Early 2000s I was trawling for rpgs to play on zsnes, and EB was really well regarded by then. Found it on ArchNacho and TortillaGodzilla’s site. Later followed the fan translation of mother 3 and played that on VBA.

It was a combination of things, I played Brawl at my grandma’s house with my cousins and was always perplexed by the New Pork City and Onett stages, they stood out even with Snake being another unknown character for me. After I beat Undertale, I found out that EarthBound was one of the game’s biggest influences, and now I’m typing out a comment about it in my jammies.

Was first introduced to the franchise by SSB on the N64, but it was Melee that introduced me to the music which is honestly what made me actually want to try it. Finally got around to playing Earthbound a few years ago and it had a profound impact on me. Now it’s one of my favorite games of all time.

The scratch and sniff ads in Nintendo power sold me. No fucking clue what the game was about, but I needed it. Got it with the manual the day it released on SNES, I was about 13 and paid for it myself, never looked back.

My friend rented EB in 1996ish, and we played for a bit in his basement, so I was one of the chosen few who knew what a Ness was when he appeared as a hidden character in Smash64. However, I had very little interest at that time. I thought the game was slow and basic. Later in 2000, I tried again on emulator, and once I got to Happy Valley it was freaking impossible. Those diamond-shaped overworld enemies zoomed across the overworld at warp speeds, and there were so many of them. I guess the antipiracy stuff got me, but at that time I didn’t know about it, lol.

So I kind of forgot EB for 15 more years. I was slowly falling out of story-driven games in general. I see this thing on Newgrounds and it looks like it’s from something, but I dunno. A bit later, I learn about Undertale, and decide to give it a whirl. It totally lit my fire again! 10 straight hours getting the True Pacifist stuff, a 29 year old man sent right back to writing cringy fanfics and obsessing about fictional characters again.

Then, I look for more. It obviously was EarthBound-inspired, and there are also a lot of JoJo references. So I start watching the JoJo anime that conveniently started to appear in 2012, and I also remember that there was a big deal made about the re-release of EarthBound on WiiU a few years before, so I get that, and this time it really sticks.

Riveting stuff I know

And thus concludes my first Lemmy post.

I first saw it played it at a friend’s house after a sleepover. Then I downloaded the rom and I was hooked.

In the late 90s I found a copy of it in a used game store for $10. Ripped label but even with that I knew it was a decent deal despite not knowing much about the game.

Later that year I ended up being grounded to my room for some reason for a fair amount of time and I spent all that time playing Earthbound. Kept me going, and it turned into my favorite game of all time.