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This completes the Earthbound trilogy!
Jan. 11th, 2013 08:46 amJust beat Mother 3 yesterday. Invited Mom to come watch, since she's been having these few days off from work due to not feeling well. (That's right; my mother has now seen the endings of all three games in the Mother trilogy.)
So anyway, let's get started with my thoughts about the whole thing and how they'd pertain to Starbound:
-----
Well, to start off, it was during March 1996 that my brother rented Earthbound for the first of two times. I remember being unable to beat Frank, the first real boss in the game (not counting the Starman Jr.) because I couldn't afford a Tee Ball Bat to replace the Cracked Bat (after spending nearly all my money on burgers). The following weekend, I wanted to rent EB again, but Mom was unwilling that time to rent two games, so I had to settle then for renting Speedy Gonzales: Los Gatos Bandidos together with Brian. The weekend after, I was more adamant about renting Earthbound, and managed to while Brian rented AAAHH! Real Monsters*. I didn't pay anything beyond the rental fee, but somehow, I ended up outright owning the game from there on, and it took until the last several days of school that year for me to complete.
Fast forward through multiple incomplete playthroughs, right to October and November 2003: Played the game again, and this time, it only took two weeks to complete. This brings us to our next topic (to say nothing about my initial playthroughs of Earthbound Zero in 2010 and Mother 3 around Thanksgiving a year ago).
-----
During 2004, without many Mon Colle Knights fanfics to read for ideas to use in what I would end up calling Monster Collection Chronicles, I took instead to reading what people had to offer of Earthbound. Most of these were sequels to Earthbound in which Pokey returns for his revenge (if the team isn't still contending with him from where the game leaves off). There were several fansequels, though, which don't involve Pokey at all. Also among them were a prequel called The End, which was about a team of six OCs self-named the Third Band and how they helped Buzz Buzz travel to the game's present from the bad future he arrives from (unfortunately, it no longer exists on Fanfiction.net or Starmen.net); and an alternate reality called E Revolution, which is a lot like Neon Genesis Evangelion, except replace giant mecha with psionics.
Several things were particularly noticeable with most of what was available.
First, like I said, was that the plots for most of what I read were about how the four main characters have to deal with Pokey Minch in one way or another. Keep in mind that this was two years before Mother 3, which has all its own characters and its own world, saw the light of day even in Japan. If Earthbound Zero did get released here when it was officially planned to, and if Fanfiction.net, Starmen.net, or even the Internet itself had existed back then, most fanauthors would have written about Ninten and his friends still fighting against Giegue.
Second, is that most fics tend to stay only within the bounds of the game. This is actually true for fanfiction in general of any game, which is understandable, seeing as most people don't have the same kind of creative talent for world-building as the developers of the actual games. However, even in games such as Chrono Trigger and Grandia III, where you can just fly around after a certain point, one should assume that the places you visit in any given game aren't the actual entirety of the world, but rather, just what becomes relevant during your travels (and that each place visited is actually compressed from how vast it really is to just what's relevant there and some of what isn't). Starbound is going to take place in the real world (though likely with some fictional locales thrown in), and this is one of the reasons why.
And finally, the humor and quirkiness, one of the game's defining characteristics, are mostly absent in fanfiction. Not that that's a bad thing, seeing as most fanfic authors just want to tell stories, and not everyone is cut out for Original Flavor, even though Radiation managed to get quite a bit of humor in both of his hacks that could've just as easily been canon. Starbound, though, might just be an inversion of this, seeing as Lucky Star, while lighthearted and humorous in its own way, is only particularly comical when Anisawa and his assistants try to market their stuff to Konata in an over-the-top manner while she barely reacts at all.
Speaking of that, I should also note Earthbound 199X, a novelization which I started reading in December 2009. It's pretty plain itself, actually, but does make good use of what Earthbound itself had to offer. If only the author would continue writing to it...
Well, I can't really say what my favorite of these would have been, but my least favorite, by far, was the ever poorly written Attack of the Shadow Man. C'mon, the battles are rather unsophisticated, Pokey acts as an ally, Giygas turns out to have a brother named Trigas who is described as a "universal destroyer" while Giygas himself is a "cosmic destroyer" (Giygas is both), there's an unnamed princess of Dalaam who barely does anything, and, oh, ( Spoiler, in case you wanna read it anyway... )
-----
Now, let's talk about the enemies in each game, as well as in several ROM hacks:
In Earthbound Zero, the enemies are much more plain than in either of its sequels, while Mother 3 is intensely focused on zanier enemies (and zaniness in general, for that matter) than in either of its prequels. Earthbound, as the middle game, is much more balanced, with some enemies appearing more comical than in EB0 (such as the Mighty Bear to the (Polar/Grizzly) Bear) and others more plain or serious than in M3 (case in point: both versions of the Zombie Dog).
Mother 4 is still in the works, but even if it was available by now, I'd probably just keep it both simple and balanced, and stick with only everything from the canon trilogy. I've also checked out gameplay videos of the few ROMhacks available on ROMhacking.net, and I gotta say, the only ones worth deriving enemies from are the two by Robert "Radiation" Fox. Colinbound: Infina's Invasion and The Rat Race are pretty much just clones of the original Earthbound, and The Mysterious Mine is about fighting cartoon characters.
The Halloween hack, on the other hand, provides a fourth point on the Sliding Scale of Silliness vs Seriousness, featuring enemies that Pokey's spider tank would fit right in with. Arn's Winter Quest: Gway Edition, on its own, might or might not have stood out, but together with Halloween, they are like Yin and Yang, with Halloween being mostly scary (though having its share of humor, like with the canon games) while Arn's Winter Quest tries to be funny. Furthermore, while I've only watched one gameplay video of AWQ, both make use of non-standard battle openings, enemy moves, and enemy defeat lines. Even though I have watched all the gameplay videos of Halloween on YouTube, I very much plan at this point on actually playing both that and AWQ. Chances are, except for bosses, enemies from both hacks will appear towards the end of Starbound, with those from AWQ (and a few from Halloween, such as Remember Me? and Anxiety Attack) appearing in some equivalent to EB's Magicant, and nearly everything from Halloween appearing during the final chapters after that arc.
-----
As far as music goes, I can't really say I've got a favorite song from Earthbound Zero. From Earthbound, though, that honor would go to Battle Against a Machine, which first plays the first time you confront a Spinning Robo. Pokey Means Business, the first final boss theme (known in Japan as Inakunarinasai, or Cease To Exist), kicks serious ass too! For Mother 3, my favorite, by far, is Serious, also a battle theme.
Also, since I mentioned something similar for something from EB0, does anyone notice that the Pigmask's theme from Mother 3 almost shares a common part with the Dark Men's theme from Mega Man 5?
-----
To sum it up, while it was fun to strive for a complete Battle Memory in Mother 3, Earthbound will always be my favorite game in the trilogy. Earthbound Zero, though, while being inferior, has the same kind of visual appeal, similar to A Link to the Past to Ocarina of Time in the Zelda franchise. If I were cut out for it, I would totally hack Earthbound to spin something off from Lucky Star. Such isn't the case, though, and even among Radiation and others capable of it, Earthbound happens to be one of the hardest games for anyone to hack. Anyone watching or playing Halloween will notice that the moment in Ness's room while the meteorite falls nearby is still completely intact, even though it has no in-universe reason to take place. So, for now, I'll just have to settle for something text-only. If I even do complete that, I'll probably ask Brian to create a game version of it all.
-----
But anyway, to conclude this entry, here is the spritesheet of what the Lucky Star girls would look like in Earthbound:
http://dmxrated.deviantart.com/art/Lucky-Star-Earthbound-sprites-347019932
And more importantly, the fanfic itself: Starbound!
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8895129/1/Starbound
Can't wait to see where I go with things!
So anyway, let's get started with my thoughts about the whole thing and how they'd pertain to Starbound:
-----
Well, to start off, it was during March 1996 that my brother rented Earthbound for the first of two times. I remember being unable to beat Frank, the first real boss in the game (not counting the Starman Jr.) because I couldn't afford a Tee Ball Bat to replace the Cracked Bat (after spending nearly all my money on burgers). The following weekend, I wanted to rent EB again, but Mom was unwilling that time to rent two games, so I had to settle then for renting Speedy Gonzales: Los Gatos Bandidos together with Brian. The weekend after, I was more adamant about renting Earthbound, and managed to while Brian rented AAAHH! Real Monsters*. I didn't pay anything beyond the rental fee, but somehow, I ended up outright owning the game from there on, and it took until the last several days of school that year for me to complete.
Fast forward through multiple incomplete playthroughs, right to October and November 2003: Played the game again, and this time, it only took two weeks to complete. This brings us to our next topic (to say nothing about my initial playthroughs of Earthbound Zero in 2010 and Mother 3 around Thanksgiving a year ago).
-----
During 2004, without many Mon Colle Knights fanfics to read for ideas to use in what I would end up calling Monster Collection Chronicles, I took instead to reading what people had to offer of Earthbound. Most of these were sequels to Earthbound in which Pokey returns for his revenge (if the team isn't still contending with him from where the game leaves off). There were several fansequels, though, which don't involve Pokey at all. Also among them were a prequel called The End, which was about a team of six OCs self-named the Third Band and how they helped Buzz Buzz travel to the game's present from the bad future he arrives from (unfortunately, it no longer exists on Fanfiction.net or Starmen.net); and an alternate reality called E Revolution, which is a lot like Neon Genesis Evangelion, except replace giant mecha with psionics.
Several things were particularly noticeable with most of what was available.
First, like I said, was that the plots for most of what I read were about how the four main characters have to deal with Pokey Minch in one way or another. Keep in mind that this was two years before Mother 3, which has all its own characters and its own world, saw the light of day even in Japan. If Earthbound Zero did get released here when it was officially planned to, and if Fanfiction.net, Starmen.net, or even the Internet itself had existed back then, most fanauthors would have written about Ninten and his friends still fighting against Giegue.
Second, is that most fics tend to stay only within the bounds of the game. This is actually true for fanfiction in general of any game, which is understandable, seeing as most people don't have the same kind of creative talent for world-building as the developers of the actual games. However, even in games such as Chrono Trigger and Grandia III, where you can just fly around after a certain point, one should assume that the places you visit in any given game aren't the actual entirety of the world, but rather, just what becomes relevant during your travels (and that each place visited is actually compressed from how vast it really is to just what's relevant there and some of what isn't). Starbound is going to take place in the real world (though likely with some fictional locales thrown in), and this is one of the reasons why.
And finally, the humor and quirkiness, one of the game's defining characteristics, are mostly absent in fanfiction. Not that that's a bad thing, seeing as most fanfic authors just want to tell stories, and not everyone is cut out for Original Flavor, even though Radiation managed to get quite a bit of humor in both of his hacks that could've just as easily been canon. Starbound, though, might just be an inversion of this, seeing as Lucky Star, while lighthearted and humorous in its own way, is only particularly comical when Anisawa and his assistants try to market their stuff to Konata in an over-the-top manner while she barely reacts at all.
Speaking of that, I should also note Earthbound 199X, a novelization which I started reading in December 2009. It's pretty plain itself, actually, but does make good use of what Earthbound itself had to offer. If only the author would continue writing to it...
Well, I can't really say what my favorite of these would have been, but my least favorite, by far, was the ever poorly written Attack of the Shadow Man. C'mon, the battles are rather unsophisticated, Pokey acts as an ally, Giygas turns out to have a brother named Trigas who is described as a "universal destroyer" while Giygas himself is a "cosmic destroyer" (Giygas is both), there's an unnamed princess of Dalaam who barely does anything, and, oh, ( Spoiler, in case you wanna read it anyway... )
-----
Now, let's talk about the enemies in each game, as well as in several ROM hacks:
In Earthbound Zero, the enemies are much more plain than in either of its sequels, while Mother 3 is intensely focused on zanier enemies (and zaniness in general, for that matter) than in either of its prequels. Earthbound, as the middle game, is much more balanced, with some enemies appearing more comical than in EB0 (such as the Mighty Bear to the (Polar/Grizzly) Bear) and others more plain or serious than in M3 (case in point: both versions of the Zombie Dog).
Mother 4 is still in the works, but even if it was available by now, I'd probably just keep it both simple and balanced, and stick with only everything from the canon trilogy. I've also checked out gameplay videos of the few ROMhacks available on ROMhacking.net, and I gotta say, the only ones worth deriving enemies from are the two by Robert "Radiation" Fox. Colinbound: Infina's Invasion and The Rat Race are pretty much just clones of the original Earthbound, and The Mysterious Mine is about fighting cartoon characters.
The Halloween hack, on the other hand, provides a fourth point on the Sliding Scale of Silliness vs Seriousness, featuring enemies that Pokey's spider tank would fit right in with. Arn's Winter Quest: Gway Edition, on its own, might or might not have stood out, but together with Halloween, they are like Yin and Yang, with Halloween being mostly scary (though having its share of humor, like with the canon games) while Arn's Winter Quest tries to be funny. Furthermore, while I've only watched one gameplay video of AWQ, both make use of non-standard battle openings, enemy moves, and enemy defeat lines. Even though I have watched all the gameplay videos of Halloween on YouTube, I very much plan at this point on actually playing both that and AWQ. Chances are, except for bosses, enemies from both hacks will appear towards the end of Starbound, with those from AWQ (and a few from Halloween, such as Remember Me? and Anxiety Attack) appearing in some equivalent to EB's Magicant, and nearly everything from Halloween appearing during the final chapters after that arc.
-----
As far as music goes, I can't really say I've got a favorite song from Earthbound Zero. From Earthbound, though, that honor would go to Battle Against a Machine, which first plays the first time you confront a Spinning Robo. Pokey Means Business, the first final boss theme (known in Japan as Inakunarinasai, or Cease To Exist), kicks serious ass too! For Mother 3, my favorite, by far, is Serious, also a battle theme.
Also, since I mentioned something similar for something from EB0, does anyone notice that the Pigmask's theme from Mother 3 almost shares a common part with the Dark Men's theme from Mega Man 5?
-----
To sum it up, while it was fun to strive for a complete Battle Memory in Mother 3, Earthbound will always be my favorite game in the trilogy. Earthbound Zero, though, while being inferior, has the same kind of visual appeal, similar to A Link to the Past to Ocarina of Time in the Zelda franchise. If I were cut out for it, I would totally hack Earthbound to spin something off from Lucky Star. Such isn't the case, though, and even among Radiation and others capable of it, Earthbound happens to be one of the hardest games for anyone to hack. Anyone watching or playing Halloween will notice that the moment in Ness's room while the meteorite falls nearby is still completely intact, even though it has no in-universe reason to take place. So, for now, I'll just have to settle for something text-only. If I even do complete that, I'll probably ask Brian to create a game version of it all.
-----
But anyway, to conclude this entry, here is the spritesheet of what the Lucky Star girls would look like in Earthbound:
http://dmxrated.deviantart.com/art/Lucky-Star-Earthbound-sprites-347019932
And more importantly, the fanfic itself: Starbound!
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8895129/1/Starbound
Can't wait to see where I go with things!