Mother 2: Gîgu no gyakushuu

EarthBound is one of those games you finish playing and feel good about. The game takes place in an everyday town. A young boy named Ness (in the original Mother game, also called EarthBound Zero, the boy's name was Ninten). Ness meets a girl, a nerd, and a ninja. The take an amazing adventure across the world collecting pieces of songs to be able to stop an alien invasion from Giygas. Instead of swords and shields, you get frying pans, yo-yos, bats, and bottle rockets. Instead of earning gold, your dad puts money on your ATM card. Instead of monsters, you fight dogs, hippies, crazy shopping ladies, barf, and cavemen.

The music is memorable. I found myself leaving the game on just to listen to the music in Ness's house. The backgrounds during fights are trippy and amazing to watch, especially toward the end of the game. The fighting system is not too easy and not too hard. It's perfect for an RPG. SNES RPGs were known for excellent battle systems.

The main highlight of the game is the humor. The game gets ridiculous at times, with people telling you they farted, crazy enemies. It's fun to call your mom on the phone and listen to her talk about giving the dog a flea bath. You never see your dad in the game. You just talk to him on the phone. My favorite part of the game is when the owl takes your picture and says "say 'fuzzy pickles.'"

Simply put, this game is fun for all ages, especially adults. I'm about 20 years old and I found this game to be extremely enjoyable. This game has great moments that you don't soon forget. So go to the Onett library, pick up a map, and ZOOM great distances in the world of EarthBound. Very few RPGs out today are as enjoyable as this game. Even if you're not into role-playing games, you might just find yourself talking to a Mr. Saturn after popping this into the SNES.

At first glance, 1995's Mother 2/Earthbound might seem like a childish game that wouldn't keep a more seasoned gamer occupied. But if someone was brave enough to pay 20$ for a brand new, discounted copy of this game around the time that the 4th generation of video game consoles were fading out, they would've bought a cult classic...and a profitable product - Original, good condition copies of this game top $200 in value in online auctions.

Set in the '90s, Earthbound is the story of a young boy named Ness, who is gifted with Psi powers and is thrust into a quest in the middle of Eagleland (A fictional take on the U.S.A.) to save the world from the evil Giygas.

First of all, This game is loaded with cultural references to a lot of things, from Religion to the Beatles. It rejects Swords in favor of Baseball Bats as weapons, and rejects Potions in favor of Hamburgers for regenerating health. It requires a mind abundant with thought about what to do, but a sense of humor that can determine what is funny and what isn't. And there is lots in the game to laugh at. From the "Parents Opposing Obsession Plan" to the guy who wants to make "Pretty girl paper" and then eating the cake in summers, and finally, fighting master belch, a big pile of barf.

But to look at the game from a different perspective, When you were a child, you would've seen lots of things that didn't make sense that you would see again as an adult, that finally did. This game is a take on that. You are playing as Ness, who is seeing the world for the first time and since he is a child, most of it doesn't make sense at all. This is particularly evident in "Happy-Happy Village" in which all of the members want to paint the world blue. As the player, you realize that part of the game represents a cult that has a goal that seems sensible. But to a child, It looks like a bunch of morons who want to waste their time doing a pointless task.

Thankfully, Nintendo made this game available for $10 on their eShop on the Wii U. That's definitely the best legal option to play this classic...or you could do it the way everyone's been playing SNES games for the last 15 years or so by downloading it for free and playing it on an Emulator.

Either way, go play it. It's definitely worth a few days of your time.

I have a soft spot for odd things and this game appealed to me ever since I first laid eyes on that larger than average, game box while at a supermarket (back when there were VHS tapes and old cartridge games you could rent). I observed the box many times, wondering why it was that size. When I finally got chance to actually play it, I realized why, it's crammed full of surprises that a guidebook was needed for it to cram it all in (I wouldn't read it all the way through if you like great surprises). On the surface it looks childish since you are controlling a bunch of kids, but if you look deeper there's plenty of offbeat mixtures of humor and darkness in a modern world. Being an RPG fan myself, I had to play through this to see everything, which you really have to do to fully appreciate its style. Even when you beat it once, you'll want to play through it again and again to catch everything you missed the time before.

All in all, Earthbound is a high-quality game. Okay, so the graphics weren't mindblowing. I didn't find a problem with them in the numerous times I played it. Some of the enemies are done pretty well. The game storyline is also quite extensive, traveling all over the "world" to 8 important sites. Good characters and some interesting tangents (Moonside, Ness's Mind. . .) make the game even more interesting. My main two gripes: The item storage is extremely limiting, compared to other RPG's, and going through the pyramind/the desert/dungeon man is tiresome. But that doesn't make it uplayable, so I'm going to get up, erase some erasers, and kick some alien butt.

This is the best video game ever. It's so unique and isn't like any other RPG. It's inventive in every way imaginable. Sure, bore yourself to tears with the contrived RPGs with sorcery and dragons and such, but you don't know what you're missing here...