Earthbound: The Trippiest And Most Fucked-Up Cutesy RPG Ever!
Where do you start with EarthBound (Mother 2 in Japan)? Before we get into the trippy and utterly fucked-up reality and unreality of the game, lets start with some solid gaming facts. Ground ourselves here on Earth before we delve into the utterly screwed-up 16-bit, but 8-bit looking, world of EarthBound. The game was unleashed on the world in 1994 (actually 1995 outside of Japan) for the SNES. The was written by Shigesato Itoi, author, musician and advertising copyrighter and philosopher. Although the game looked on the surface like many 2D RPGs of the time, it stoof out as having a "real world" setting, rather than the usual fantasy world popular among the genre. The game designers were attempting to create a wider interest, by the setting being a parodied version of Western culture, with references to American culture and society. The game had higher philosophical pretensions, than other games of its type. Focusing on the emotional needs and desires of its characters. They may have been 2D on screen, but they were fleshed out in their personalities, in their needs and their yearnings. Initially the game failed to entice audiences outside of Japan, maybe due to its sarcastic marketing campaign missing the mark, with its strap-line of "This Game Stinks!" However it was a slow burn, and over the years EarthBound has garnered a cult following among retro gamers, especially with the mythology that has built around the meaning of the storyline, and key elements of the game.
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The look of the game was unique at the time, for an RPG. Rather than the usual top-down overworld map view, the used an oblique view, giving a sense of 3D in its 2D world. Anyway getting away from the geek-tech talk, before we go too far down that rabbit hole, lets look at what the game was all about. The main character is Ness, who explores the game world with a gang of friends he meets along the way. At first Ness investigates a meteorite crash with his neighbour, Pokey. There he finds that an alien force, Giygas, has enveloped the world in hatred. A bee from the future instructs Ness to collect melodies in a Sound Stone to stop the force before it starts. He visits eight Sanctuaries, meeting others and completing tasks along the way, filling the Sound Stone. Once full Ness visits Magicant, a surreal location in his mind where he fights his dark side. Once back he travels back in time to fight a young Giygas, a surreal end battle we'll look at in more depth later.
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There are some strong adult themed tones to EarthBound, if you look beyond the cutesy graphics. Some of which hint at actual real world events. Take for example the scene after Ness beats the first boss in the game, when he is taken to a police station, and attacked one-by-one by four police officers and their captain. The scene in the game mirrors the 1991 beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, where four LAPD police officers beat King with batons under the orders of their sergeant who himself tasered King. A coincidence that such a scene should appear in what on the surface seems an RPG game for kids? I don't think so.
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Let's look at the Happy Happyism cult that features in the game. First their appearance, which is similar to the Ku Klux Klan, with their hooded cowls with a small "HH" (which can be read as a KK) on the front. This was actually altered in later versions of the game, removing the "HH", and adding a fluffy bobble on the end of their hoods to make them less KKK looking. Anyway, there appearance is only part of the weirdness. Aum Shinrikyo was a cult founded in Japan in 1984, infamous for the sarin nerve gas attacks in 1993. One of the uniform colours of the cult was a purple/blue colour, their flag colour is almost exactly the same as the uniforms of the Happy Happyism cult. The followers of Aum Shinrikyo had a reputation for being over-the-top "insanely" happy, singing and dancing all the time. Say maybe wanting to "paint the town red!" Which in the game means to actually pant it blue. Even the cow outside their cult compound is painted blue, the only cow in the whole game. Interestingly, Aum Shinrikyo's own compound was located in the dairy farming village of Kamikuishiki. Beginning to see the underlying themes in EarthBound now?
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Finally let's address the "baby" elephant in the room. EarthBound's end boss level. Often voted as one of the creepiest end bosses in any video game. Shigesato Itoi has openly stated that the end of the game is based on nightmares he had, after accidentally seeing a scene from a Japanese horror movie called The Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty (1957). It was one of the earliest pieces of Japanese cinema to show or suggest extreme violence, torture and as the title states "dismemberment". (Though the game does feature dismemberment.) Shigesato Itoi didn't see any of this, the scene that inspired the game, was one of "rape", that young impressionable Itoi witnessed. The scene wasn't actually of a rape, but that's how he saw it and it's what created the nightmare, that became the nightmarish end of EarthBound.
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There is a rumour that has built around the game, that at the end of the game to confront Giygas the players are actually entering the inside of a "mother", along her internal organs, to find a weakened Giygas in baby form. The screen-shot above shows the negative space in the graphics of Giygas, that does look like it could well be a baby. A baby, that you as the player are attempting to kill. I told you this game is weird. Although it has to be said, that this is just Weird Wide Web conjecture and theory. However the fetus and womb theory aside, the end is still creepy as hell. The swirling graphics, the electronic bleeps, squeaks and static feedback soundtrack, the rambling speech that makes no sense whatsoever. It truly is the thing of nightmares. Tame maybe by today's lush graphical standards, but still for its time it was up there with the likes of DOOM for its graphics creepiness factor. All wrapped up, in a surreal and fucked-up cutesy RPG game.
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