Earthbound

by Nintendo

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000035Y63
• Item Weight: 8 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (68 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #25,950 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

This role-playing game is set in the modern world and is filled with irreverent humor. You play as a teenage boy who must save the world from a malevolent alien.

Product Description

Earthbound is a cult classic RPG for the Super Nintendo (SNES). Part of a series known in Japan as Mother, EarthBound is the only installment released anywhere else. Perhaps you’ve played Super Smash Bros. and wondered about the character Ness. Ness is the star of EarthBound, and this is your chance to experience a hidden gaming gem! Ness lives in the town of Onett, where one night, while he’s in bed, a meteor lands. While investigating, Ness finds a bug from the future who tells him that he must prevent an evil alien named Giygas from taking over the world. Your party will consist of some very unique characters, and you will come across different weapons and items as you play that will enhance your abilities. Take on aliens in turn-based battle and save the world! Gamers love EarthBound for its humorous depictions of American culture and for its clever parodies of the RPG genre. It’s also fondly remembered for its music and sound quality. If you’re an RPG fan, this is one game not to be missed!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars By far the best RPG, nay, the best game ive ever played., April 11, 2006

By 

L. Garabet (Fullerton, Ca) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Earthbound (Video Game)

i still remember the first time i played this game. it was given to me by and old neighbor of mine as a gift back in 1995. ever since then i think ive beaten and restarted this game over a hundred times. to me this game never gets old. the only reason i still have my snes is just for this game. i highly recomend this game to anyone that likes RPGs. it is so simple that anyone can pick it up but the storyline is so deep that it actually makes you care deeply about these 16-bit sprites on the screen.

the music is so catchy, each city has its own theme and almost each enemy has his own music. the music for this is perfect for the tone of the game.

the graphix are sufficient. sprite detail is great. the only complaint anyone has (not me) is the battle graphics are just a box with your name on it fighting a picture of the enemy. very simple but youlle actually be suprised how well it works.

replayability is by far the best aspect of the game. there is so much to do and its so fun to complete all the tasks.

it is a little bit hard to figure out what to do next though, even the original game came with the players guide. if you dont have a guide you can easily download a guide online for free.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great RPG from the SNES days., July 28, 2001

By 

Ben (Smyrna, Tennessee United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Earthbound (Video Game)

It's about time I found a listing for this on Amazon! I've been looking all over for this game. This is one of the best ones I played on the SNES, and I still like it today.

In terms of graphics, it's very cartoony, and the battles are done in Dragon Warrior style with some weird swirling color patterns in the background. The music in this game is pretty cool, though it gets weird at times. But, well, this game IS weird... that's the whole point of it.

The gameplay is much like the old Dragon Warrior style, and a few old features like limited inventories have come into play. I personally don't like that, but it certainly does add some challenge.

One of the best and most unique features of this game, also, is the battle system. First, there are no random battles. You must run into an enemy in order to fight it. If the enemy is stronger than or equal to you, it will come after you. If you're far stronger than they are, or you have already beaten their area, they will usually run away. Also, when you come into contact with an enemy, the beginning of the battle is determined by HOW you met them. If they caught up with you from behind, they get the first strike. If you caught them from behind, you get the first strike. And, if you met face to face, it's an equal start. One other feature of the battle system, which I truly like, is the ability to skip pointless battles. If you are far stronger than the enemy and they run into you, you will automatically win without even going into a battle screen. That is an excellent feature, and I don't know why it hasn't been implemented in other games. Final Fantasy certainly could use something like that.

This game is placed in modern times, which is another thing that makes it unique. Also, it is purposely comic, and I enjoy that a lot more than FF7's dark, gloomy overtones. I also like the interesting choice of weapons that the heroes use to fight bad guys. Baseball bats, frying pans (!), slingshots. This game is wacky, and it's not the least bit shy about that.

Unfortunately, it came out at a time when people were saying "If it didn't come from Squaresoft, it can't be any good," so as a result it was either overlooked or scorned. But, this is actually a great game. If you can get your hands on it, go for it.

22 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You need to know that Nintendo DESTROYED this game, June 11, 2006

By 

The Editor - See all my reviews

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Earthbound (Video Game)

Earthbound... This is a game that I remember enjoying immensely back in the day. Unfortunately, it has now been plunged into obscurity and receives very little respect from new age gamers that happen to come across it. Despite that, though, you might be a bit surprised to learn that this game was the source of a considerable amount of hype prior to its release. I remember Nintendo Power Magazine, which was one of the leading authorities of video games back then, did a pretty big promotion for this game. Sadly, this promotion probably did more to hurt the game's image than anything else. What NP tried to do was, they tried to play off the game's humorous and quirky nature. They ended up having these scratch and sniff cards that had stuff like dirty sock scent and things like that which came out in a special pull out section of the magazine. It was done with good intentions, but needless to say, I don't think it did very much to boost the game's image. NP's coverage of the game also did its part to hurt the game's stock. I remember that the coverage they did on it was really weird. It wasn't a normal walkthrough like they did with virtually every other game they've ever featured. There were no strategies, no hints or tips, no maps, nothing like that. There was never any kind of coverage like that. Basically what they did was, they had in-depth journalism type feature about this odd unconventional RPG that was wrecking the standards for RPGs everywhere. If you read through it really carefully and you have a bit of background knowledge about the game, then you can kind of tell that it was just meant to be a big joke, but if you didn't know much about it (which at the time, most people didn't, since it had just been released) then it really looks like NP was just slamming this game. At the beginning it said "we suggest psychiatric guidance" for anyone who reads this review or something like that, and it went on to explain "how Earthbound will destroy civilization as we know it". At the very end it said, "Not only does the game of Earthbound reek like some foul creature of the sewers, but Nintendo has made the product even more repulsive with the Player's guide that comes packaged with the game." I swear that's literally what it says, and if you don't believe it then you can look in volume 73 of Nintendo Power Magazine from June 1995, if you can still find it. Folks, you really have to remember the impact that this magazine had on the video gaming world at the time. In the mid-nineties, Nintendo was the biggest gaming company in the world, unlike nowadays. I believe this is the single biggest reason why this game is now largely forgotten because the fact is, there were quite a few people back in the day who were really looking forward to this release. As soon as it came out, though, the hype was gone and the game's legacy would soon follow. As for the game itself though, it plays pretty much like many other RPG's, but to be honest it is a kind of quirky game. For those of you who are thinking about ordering this game or playing it and never played it the first time around, or for those who just didn't get it in the first place, you really have to put the game in the context of when it came out. Earthbound was released amid the golden age of RPG's. You had all these overblown, dramatic games coming out like Zelda, Chrono Trigger, all those Final Fantasys, the Secret of Mana, the Secret of Evermore, and the list goes on and on. What the developers of Earthbound sought to do was to create a satire of games like this. Instead of having the Masamune or the Master Sword, you had baseball bats and frying pans. Instead of fighting a race of Moogles or a mythical dragon, you fight hippies and snakes and retail store managers. This game was to RPG's what the Dead Kennedys were to punk rock, or what Pulp Fiction was to the 90's movie scene. No, the developers of this game were not nuts; they were just trying to poke fun at what was becoming an increasingly overwhelming and overblown trend. But somewhere in all that, they created a game that was truly one of kind, fun, addicting, and as far as I'm concerned, one of the best games ever released for any system. It's just a shame that Earthbound will never be remembered that way.