This is the one
where it's overhead
but low-angle
you're children
looking up at cops, space aliens, cultists, beach bullies, feral animals, pogo punks, armored space warriors, tentacle robots, mobile self-immolating trees, zombies, dinosaurs, flying saucers, giant mutant animals, weird strangers, reeling drunks,
and you use baseball bats, frying pans, bottle rockets, DIY rayguns, psychokinesis powers right out of X-Men or Scanners or Mai the Psychic Girl to vanquish these antagonists,
but it's not always clear who's evil
and who's just under the influence
of extraterrestrial mind control
'cause that's also a thing
with a behind the scenes villain known as Giygas,
a malevolent Lovecraftian whatsit that hides in a pocket dimension of time-outside-of-time,
or something,
exerting sinister dominions over the deep dream lives of the folks'n'critters who endeavor to put pain into your ass
I encountered it
at the beginning of high school
so it was a reverse aspirational experience
"get back into your elementary school self"
which I totally resisted
like it was brain waves from Giygas Itself
I kept reimagining it as a violent action sci-fi thing
Aliens and Blade Runner by way of John Woo, Tsui Hark, and Ringo Lam,
with body horror by Barker, Carpenter, Otomo, and Cronenberg
inside my head cannon fan fictions
making smoking craters out of the arcade where Frank and his gang hold court,
the police station where Captain Strong and his Pigs rut,
and don't even get me started on how I knocked down the Monotoli Tower . . .
but that was fine
I had no interest in downgrading my adolescent male (spectator's) bloodlust into the kid friendly whimsies-as I (mis)perceived them-of Shigesato Itoi and co.
I know, I know, I was doing it all wrong.
Believe me.
Now . . . I get it.
Growing up sucks.
Adulthood consists of realizing friendship is an illusion, that faith is just a political tool, and money and social conformity are all that gets you over under capitalism.
EarthBound is a game where the power of prayer actually saves the day.
Yes, baseball bats, psionic attacks, bottle rockets, frying pans, and DIY rayguns have their parts to play. Faith is what slays Giygas in the end, but to get to that final battle, ye must be willing to grind away for hour after hour, busting open countless Enemy skulls, blasting apart no end of robo-foes, putting down a staggering number of animals gone feral under the corrupting brain waves of Giygas-
-yes, it is a grindyass JRPG where ye must be empowered by the blood of your Enemy, who has numerous manifestations, yet One Fate:
to fall before your Louisville Slugger,
your cast iron pan,
your death ray,
your martial arts prowess-once you recruit that cool, slightly older kid in the karate uniform-
Now,
sure,
I see the hard-boiled whimsy of EarthBound,
and I can even understand why people want to burrow away from the Now
into some kind of bullshitological Invented Past,
an Alternative Childhood,
more colorful and heroic
than any Actual Childhood could’ve been.
So . . . 7 out of 10.
-October 1996-February 2022.
