When asked if this is my favorite game, I'll usually reply with an "Uh...I think so? Probably? One of them?". And it is, all of those things.

What keeps it at the top is not so much its slightly quirked-up RPG tropes---the rolling HP counter, items not stacking, recieveing accumulated money from your dad over the phone instead of right after a battle--for all of these do not add up to a "better" "RPG gameplay" experience than something like Final Fantasy VI or even a modern Persona. Figuratively, Earthbound is a JRPG with tank controls; it moves slowly and at times requires more-than-reasonable jumps in logic to progress or even do so in the most efficient way. It can be frustrating, and I can't blame anyone for wanting to put the game down after a few souring experiences with it. I love it, but I also have to admit that it's clunky and doesn't always hold up.

And yet, to me, the quirky world surrounding the quirk is how its identity rises into the cosmos to a league of its own. Its tethering to real world, 90s-era Americana is unfailingly charming, and the charm is expounded upon with each strange little encounter with a walking mushroom, a cultist, miniature UFO or wayward hippie. By itself the setting doesn't come across as fantastical as a Dragon Quest or any number of steampunk-medieval mashups from releases of its time, but the magic comes from the contrast of hanging out in a cozy small town and the alien oddities just outside it. If we're truly role-playing, it's the only game where I can say "my friends and I ate burgers at the mall before we fell into a nearby cave and walked with live dinosaurs in a prehistoric world". Or perhaps I can say "we explored behind a watefall and discovered a village of aliens with whiskers and bowties before sitting down and reflecting on life over a cup of coffee". This particular flavor of imagination is amongst my favorites.

This game reminded me how much magic there is in our day to day lives if we care to stop for a moment and read between the lines, which coincidentally is why I now use a Hobonichi planner made by the same creator. I'll probably play it several more times whenever I'm feeling a little lost in life. And I'll call my Mother.

When reviewing an older game, there's a question you have to answer befroe you start. What matters more: influence, or accessbility? More than any other art form, games age. What was once tricky can thirty years be frustrating to a loathsome degree. Some slight mechanical friction will often fester to a point of borderline jank, making it hard to justify playing these older games when so many have come out since that have no doubt improved on these base mechanics.

But then there likely wouldn't be any of those later games without that janky, wobbly game that's so difficult to enjoy now. Without the first Metroid, there's no Symphony of the Night, no Hollow Knight, no Ori, no Cave Story and so on. And so it is with Earthbound too. Without it, there's no Undertale, no Hylics, no Moon, no Omori, no Lisa and god knows the impact lost for so many games that aren't so obviously aping it. Earthbound is easily one of the most influential games ever made, and extending from that, one of the most important too. Yet it's also hard to return to now, especially with the poorer design elements of it.

Normally this question demands an answer. Influence or fun, which matters more? With Earthbound though, I don't feel as much consternation writing about it as I do with so many other games from the time. I finally finished it for the first ever time, and I knew I had experienced one of the most charming, well written stories ever put it into game form. Sure, there's problems, oh boy there's problems. The inventory management never stops being annoying, the combat is uneven, either a complete cakewalk or brutally unfair and the game slows down a ridiculous amount if there's more than two moving NPCs on screen at once. Beyond all that though, Earthbound is a masterpiece.

I just can't conceive how one would go about writing and creating such a startlingly original game so long ago. There's simply no precedent for the Mother games. There's a perfect balance in tone, swinging from goofy, charming jokes to heartfelt, emotional moments. It's not a subtle game by any means, but it's also not ironic. Earthbound is exceptionally sincere, even the jokes feel like they come from a place of positivity and are never meanspirited. You're taken on a truly epic journey, travelling through varied locales, meeting interesting characters all the while scored by a fantastic soundtrack, then it all culminates in one of the creepiest final bosses of all times, and overcoming it genuinely moved me.

What's most astounding to me is how it doesn't feel cliched. Often with these titans of game history, what makes them special has been aped and copied so much that the experience of playing the original feels overly familiar. While that should be true of Earthbound, it still somehow feels startlingly original. There's an inimatable heart here and I would challenge anyone to not feel moved by Earthbound at some point. Few games have made me smile as often or well up as quickly as Earthbound has. In spite of its flaws, its undoubtedly still one of the best of its genre.

I played EarthBound without any nostalgia for it and with relatively few expectations. My overall impression was that it was broadly enjoyable despite its moments of tedium; frequently clever and fun, but never really taking its oddball setting much farther than vague pseudo-satire. It's storytelling meanders between a delightfully absurd jumble of earnest heroism, creeping horror, offbeat comedy, and wild psychedelia, all of which help to keep the experience varied and unexpected.

The game has a number of small mechanical twists that demonstrate its "not like other JRPGs" philosophy pretty nicely, as well as a number of aesthetic changes to the usual genre trappings that are fun to puzzle out (e.g. figuring out what the heck the "crying uncontrollably" status does).

Actual moment-to-moment gameplay can be rather tedious to at times, despite the twists; I recommend leaning on emulator save states (if available) to avoid retreading a dungeon if you whiff a boss fight. There is an in-built hint system that's also quite handy, so you'll pretty rarely need to look up anything even if you're playing casually.

A lot of folks have a deep connection to this game that comes from playing it at a formative time, and I can certainly appreciate how impactful that can be. For me, EarthBound didn't manage to pull on my heartstrings at all; its own irreverence and paper-thin characters got in the way of any real emotional investment.

That said, it was consistently fun to see what kind of nonsense the game had hidden around each subsequent corner, and that's a perfectly good reason to play. I liked it well enough!

"Ness thought he heard his mother from far away."

Earthbound has been a presence in my life since I was a child, though initially it was from quite a distance. I would see the game referenced in magazine articles, or ScrewAttack Top 10s. I would see it mentioned in forum posts as an underrated classic, ballooning in importance as the years went on until it was eventually championed as one of the all time great video games. When Earthbound was released for the Wii U in 2013, I finally had a chance to play it. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but somehow got stuck in Twoson and dropped the game there. Many years later it was again rereleased, this time for the Switch. "Finally, I can redeem myself and finish Earthbound." I thought. Once again, my playthrough ended in Twoson. Years have passed, and I'm happy to report that over a decade after my first attempt to play Earthbound, I've finally rolled credits. It is an odd feeling.

Earthbound has plenty of faults. Its battle system is pretty good, but can be overbearing at times when there exist some fights that simply will not let you win. Endgame enemies deflection your damage and causing a guaranteed HP loss for multiple party members upon death is a good idea to force cautious resource management on the player, but by the time you've reached that final dungeon you're probably too busy wanting the game to be over to be welcoming of that added stress. Earthbound's narrative progression is gated by a lot of little fetch quests and point A to B navigation, none of which are particularly obtuse but some of which definitely grate. Completing a dungeon only to be told you have to spend 10 minutes returning to a prior area, talking to an NPC, and then going back to the dungeon location to continue to the story happens on several occasions and it never feels like anything other than padding. The game ultimately feels quite a bit longer than it should.

The core of the game's content is quite strong, however. Bosses are fun and interesting, a lot of the enemies are charming and likeable, and every area you enter has great appeal. The art and music are unique as hell, and lends the game an irresistible charm. No other game has ever quite managed to have the 'flavor' of an Earthbound, even a game like Undertale that you can tell is trying its hardest. I think that's because, for all its irreverence, Earthbound is hiding within itself one of video gaming's most melancholy hearts. The nostalgia people have for Earthbound today is due to the game itself being a total pincer attack - on one hand, you have its inimitable style, and on the other, it's a game very much about nostalgia itself.

I remember the first time I played Earthbound, back in 2013. I was still in high school, though not for long. I would finish school and come home most days to walk my dog and handle errands around the house. Often I'd snack on a few strawberries - my favorite fruit. Eventually my mom would come home. She'd cook dinner, we'd all eat, and after dishes were done I'd head to my room to do homework or watch TV or play a game. Usually the latter. Playing Earthbound now, I can't help but reflect on those days. Things are a lot harder now - that's how it goes everyone, right? Things get tougher the older you get and the less connected you get from the way things used to be. One thing people do to help cope is to remember. Remember sitting down with their family and eating their favorite meal. Remember their childhood friends playing a game at the park. Remember their mother's laugh when they would tell a silly joke. As we get old, we all go through a terribly difficult journey, each our own. We battle forces from outside as well as within. Often, we overcome them. We forge our paths with determination, vision, and love. And that courage and love doesn't come from nothing, it gets instilled in us when we are young. By our mothers, our fathers, our teachers, our friends. It is through them that we are made to become the versions of ourselves that can overcome trials and succeed at tasks once unimaginable. And it is through our memories of them that we can keep ourselves level.

Yesterday was Mother's Day. I couldn't afford to buy my mother a gift. She smiled at me and we ate quiche and strawberries.