her at their home. He panics and runs around town looking for her [P P P Paula! Where are you? It’s time for a yummy piece of pie!] and presumably never tells his wife, who does not mention Paula’s absence.

In a lot of ways she’s a stereotypical girl in an RPG, but I think this is done with purpose. She does get kidnapped, and she is heavily suggested to act as a love interest for Ness, and she IS the most magically (psychically) talented member of the group. So she’s girly. But, in the 90s, I feel like if a fictional girl wasn’t wearing pink with bows in her hair, she could have been Boomer from the Burger King Kids Club.

She’s also the most versatile attacker. All of Ness’ iconic attacks in Smash Bros. – Fire, Thunder, Freeze, Magnet – were actually borrowed from Paula. She gets more Psychic Points than Ness, and can even use PSI Magnet to leech PP from enemies – an explicit encouragement to use her special skills as often as possible. Her sheer offensive potential, I believe, does a lot do balance out her girliness. Hey, she doesn’t even learn restorative skills.

There’s also something about Paula I never took seriously before. To spoil something: before you recruit your remaining party members, you take control of them for very brief but very illuminating moments.

You never take control of Paula. I can’t think of a more eloquent way to illustrate how an adolescent male like Ness has no idea what goes on in the mind of a girl his age. When I first played this game, I was an adolescent male like Ness, and I never even thought to want to play as Paula.

Another interesting thing about Paula is revealed in looking back at the Japanese version of the game. When naming your party at the beginning, you can choose “Don’t Care” to have the game cycle through a set of pre-made names.

In Japanese, these names are, of course, different, but some of them are very special. If you were to name everyone with the 4th set of names,

Ness would be John
Paula would be Yoko
Jeff would be Paul
Poo would be George
and the dog would be Ringo.

Yoko: a lady among men, a non-Beatle among Beatles. The ultimate “other” is paralleled with Paula.

Right from the get-go, Earthbound has so much to say about men and women.

Happy Happy, Joy Joy, Mani Mani

So back in Onett, there’s this guy who lives on the big hill named Lier X. Agerate, Treasure Hunter and self-described “billboard guy”.

At first I thought Agerate might be a stand-in for Shigesato Itoi, or rather the kind of person Itoi was or met as an ad man in the 80s. He calls himself a Treasure Hunter, but actually, he just advertises that he’s a treasure hunter.

He’s also really really friendly with Ness, despite being an older gentleman who isn’t part of his family. Kind of awkwardly forced, a bit creepy, in the way I’ve noticed other Japanese auteurs represent themselves in their own work. I guess I’m mostly thinking of Akira Toriyama.

He also initiates a very important sub-plot when he actually finds treasure. (0:34 in the video)

The thing he finds is creepy, and gives a very peculiar sound cue when examined. But that’s it, at least for now. In fact, you don’t HAVE to do ANY of this, which is why I didn’t mention it before.

ANYWAY, once you get through Peaceful Rest Valley, you’ll reach Happy Happy Village. Happy Happy Village, I think, is a unique result of Japanese minds recreating a particular aspect of American culture.

The villagers all follow a man called Carpainter who believes that happiness can be found once everything is painted blue. They all praise the color blue, assert how happy they are, and some even suggest their strong distaste for any who disagree with their viewpoint.

On one side of the village there is a woman who requests donations from you, follows you around and insults you if you don’t comply, and if you DO comply, gives you a postcard, which, in terms of resale value, is the most worthless item in the game. On the other side of town there is a market where you can name your own price for the items on sale. If you don’t pay anything and talk to the man keeping surveillance behind the bush, he will fight you.

Religious extremism is everywhere in the world, but the hypocritcal nature of the Happy Happyists seems distinctly American to me. Evangelical in practice, Mormon in origin, Scientologist under scrutiny. Also, fucking look at these guys.

These cultists appear at random throughout the town. The rest of the villagers are polite enough, but they do not take responsibility for these violent crazies. The little Santa Claus pom-pom at the end of their hoods were added in the American version. There also used to be a little “HH” on the forehead, as though the Ku Klux Klan komparision wasn’t close enough already.

Around the same time as Earthbound’s development, the Aum Shinrikyo cult would carry out a Sarin gas attack in Tokyo. In creating the Happy Happists, maybe Itoi was casting a wider net than just Christian extremism. (The cult even published a magazine called Enjoy Happiness)

With enough scouting around, you’ll find out that Paula – who may have contacted you telepathically in your sleep by now – is locked in a cabin somewhere in Peaceful Rest Valley, being sweated out until she agrees to become Carpainter’s right-hand priestess. Carpainter has the key to her cell, but if you visit her she’ll give you the Franklin Badge as protection from Carpainter’s power over lightning.

Yeah, what, lightning? Wait. Shut up.

When you exit, you’re greeted by Happy Happyist cronies and… Pokey?! He’s a high priest with the cult now, and based on accounts in Twoson, he may have been in charge of Paula’s kidnapping. He sics the Happyists on you. Pokey, what are you up to?

The next place to be is the Happy Happyist HQ in the middle of the village. So this is where they’re all coming from! I can’t stress enough how funny and weird and clever this place is. The only way through the throngs of chanting followers is to find the stand-outs and ask them to move out of your way – though some will fight you.

And then you’re face to face with Carpainter. No, wait, first you meet this… receptionist.

Because I didn’t know what else to do!

Then, up the stairs, you’re face to face with Carpatiner and,

HEY that other thing! Agerate’s statue that he found. First you have to overcome Carpainter in battle. Which is very easy! Because the Franklin Badge reflects all of his Crashing Bang Boom lightning attacks. It’s kind of a joke, and it feels great. Yeah, take that, asshole!

Oh, but he’s not a real asshole. Once defeated, much like Frank Fly back in Onett, Carpainter comes to his senses right away. He says that the statue had been making him do peculiar things since he obtained it. He promises to get rid of it and return the village to normal.

Carpainter is a weird guy. His name is a pretty half-hearted pun, and he seems to be wearing something like a yarmulke. Maybe Itoi just wanted to use Happy Happy Village to include religions predomninantly practiced in America? Or some kind of statement about how, despite the percentage of Christians in the country, the Jews seem to run everything?? I don’t believe that by the way. His design is just so peculiar to me.

The statue, which Carpainter reveals is called the Mani Mani statue, is also pretty weird, but a little easier to break down. It definitely looks like an Oscar statuette with devil horns – a pretty natural symbol for the corrupting nature of power and fame. Also, not only does “Mani” sound a little like “money”, the statue also functions as an evil and powerful MacGuffin in the same way the Mammon Machine does in Chrono Trigger. “Mani” kind of sounds like “Mammon”, and Mammon also basically means wealth as a result of avarice.

For now, we take Carpainter’s word for it, and the statue just kind of hangs out. Carpainter also gives us the key to Paula’s cell. Let’s go get her!