I've had to smack myself for completely missing out on Earthbound as a child. From minute one of the game, I was already enjoying the world in front of me. Earthbound, or the Mother series as its known in Japan, has a huge legacy surrounding it being one of the most celebrated RPGs in history standing in the ranks next Chrono Trigger. I heard a lot about Earthbound growing up but I never really did any investigating of it on my own until getting into college. I read a bunch of fan pages and met friends who were fans as well and I knew that I wanted to play the game but even then I still never jumped into playing the game until now and it has been a fun experience each time I load up my game.

You play as Ness, a young boy who investigates a meteorite crash in his hometown with his neighbor Pokey. They find out that the meteorite is actually housing a bee from the future, Buzz Buzz, who tells them that an alien called Giygas has enveloped the world in hatred and turned everything into dangerous monsters. Buzz Buzz tells Ness that he is destined to save the world and instructs him to collect melodies to gather the power needed to stop Giygas. Ness sets off and meets the other party members, Paula, a girl with incredible psychic abilities, Jeff, an inventor, and Poo, a ponytailed martial artist. Playing through the game feels like a real hero's journey and every little detail of the game feels like a purposeful decision of art such as the Happy Happy Village blue cultists clearly being a reference to the KKK which sounds insane on paper but it comes off as more quirky, goofy and weird and I love it.

The game works as a traditional RPG but instead of swords and shields and wands, the characters have access to baseball bats, yo-yos and toy guns and fry pans. It works because they're young children and why would they ever have weapons like that? It makes sense and really gives the game its own identity and this translates into items as well such as eating hamburgers and other foods to recover health and PP. Ness travels with the whole party behind him on the overworld as you walk through towns and dungeons and then combat doesn't work through random encounters but as enemies that appear on the overworld and if the two of you make contact then the fight begins. The game shifts into a first person perspective where you see your party's health and PP at the bottom of the screen and the enemies in front of you and it does traditional turn based attacks based on speed. My favorite thing about fighting is that leveling up never feels like a grinding experience. Once you get strong enough and encounter enemies, you'll never go into the battle phase, instead they are killed onscreen and you'll get the experience and items and move on. Its the perfect way to let you know you've power leveled a area and need to move on.

I can't stress how much fun the game is and how great my experience has been with it. If you're someone who's played Smash before and wondered where Ness (Earthbound/Mother 2) and Lucas (Mother 3) come from, check out the Mother series. The games still hold up after 20+ years and somewhat relevant in these times. Please go play Earthbound, you can't go through life without playing this game.