This completes the Earthbound trilogy!
Jan. 11th, 2013 08:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dmxratedJust 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, Paula's love for Ness is what brings him back to life after he gets killed by Trigas.
-----
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, Paula's love for Ness is what brings him back to life after he gets killed by Trigas.
-----
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!
From Brian:
Date: 2013-05-26 03:51 pm (UTC)From the very beginning, Ness who wakes up in the middle of the night and finds a bee that warns him of the Earth's imminent destruction, the tacit acceptance by his parents of a mission they seem to have understood from the start, draws parallels with the process of growth a child may see. Throughout the game, in the giant dungeon/man, Ness encounters his own insecurities on a screen (on a screen), and is forced to plunge into a darkness at the end of a tunnel.
Whimsical things like giant Kraken, Dar Salaam, the desert city, the jungle of Deep Darkness, seven giant mole rats in an abandoned mine, mountaintop meditations against spirits of temptation, all draw from a global collection of mythologies and concepts. The duality of Apple Kid, the helpful, if forgetful, messy, inventor, and Orange Kid, whose pretensions fail to produce any meaningful work, give lessons in character.
I could not ever conceive of Mr Saturn, or the starmen, the New Age Retro-Hippy, or Frank's evil invention, the Frankystein Mark II. Pogo punks and skate punks, gangs, and rabid animals, amorphous blobs, the terrifying haunted department store, frying pan attacks, ribbons, teddy bears, the list goes on and on.
I am still scared of the department store. Giygas wasn't scary, we had the manual, but the way that battle ends is singularly more creative than any boss ending I've seen since. The creators break with conformity at almost every step and produced a game that stood proudly outside of convention, never failing to startle and rush my imagination. Darkside was the best. It was the best level, ever.
I still can't imagine ever reaching the creative heights that game offered, because I cannot compel myself to think of such outlandish things, even now. I'm glad that you've pursued this thread, and I enjoy reading and thinking about it even now. I think about your game in light of Earthbound, and the possibility that you could make something so startlingly creative, and outside the realm of our imaginations.
Re: From Brian:
Date: 2019-07-16 11:11 am (UTC)I do recall how sick and tired that game made you of having to watch me play it in excess (something which you cleared up a year ago as not being the game itself that sucked), even though it was your idea to rent it the first time around while I was playing Yoshi's Island. Despite you wanting to rent other games after the first time, I bet you're glad I insisted on it the second time around, or else it might never have become relevant again.
You told me through the phone the other day that you recall buying that game at Walmart, or at least looking at the box there. You'd probably remember better how we ended up actually owning the game. All I recall from that particular weekend was finally beating Frank and progressing all the way to Twoson, encountering a New Age Retro Hippie, and making a bunch of hand motions and facial expressions outside the bus window in time to you repeating "New-Age-Re-tro-Hippie-New-Age-Re-tro-Hippie-" etc., and then having a cough at school and asking all day to be let home (really, so that I could continue playing the game).
The aforementioned song Pokey Means Business really freaked me out the first time I heard it, causing me to run out into the living room and scream "IT'S TOO HAAAARRRRDDDD!!!!!!" That was, without even actually entering any commands, only after which Pokey and Giygas could themselves attack. Really, it was just some kind of shock to hear a very negative battle song that doesn't play at any point beforehand.
I could not ever conceive.....
I still can't imagine .....
Exactly why I initially invited people to pool any ideas they might have for stuff to appear later on. Recently, though, Chelle told me that that is a good way to put people off, as they'd read between the lines and infer what I really mean is "I have no freakin' clue where this is going"; she also said that if anyone has ideas to contribute, they'll do so on their own terms.
Re: From Brian:
Date: 2019-07-16 11:11 am (UTC)Another point I made was that not all ideas are likely to be useful or good. That's important not just for narrative integrity, but also the brand of quirkiness.
Re: From Brian:
Date: 2019-07-16 11:12 am (UTC)On my part, here are some things I've come up with based on dreams I've had since I showed you my summaries:
-A pair of orange kittens running across tree branches in a forest, apparently competing w/ each other and a larger cat for a bowl of food.
-A bird resembling Tweety Bird walks one step at a time while nine smaller birds surround it, one bird disappearing w/ each step as the music plays in time, until the last bird remaining becomes a blue devil bird w/ a slasher smile, as if to say "Now you're in charge of all these chicks!"
-Anthropomorphic ants weak to earth-based attacks.
-Pink elephant statues that one can bounce really high off of like a trampoline.
-Fighting a monster clown's face, arms, and something at dusk w/ a 2x4 and a machete.
-The Naming Witch, some kind of Home Depot pushcart displaying an arrangement of cards. Naming a correct name causes some group of cards to vanish. On its turn, "I associate Warrior w/ Poison". Cards w/ a skull dispense toxic fumes. Someone then drives a miniature bulldozer to ram it into a wall.
-Some kind of orange liquid tree mold: Blood/drugs that teenagers lick up.
-An office building w/ a Mecha-Lion behind every door.
-A race of mushroom people. While they are nice people, it's good manners to feed off of them mouth-to-mouth. (Gross, yeah, but this is kinda like how "presents" that cats bring to one's doorstep literally are meant as such.)
Any opinion on those?
Re: From Brian:
Date: 2019-07-16 11:15 am (UTC)Do you actually have the money to hire them to give you those ideas?
- For the first, how about how having a bunch of bowls with cat food running through the trees competing for who gets to feed an orange kitten? Could be framed as a quest for the heroes to catch the bowls for whatever reason before they spill all the cat food or the cat eats it.
- I'm not really sure what specifically to do with this, but it's got options.
- Anthro animals are already amongst the mooks anyway, so these might easily fit in.
- It would be odd for the Lucky Star world to suddenly have scenery like this, but might pop up in the other world.
- Like in detached floaty body parts? That would be nifty. The girls have their magic, but this might be a chance for the non-powered members of the team to do something.
- This could be worked into a prelude to a battle, maybe something where the fumes get in the way of using their powers properly (can't see or something) and they have to use more conventional ways to defeat it?
- I don't think this setting needs more drugs.
- An enemy who is really orderly about his villainy and is a fan of Go-Lion and installed mecha lions to run his office, and the heroes need to navigate the place to find him?
- You might wanna avoid using the last one cause some people might interpret it as ship tease.
Re: From Brian:
Date: 2019-07-16 11:15 am (UTC)At the moment, no. It would just be on an if-they're-interested basis. I should note that, to begin with, everyone working on Mother 4 is just a volunteer anyway. If money ever does get involved, it would most likely be through a Kickstarter campaign to take place when I post the last chapter, to go towards a game that might be either just an adaptation of the fic, a modified version of the story featuring different characters, or its own story altogether (see today's entry).
Thanks for your input regarding the various items I came up with.
Regarding drugs such as the orange tree mold, while I might leave fictional drugs out, do understand that certain other herbal drugs are an important aspect of the EB trilogy. For example, Magic Weeds, which recover HP in EB0; Secret and Refreshing Herbs, which cure status problems in Earthbound; and introspective herbal tea in EB and Mother 3. On the other hand, the games do take a position against recreational drugs such as alcohol and marijuana, hence certain enemies in the forms of hippies and drunken businessmen.
http://forum.starmen.net/forum/Games/Mother2/Earthbound-and-psychedelic-experiences
Re: From Brian:
Date: 2019-07-16 11:16 am (UTC)Don't expect much of it, since they are far more likely to put their creative juices into something they actually can make a profit from.
I didn't mean the drugs thing that literary, but that given how surreal the world is going to get, you wouldn't need a few tree licking people to spice things up.
Re: From Brian:
Date: 2019-07-16 11:17 am (UTC)Earlier on, though, she did also suggest I derive ideas from dreams I have, after having read my summaries of each game in the trilogy, since those would be one of the few things that ideas such as the Reconstructed Caribou and the coffee table that acts like a horse (both in Mother 3) could be derived from. Also good to have Jake in on this project, despite his distaste for Lucky Star, as his contributions thus far have been on the humor side of things, as with a storyline he contributed involving a Hooters restaurant whose storeroom leads to a secret robot factory, and also this part of an email exchange I had with him and Chelle:
The comedy isn't that Apple Kid is the one who can help you, it's that his invention is completely stupid, yet it's the one thing you need to go ahead. Which he only came up with because Ness gave him money and food instead of giving it to Orange Kid, inventor of the most absolutely useless crap in the entire game. (And this is considering Dr. Saturn.)
There's comedy deriving from the coincidences, but the really hilarious part is that the things involved in the coincidences are silly. The trains being incapacitated because the aliens happen to hate trains isn't very funny; the trains being incapacitated because someone invented a giant magnet and it happened to draw all the electricity from the rails is funny; the trains being incapacitated because a giant alien is using their electric lines for pasta is hilarious.
Personally, I described the trilogy to Chelle as comedic but not over-the-top like Excel Saga or Pani Poni Dash! Jake, on the other hand, does see it as over the top, being a game that involves things like fighting sentient sludge. I'll have to ask him if the things you mentioned are things he himself could have thought of anything similar to. Really, I'm not actually expecting myself to achieve the same level of creativity as Shigesato Itoi (I'm hoping to), but if I could interest him enough with my fic enough to help with the subsequent video game adaptation, unlikely as it may be all on its own (especially since actually contacting or meeting him might be next-to-impossible itself, and who's to say he'll understand English?), that would be nothing short of epic!
Such is the main reason why I bought Mother: The Original Story, although Earthbound Zero itself isn't as trippy as its sequels. I mean, there is its own version of Magicant, talking monkeys (one of which sings), a village of humanoid canaries, and certain items such as Flashdarks, among other things, but most enemies and locales in the game are comparatively plain. Just look up the walkthrough on Starmen.net and see for yourself.
By the way, there were five moles in the Dusty Dunes Desert gold mine, and the mirror dimension of Fourside is called Moonside, not Darkside.
Re: From Brian:
Date: 2019-07-16 11:18 am (UTC)I'm on board with calling it over the top, perhaps not in how the characters themselves or its themes, but the environment they are in, definitely. It's downright surreal in certain ways.