I need to confess something upfront – I nearly quit the Balding Gamer crew over Earthbound’s placement on our SNES rankings. I wanted it number one. I wrote approximately 47 Slack messages explaining why everyone else was wrong. I threatened to exclusively write about Genesis sports games for six months. Carl had to mediate like I was a child.
But here’s the thing – Earthbound is brilliant precisely because it’s so weird and personal that ranking it objectively is basically impossible. This is a game that dared to be completely different when every other JRPG was trying to be Final Fantasy. And it worked in ways that still resonate decades later.
What Makes Earthbound Special
Developer: Ape/HAL Laboratory | Released: August 1994 (Japan as Mother 2), June 1995 (North America)
Earthbound is the sequel to Mother (Japan-only Famicom game) and follows a young boy named Ness who discovers he has psychic powers. A time-traveler from the future tells him that an alien force called Giygas will destroy the world, and only Ness and three other kids can stop it by collecting the Eight Melodies scattered across Eagleland (a twisted version of America).
The setup sounds simple, but the execution is anything but. This is a modern-day JRPG set in a version of 1990s America where hippies run coffee shops, zombie possession is an actual concern, and abstract alien entities threaten reality itself. You fight enemies like New Age Retro Hippies, Mad Taxis, and Annoying Old Party Men. You eat hamburgers to restore HP. You call your dad on the phone to save your progress.
The tonal whiplash is constant. One moment you’re having genuinely funny interactions with quirky NPCs. The next you’re dealing with child abuse, cults, and existential horror. Earthbound shifts between comedy and darkness with zero warning, and somehow it all works together.
The Combat System That Breaks Conventions
Earthbound uses turn-based combat like most JRPGs, but with several innovations that modern RPGs have adopted. The rolling HP counter means when you take damage, your HP decreases gradually instead of instantly. If you can heal or end the battle before it rolls to zero, you survive. This creates genuine tension in close fights.
Status effects actually matter. Feeling strange can make you do random actions. Feeling nauseous makes you occasionally vomit mid-battle. Diamondization turns you into a diamond (which is somehow worse than being stoned). The game doesn’t just have “poisoned” and “paralyzed” – it has weird, specific conditions that change how you play.
PSI (psychic) abilities replace traditional magic. Ness learns PSI Rockin’ which damages all enemies. Paula gets PSI Freeze and PSI Fire. Poo learns PSI Starstorm. Jeff doesn’t use PSI but instead repairs broken items and uses gadgets. Each character has distinct combat roles that complement each other.
The difficulty is… interesting. Early game can be brutal if you don’t grind a bit. Mid-game becomes easier as you get powerful PSI. Late game ramps back up with enemies that can destroy you in one hit if you’re not careful. But the rolling HP counter means skill and quick thinking can save you from situations that would be instant death in other RPGs.
The World That Feels Alive And Bizarre
Eagleland is a satirical take on American culture filtered through Japanese game developers’ perspectives. The result is simultaneously familiar and alien. Onett feels like a real small town. Twoson has a circus and hospital. Threed is overrun by zombies. Fourside is a bustling city with a department store and corrupt politicians.
The game’s sense of humor is everywhere. NPCs say genuinely weird things. A man obsesses over his broken iron. Another guy just stands around being completely useless. The Runaway Five are a blues band trapped in debt. Mr. Saturn creatures are… honestly, I still don’t know what they are, but they’re adorable and strange.
But underneath the quirky humor is genuine darkness. Porky (Ness’s neighbor) becomes increasingly corrupted and evil. The Happy Happyists are a cult trying to paint the world blue. Moonside is a nightmarish reflection of Fourside. Giygas himself is a cosmic horror entity that defies description.
The game trusts you to handle this tonal complexity. It doesn’t explain the shifts or soften the darkness. One moment you’re fighting a Spiteful Crow. The next you’re confronting the manifestation of pure evil that destroyed its own race. Earthbound treats its players like adults who can handle weird, uncomfortable ideas.
The Inventory System From Hell
Let’s address the elephant in the room – Earthbound’s inventory management is atrocious. Each character has limited inventory slots. Items don’t stack beyond certain amounts. You’re constantly juggling what to keep and what to drop. Want to hold onto that broken machine for Jeff to fix later? Better drop something else.
The Escargo Express delivery service lets you store items and have them delivered, but it’s clunky and costs money. You’ll spend significant time managing inventory, especially mid-to-late game when you’re finding useful items but have no space.
Is this a flaw? Absolutely. Does it ruin the game? Not really. You adapt. You learn to be selective about what you pick up. You make frequent Escargo Express trips. It’s annoying but manageable, like a weird uncle at Thanksgiving – part of the experience even if you wish it weren’t.
The Music That Defines Each Moment
Hirokazu Tanaka and Keiichi Suzuki’s soundtrack is genuinely eclectic. The Onett theme sounds like pleasant small-town life. The Moonside theme is disorienting and nightmarish. The Winters theme is melancholy and lonely. Giygas’s lair music is actively unsettling.
The battle themes range from upbeat and funky to genuinely creepy. The Kraken of the Sea fight has this ridiculous surf rock theme. The Giygas battle music is distorted and horrifying. The variety is massive – no two areas sound the same, and the music always reinforces the mood.
The sound design matters too. The psychedelic battle backgrounds that pulse and writhe. The bizarre sound effects for PSI abilities. The way certain enemies make unsettling noises. Earthbound uses audio to create atmosphere in ways most SNES games didn’t attempt.
The Ending That Still Hits
I’m not going to spoil the Giygas fight in detail, but I’ll say this: it’s one of gaming’s most memorable final battles. Not because of complex mechanics or epic scale, but because of how it subverts JRPG conventions and creates genuine emotional weight.
The fact that you defeat the ultimate evil by praying – by having people believe in you and support you – is such a perfect thematic conclusion to a game about kids standing up to incomprehensible evil. The final moments are genuinely affecting in ways most games don’t achieve.
And then the ending credits roll and you see what happened to everyone after, and it’s bittersweet and perfect and exactly right for this game’s tone.
Does Earthbound Hold Up Today?
Yes, but with caveats. The quirky charm and emotional moments feel timeless. The humor still lands. The darkness still unsettles. The core experience of weird kids fighting cosmic evil while dealing with inventory management and homesickness remains compelling.
The graphics are deliberately simple – no Mode 7 showboating or pre-rendered 3D. Just clean sprites and psychedelic battle backgrounds. It looks dated compared to Final Fantasy VI or Chrono Trigger, but the art direction is distinct and intentional.
The grinding can frustrate modern players. The inventory management is genuinely annoying. The pacing is sometimes slow. These aren’t rose-tinted memory issues – they’re legitimate flaws that some players won’t tolerate.
But if you can accept those rough edges, Earthbound offers an experience unlike anything else. This is a game that dared to be weird, personal, and emotionally honest when the safe move was churning out another fantasy adventure. That courage makes it special even when the execution stumbles.
Why I Fought For Number One
During our SNES rankings debate, I made the case that Earthbound should be number one. Not because it’s technically perfect – it’s not. Not because it’s more polished than Chrono Trigger – it’s absolutely not. But because by pure importance and uniqueness, nothing on the SNES is more significant.
Earthbound proved games could be genuinely weird and still work. It proved you didn’t need swords and castles to tell compelling RPG stories. It proved fourth-wall breaking and tonal shifts and cosmic horror could coexist with quirky humor and childhood adventure.
Tim argued for Chrono Trigger’s design perfection. John pushed Super Metroid’s atmosphere. Sam wanted more fighting game representation. Carl kept trying to move us along because we’d spent three weeks on this list. But I maintained – and still maintain – that Earthbound’s influence and courage exceeded everything else.
We compromised at number seven. I’m still annoyed. This should be higher. But I’m writing this deep-dive, so I get to make my case properly.
The Marketing Disaster That Doomed It
Earthbound bombed commercially in North America because Nintendo’s marketing campaign was bafflingly awful. “This game stinks” scratch-and-sniff ads focusing on gross enemies. Strategy guides the size of phone books bundled with the game, increasing the price. Zero explanation of what made the game special.
The result? Earthbound sold poorly, never got a proper sequel (Mother 3 stayed Japan-only for years), and became a cult classic only through word-of-mouth and emulation. Nintendo basically ensured their weirdest, most interesting RPG would fail by marketing it as gross-out humor when it was actually a heartfelt, bizarre, emotionally complex adventure.
The irony is that Earthbound’s cult status now exceeds what it probably would have achieved with better marketing. It’s become this legendary “lost treasure” that people discover and evangelize. The scarcity and misunderstanding became part of its mystique.
The Verdict
Earthbound is one of the most important games on the SNES. Not the most polished. Not the most technically impressive. But the most willing to be different, to take risks, to trust that weird could work if executed with heart and sincerity.
It’s a game about kids fighting incomprehensible evil using PSI powers and baseball bats. It’s funny and dark and touching and unsettling often within the same hour. It has terrible inventory management and grinding but also some of gaming’s most memorable moments.
If you’ve never played it, play it with an open mind. If you bounced off it because of the rough edges, try again and push through. If you loved it as a kid, replay it and appreciate how much courage it took to make something this weird in 1995.
And yes, it should be higher on our list. Fight me.
Rating: 10/10 – Flawed genius that proves different is valuable
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Joe’s a history teacher who treats the console wars like actual history. A lifelong Sega devotee from Phoenix, he writes with passion, humor, and lingering heartbreak over the Dreamcast. Expect strong opinions, bad puns, and plenty of “blast processing.”
