bjbj Episode 14: Earthbound Smile for the camera and eat some trout yogurt because this
week, we re tackling Mother! Hello Internet. Welcome to Game Theory, the show where our
special PSI ability is Brainshock. Episode 11, our romp through the Pacific Ocean to
find Adventure Island, got me talking about my top ten games and this week has me unveiling
one more. Yes, I confess, I am an Earthboundian, a Ness-o-phile, a Fuzzy-Pickler. Anyway, it
s tied for my number one spot. I mean, what other game has you fighting ruler-brandishing
hippies, a former member of the ScrewAttack team, and a huge steaming pile of vomit with
googly eyes? It s a well-loved cult classic and is hailed as one of the funniest, most
unique games of all time, but this upbeat Technicolor romp about a boy, his bat, and
the portly demon spawn next door hides a much darker side. So put on your Mr. Baseball cap
as we check out the birth of the creepiest boss in gaming, chemical terrorists, police
brutality, prostitutes, dismemberment, and a whole lot more! In short, this game is like
a transformer, with more than meets the eye. At first glance, Earthbound simply appears
to be an offbeat RPG with a quirky sense of humor. Taking place in the year 199X, Ness,
our silent protagonist and psychic wunderkind (Ryan), along with the help of his motley
crew must save the world from an evil alien force named Giygas, kinda like Chrono Trigger
but without time travel and replacing the ethers and crossbows with pizzas and frying
pans. The music sounds like it came from an episode of Rocko s Modern Life with a lot
of catchy bleeps and blats and the color palette ranges from Sunday morning comics to psychedelic
trip out. But the Rainbow Brite feel glosses over some serious issues here. For example,
practically every list chronicling the scariest bosses in gaming features, spoiler alert,
Earthbound s final fight against Giygas. Which is odd since no other boss is scarier than
a Hello Kitty stuffed animal. Aw! A giant ant! A cute disease-ridden rat! But then look
at this! You walk up through a twisted system of intestines, already a huge change in tone
from the rest of the game, only to fight this which turns into this The director of the
game, Shigesato Itoi, has been very open in admitting that his inspiration for Giygas
was what he remembered as a rape scene from The Military Policeman and the Dismembered
Beauty, an adult movie that traumatized him when he accidentally saw it as a child. It
also inspired Giygas dialogue, with phrases like It hurts and I feel good. Also, and I
m just going to touch on this because fans of the game hate this theory, but it deserves
mentioning: many have debated that the final boss takes the form of, are you ready for
it? A fetus. Seriously. But it kinda makes sense, walking along internal organs and then
look at the negative space here. It s like a messed up Rorschach test. But, baby or no
baby, you can start to see why it s not much of a stretch to say that Earthbound may have
some darker themes. Take for instance its cult. And no, I don t mean Earthbound s fanbase.
Sure, the cult depicted in the game calls itself Happy Happyism. And yes, their mission
statement is laughable considering they figuratively want to paint the town red by literally painting
it blue which includes coloring the town s dairy cow a nice shade of periwinkle. But,
like a hallway of fallopian tubes, it gets a whole lot more disturbing when you look
a little closer. Aum Shinrikyo was a cult founded in Japan in 1984 by a mostly-blind
acupuncturist who claimed he could levitate. Here s a copy of their logo and here s an
image of their leader in his traditional attire. Does the color look familiar? But there s
more. The cult grew in popularity until the 90s when it had built up enough support for
members to run for public office. They didn t win, but their campaign became synonymous
with singing, dancing, smiling balloons, and an overall happy tone. Another odd parallel
to the Happyists in Earthbound. But if you re still not convinced, their headquarters
was located in a small dairy town, a fact which takes on a new meaning when considering
that the only cow to appear in the game is the one living right outside the Happy Happyism
compound. So who was this cult? Aum Shinrikyo began producing the deadly nerve gas serin
in 1993, and used it in the city of Matsumoto, Nagano killing eight and harming 200, making
it the first instance of terrorism using chemical weapons against innocent civilians. They struck
again in 1995 on five subway trains in Tokyo. With baggies of liquefied serin wrapped in
newspapers along with another baggie of solvent that could turn it into a gas, members of
the cult entered the subways, left the packages, and then punctured the bags with an umbrella
point on their way out, leaving the deadly gases to mix behind them, killing 12 and affecting
as many as 5,000. When their compound was finally raided, investigators found explosives,
anthrax, Ebola, and even a Russian military helicopter. And knowing this makes a silly
cult wanting to paint the world blue seem a whole lot more sinister. And the mature
themes don t stop there. What about unprovoked police brutality? Can you think of another
game released before 1994 with that? How about a game after 1994? Even in Grand Theft Auto,
the big daddy of bad behavior games, you have to seriously maim a couple of pedestrians
before the cops will even pay attention to you! But here, after beating the first boss,
Earthbound has Ness, a young boy, dragged to the police station where he is assaulted
by four cops and their captain one by one. It s sick. And accurate. You see, the 90s
as a decade was the first time the phrase police brutality made it to the public consciousness,
most famously with the case of Rodney King in 1991. It started when Los Angeles police
officers pulled King over for drunk driving following a high speed chase. After subduing
him with a taser, the officers proceeded to kick him repeatedly and hit him 56 times with
their batons. In 1992, a jury acquitted most of the officers on trial, which led to the
famous LA riots. An interesting story, but what does it have to do with Earthbound? Well,
remember how I said that Ness defends himself against four regular cops and their captain?
Guess how many officers were on the scene during the Rodney King beating. Four and one
sergeant. How about prostitutes leading you into a hotel room to get mugged? Earthbound
has that. What about willfully choosing to have your arms, legs, ears, and eyes ripped
from your body, only to then lose your mind? Earthbound has that too. It s funny how much
an oddball sense of humor and bright tone can cover up, because as a kid, none of this
made me think twice well, except for that last test I really didn t want that spirit
guy to rip out my eyes. When Shigesato Itoi set out to create a different kind of RPG,
one based on the real world, he did just that, and didn t limit himself to simply replacing
tonics with hamburgers and merchants to department stores. He dealt with issues you see in the
media every day: rape, religious fanaticism, violence, but handled them with a dash of
humor and a heaping spoonful of bizarre storytelling. Earthbound isn t about a boy trying to stop
an alien menace, it s about a boy growing up, leaving his home and experiencing both
the good and the bad of the world. That s why Giygas is so scary; he is based on the
moment Itoi lost that childhood innocence. And that s why the ending is so satisfying,
because Ness faced that darkness and made it through, becoming a young adult. He s grown
up, and we, as the player, have cared enough to get him there. It s truly a great game.
But hey, that s just a theory. A Game Theory!