EarthBound
1994 · RPG · SNES
Overview
EarthBound was an RPG set in a contemporary American suburbia rather than a medieval fantasy world. Players controlled Ness, a boy with psychic powers, battling enemies including New Age Retro Hippies, Rowdy Mice, and a cosmic evil named Giygas. The game's self-aware humour, emotional depth, and unconventional setting made it a cult classic despite initially modest sales.
Deep Dive
EarthBound was designed by Shigesato Itoi — a celebrity copywriter and media personality rather than a game designer — and developed with technical support from HAL Laboratory, where a young Satoru Iwata contributed significantly to the game's programming. The North American release in 1995 was marketed with a deliberately unusual campaign: 'This game stinks' ads that included a scratch-and-sniff card. The campaign was ineffective and EarthBound sold poorly at launch. Its reputation grew through emulation and online communities in the late 1990s and 2000s.
Developer Story
EarthBound was designed by Shigesato Itoi, who had no game design background but convinced Nintendo to back his concept for a contemporary RPG. HAL Laboratory provided technical development under Satoru Iwata. The game launched in Japan in August 1994.
Did You Know?
- EarthBound's final boss — Giygas — is one of the most disturbing in RPG history, designed to represent an unknowable, formless evil that cannot be comprehended.
- The game's 'rolling HP meter' — your character's health decreasing gradually rather than instantly — means you can survive a killing blow if you act fast enough.
- EarthBound was never released in Europe in its original SNES form — European players had to wait for the Wii U Virtual Console in 2013.
- Satoru Iwata, later president of Nintendo, fixed a memory overflow bug in EarthBound's late development that allowed the game to ship without restarting development from scratch.
