Developer’s Diary, 8/03/09: So… Nine Unknown Men.
First of all, yes, it’s been fucking forever. Second of all, it’s 5:30 in the fucking morning and I’m tired, so if I come off as grumpy, go fuck yourself in a barrel. Third of all, here’s some information on the Nine Unknown Men in my game.
So, I posted this character sheet like 4 months ago:
Remember those guys? I said I would describe each one in the next couple of posts. So, now that four months have passed, it’s time to talk about them.
But first, some information on what in the hell they have to do with the story. Basically, the plot of the game is that Cyrus, a young farmboy from a small town (as RPG heroes tend to be), has been unwillingly roped into being a hero. He’s been charged with the task of finding eight of the Nine, who have been out of touch for many years, by the Sage of Cosmology, who just suddenly appears and fucks Cyrus’s life up. Due to his powers, the sage is privy to some knowledge about the future and is doing what he has to do to save mankind, which means essentially screwing Cyrus out of a normal life. Finding the rest of the Nine becomes the primary goal of the game. Unfortunately, the person who seems to be responsible for humanity’s downfall, Hitogoroshi, becomes aware of these plans, and attempts to stop Cyrus and the Sages from saving the world.
In Navaratna, the Nine Unknown Men are nine parts of the same group acting completely independently, with no knowledge of each others’ whereabouts and actions, and the only thing that really binds them together is the source of their work. As a result, they know very little about each other, and as a result, Cyrus has to search them out. Fortunately, this is an RPG, so he’ll be able to, now with 60% more dungeons. Just like in the legends, the Nine work for the good of mankind, doing everything within their considerable power to prevent humanity at large from blowing its own dumb self up. Each of the Nine is in charge of his own discipline of knowledge, and keeps a tome of all the knowledge they’ve collected. Let’s look at each character and their discipline individually:
This burly motherfucker is the Sage of Physiology. He knows all that kung fu shit, and will mess you up if he has to. He created judo, and can do a literal touch of death, like in Fist of the North Star. Generally, he likes kicking ass, training to kick ass, chasing women, and drinking. Basically, he eats dynamite, shits lightning bolts, and generally isn’t a dude you want to mess with. His name is Hank Chuckrock. It used to be Cameron Whiteley, but he karate chopped that shit into a much manlier name.
This is the Sage of Alchemy. As you can see, he’s got a fucked up face. Thanks to various failed attempts to create Aqua Vitae (Water of Life), his body and face have been mutated nearly beyond the point of being recognizably human. Despite this, he’s eternally chipper and good spirited. This is good, because if he was bitter, he would transmute the shit out of everybody he saw into, like, trees or something. He can do that, you know.
This sexy little number is the Sage of Communication. She’s not dressed like this because she’s a whore or anything, she just realizes that people are more willing to listen to beautiful women than they are to anyone else. She could explain calculus to a dog, and that dog would then construct a rocket and fly to the moon. She can communicate with anyone, anywhere telepathically, she talks to aliens, and she can tell you where you grew up just from reading your body language. Also, bunny ears are adorable.
This is the Sage of Biology. He’s one suave son of a bitch. Tall, strong, handsome, well-dressed, well-spoken, and brilliant, he puts James Bond, Doc Savage, and most of all, you, to shame. He’s in charge of the secrets of biotechnology and microbiology, including biomechanics, bacterial nanomachines, viruses, and the such. He’s one of the few sages who simply hides in plain sight, crusing around the Old Countries in his supercharged Aston-Martin, wining and dining beautiful women, saving small villages from voodoo zombies and ape men, and above all else, doing science wherever science needs to be done.
You know how in anime there are often characters who are really grim and purposeful? Well, that’s the Sage of Cosmology. Don’t worry, though, I promise he’s not just a stock character. He’s got a few surprises up his sleeve. For example, did you know he’s a fan of country western troubadours? Of course you didn’t. Ok, that isn’t true. But, because of his research and knowledge, he’s nearly omnipresent, able to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. He can travel instantaneously, go from dimension to dimension at will, travel to alternate universes, and even through time itself. For a number of very complex reasons, though, he’s losing control over these powers. You know Dr. Manhattan, from Watchmen? Same kinda deal. He exists in the future, the past, and the present at the same time, and has a completely altered view of time, motion, and even reality itself. As such, he’s not exactly the most stable person to be around all the time, mentally or physically. However, he is the sage who is responsible for roping our beloved hero into this quest, and the one who will serve as a guide and mentor, so don’t hate him or anything. Just… try not to stand too close to him if he starts glowing.
This adorable little mystery is the Sage of Light. No one has any idea exactly who or what he is or used to be, or even if this is his true form. He has learned how to keep utter and complete control over light, and appears to be completely composed of it. He can concentrate it as a very powerful laser, bend it to become invisible, alter colors, increase or decrease the speed of light (even stopping it in midair), or even form it into shapes. Very mysterious, but everyone who’s met him has said he’s very sweet and childlike, although a bit bitter that everyone seems to be afraid of him. You’ll love him, trust me.
The Sage of Gravitation, Captain Flynn, has completely transcended the need for walking. He can fly. Be honest, as cool as all the other powers the sages have, you know you’d probably want to be able to fly most of all. In addition to being able to just straight-up lift off the ground, he knows how to build a Vimana, the mythical Indian UFOs of yore. These use no energy, make no noise, and can travel at nearly the speed of light. They’re also capable of interstellar travel. Additionally, he can invert gravity, which tends to either fuck with people’s heads, or, depending on where they are, kill them. However, as commanding and militaristic as he is, he’s also clumsy and generally pretty nice. He’s also got that cool helmet, so that’s a plus.
Finally, this friendly old scholar is the Sage of Sociology. Unlike the other sages, he’s actually out spreading his knowledge as a professor, although making sure not to allow too much out. He’s known as the hardest teacher at his school, albeit the nicest one. He enjoys having tea, baking, predicting the downfall of mankind and its civilizations, and chess. His knowledge doesn’t have many direct applications, but at the same time, much of the rest of the Nine’s work goes into preventing what he predicts from happening. He has charted civilzation for many, many years, and knows the secrets of human conflicts and interpersonal relationships, and as such, is the only one who can help prevent them.
Ok, now that you’re done going up and counting how many people I just talked about, yes, number nine is missing. I have a good reason for that. The Sage of Psychology is a complete mystery to the rest of the group. No one has any idea what he looks like, and everybody who has met him has described a totally different person. They have met with men, women, children, and even animals that claim to be the sage. As such, no one is sure about the true nature of the sage, and it’s possible that any of those making claims about being him are correct. However, it’s equally possible that none of them are correct, and that the whole illusion is a complete mindfuck on the part of the real sage. You see, he’s able to do that, because he can get inside your head and do whatever he wants to it. He’s like Hannibal Lecter, but much, much more powerful. He has the ability to control entire populations of people with the stroke of a pen, and to persuade anybody to do his bidding. Or, again, maybe he doesn’t, and he’s just good at making himself appear able to. It’s all a mindfuck, man.
So, hopefully, that sheds a little light on what in the hell is going on in this game. I have much more planned out than it probably seems based on what you’ve read, but I’m trying hard not to release any of that information. I’ve taken in 103 hours of Lost in a 2 month period, so I could destroy you with plot twists right now if I wanted to. I’ve been making a lot of progress on it recently (one of many reasons I haven’t been updating; I promise there will be plenty of updates soon), so hopefully I’ll be done with it this year. I know that seems like a pretty easy goal, but this motherfucker’s gonna be long. Trust me. I’ve got a lot of story to write.
Developer’s Diary, 5/5/09: My Writing Process and Maps
Still chugging away on the story elements.
In the meantime, I thought you might like to see my writing process.
There isn’t one.
I start at the beginning and when I’m done, I’ll know it. I’ve always written everything like this. Ever since I was a young boy I’ve been told that the correct way to write is to work out an outline, then a rough draft, then an edited copy, then a final copy. I’ve always felt like that’s total bullshit. Yeah, it might make some things a little better, but when I take the time to sit and work all of it out, it hurts the work overall. Nothing fits together as well, and it’s much easier to write (dialogue especially) when it feels like I’m finding out things at the same time as characters. It’s hard to explain, but it’s a lot easier to think of the way people would react to someting that’s happening if I don’t know everything that will ever happen to them.
One result of this is that my maps don’t get made until they’re necessary. Check out the current world map:
It seems a bit sparse.
As the story moves on, I will of course add more to it. I just don’t need any more continents at the moment. My continent bag is full.
There is a reason for the peculiar shape of the island up top, though. It’ll all be revealed soon enough.
Developer’s Diary, 4/29/09: Yo, FUCK doors.
Goddamn, I can’t believe it’s been a month.
Anyway, I’ve been chugging away at the game, mostly with behind-the-scenes stuff. I’ve been working on some different event-scripting skills with the help of the friendly folks over at RMVX. Sad as it is to say, considering how easy the engine is, I didn’t really know what the hell I was doing beyond some basic stuff. Thanks to RMVX member Aindra’s RPG School game/tutorial (the bunneh rocks), I’ve learned how to do a lot of basic stuff. Through practice I’ve actually gotten to the point where I can write my own cutscenes, which is good, because otherwise the game would have sucked. I’ve made a video on the Your Tubes internets website demostrating a little bit of what I learned (don’t worry, it’s spoiler free, not that you cared):
It’s embarrassing to say that everything in this video took me about an hour to actually do. It’s some fairly complicated scripting, though, and with what I’ve learned, I shouldn’t need to take time out from story development to learn anything else for a while.
I’ve also updated my town, which you may remember from this post. In addition to some general updates and changes, I’ve also added an entire new part of town, which I haven’t totally finished yet.
Here’s the new northern side of town:
As of right now, the town is called Foxtrot, but that (as is everything) is subject to change. That big house up top belongs to a rich fucker who will be a catalyst for the beginning of the story. Other than that, there is an armor shop run by a paranoid old dwarf-man, and a couple of houses.
In addition to all this, I’ve completely finished all of the transfer events that lead to you actually being able to go inside of a building, which isn’t a major step, but is necessary. Here’s a piteous little aside regarding my skill as a “programmer”: One feature of RMVX is the “quick event”, which allows you to add a commonly used event quickly without having to actually add anything to it yourself. One of the quick events is the “door” event, which adds the graphic of a door, then the scripting to have it open upon touch. I added this event to every building in town, then went into the event scripting and added the locations I wanted to move to. This worked fine until I actually came back out, at which time, for some reason, the character would take a step forward, freeze, then teleport back under the door’s graphic. I couldn’t figure out why it would do that, because the character isn’t literally coming out of the door, he just touches a tile from the inside of the building that teleports him back out. I worked for a fucking hour to realize that what I had done was I had added a transfer function at the end of the first page of events, which concluded with a switch which, when triggered, moved your character forward, then teleported him to a location that was supposed to have been chosen when I created the quick event. So, in effect, I caused this problem myself by just not paying attention, just like the time I crashed my car through a Walgreens because I hadn’t noticed I had drank 28 beers. The cool side of this problem, however, is that I realized that, with a little modification, I could use that second page of events to make it look like the character was walking back out the door, which has already saved me a lot of time.
Now that I have all this mapping bidness finished, I’m going to move on to finishing the first part of the story.
Look for an update soon with my first dungeon. It will be drawn in crayon. I’m sure you can’t wait.
Developer’s Diary, 3/29/09: The Essence of Earthbound
Well, I’ve done a little bit of work with the game. I have maybe the first two minutes of the game created. Cyrus (our beloved hero) can now set out from his farmhouse, meet a couple of people in town, and interact with one shopkeeper. Not that there is any money, of course. Or any way to earn money. But it’s a start.
Obviously, there isn’t much there yet. I’m not a fan of drafts, so I don’t know exactly where I’m going with the story yet. But I’ve got a pretty good idea of what I want and where I want to go with it. Essentially, I want to create a game in the same vein as Earthbound. Of course, making a game inspired by other games has been attempted before, and its usually resulted in ridiculous rehashs (“Marith sacrificed herself to save the world from Strepheroth!”), but I think I can do it well, considering the tremendous influence Earthbound had on me not only in the way I like my video games, but even in the way I think and act. I know this sounds either contrived or insane, but please bear with me.
I first played Earthbound at age 7. Obviously, this is a very impressionable age. I’m pretty sure I still told everybody that Billy Idol was my dad (since Rebel Yell is so badass it causes pregnancy, this may be true) and that my name was “Justin Donatello Leonardo Raphael Michaelangelo Strong” at that age (altered weekly depending on which Turtle was my favorite). I was always enamored with things with a “wacky”/absurd sense of humor, for example Looney Toons and Animaniacs, but I went into Earthbound for the promised fart jokes (of which there were only 2 or 3, and also Pokey shits in the desert, so I guess that kinda counts too). While I was quickly disappointed on that front, I was really impressed with a lot of things about Earthbound, and I still am. The game is one of the few things that has appealed to me for 14 years, and not just out of nostalgia, like so many other things. My appreciation of the series has even grown over the years, possibly due to maturing mentally and emotionally. I’ve really noticed how heartfelt and meaningful the game is, and as a result, I’ve decided my overall goal for the game is to capture the essence of what made Earthbound so, well, Earthboundish.
Of course much of that essence is usually attributed to the script, and for good reason. Even though the idea of a modern RPG has been done before, Earthbound’s concept and plot remain completely unique. I think what really makes it special is that Shigesato Itoi is a man who both had something to say and was tremendously capable of saying it. He wanted to tell a personal story in his own style, and he did so in a way that is easily relatable. While it would have been easy to just make a goofy little RPG full of throwaway jokes and satire of American culture, he chose to make the story funny, but full of likable characters and situtations, which, beyond just making you laugh, make you think “how would I feel in that situation?” The characters’ feelings and behavior are displayed in a way that make you genuinely care for them and feel real sympathy, or even empathy, just like you would a real person, instead of being used for gags, like in most forms of comedy today. Every joke, even little ones like “All the information is there, except for the information that isn’t there”, create (and draw you into) a cohesive and connected world and mindset for the characters, instead of eliciting a brief chuckle. Earthbound managed to do things that most other games, even recent ones, could only dream of doing, or in some cases, claim to do (i.e. Fable 2), by creating a world where you care about every inhabitant, who seem to just be going about their daily lives, albeit in a peculiar way. Just like in real life, not every person you walk up and talk to are going to respond with a comment about whatever the most important thing going on in town is, or about how happy they are you’re going to save the world. Not everyone has heard of Ness, Paula, Jeff, Poo, and their quest to save the world from Giygas. To them, you’re just a bunch of teenagers walking around town, and they respond as such. And just the same, despite the questing and psychic powers, at heart, the Chosen Four really are just a bunch of teenagers, who would be leading regular lives if not for the whole Planetary Savior thing. Unlike so many other RPGs, whose protagonists seem like they’d be going off trying to save the world from nothing in particular even if they weren’t destined to, you get the feeling they would probably just being going to school and watching TV at home if they weren’t destined for more, like they’re real people who just realize there’s something they have to do. That’s what separates Earthbound’s story apart from its peers, and why other games haven’t been able to creating something like it. Gimmicks like “karma systems” (recently bitchslapped by logic in a Penny Arcade comic and news post) only go so far because, at heart, you don’t believe everybody, every last person on the face of the planet, each person and monster and even animal, lives a life that revolves around you and your exploits as a magical hero with no life or purpose outside of saving the world this one time.
Of course, I didn’t realize all this when I first played Earthbound. The first thing in particular that struck me was how vivid and pretty the color scheme used in the game is. I may be the only one who thinks so, but I always loved bright colors as opposed to superlight pastels and superdark primaries, often the two extremes you see in games. Earthbound’s graphics are like nothing else. Oftentimes the game’s “poor graphics” are pointed to as a primary cause of the game’s failure, but I consider it to be one of my favorite games graphically. It’s true there’s a very simplistic art style involved, but you could still tell pretty much what everything you were looking at was, and it was attractive and distinct, with a lovely color palette and smooth, flowing animation. Even if the battle scenes weren’t particularly well animated really animated much at all, what was there was very unique and cool-looking. The visual style may not really make up the heart of the game, per se, but I think it is a major part of what makes the game stand out, at least at first glance (especially the unique character designs).
The sound, on the other hand, is vital to the game. Not only used in the traditional sense to heighten emotion, the music in Earthbound gives a texture to the game that couldn’t be achieved with the graphics. Nobuo Uematsu is probably still my favorite game composer, of course, but Keiichi Suzuki (already famous in Japan as a member of the Moonriders), Hiroshi Kanazu, and the great Hirokazu “Hip” Tanaka (another revered game composer who wrote, among other things, the brilliant soundtrack for Metroid) created something truly unique and spectacular with Earthbound’s soundtrack. The game has its share of fun, quirky, catchy musical asides, but there are several tracks that hold an immense emotional depth. For example, the music played while boarding the bus with the Runaway Five sounds exactly what you would think it would sound like if you just saved a nationally popular Soul/Blues group and they were riding you into another town. It seriously feels like a cut scene from the Blues Brothers (who, by the way, the Runaway Five were obviously based on). The same goes with Onett’s main theme, which just has an overall feeling of the fresh thrill of adventure and which may be the best “setting-out-on-a-quest” tune since the main theme of Final Fantasy 2/4, and Paula’s theme, which I find perfectly encapsulates what it would feel like to meet a famous, cute psychic girl that has been having dreams about saving the world with you (before you ask, I have absolutely no clue how to explain that. Just go with me on it).
Of course, it’s all these things that make the game so much more than the sum of its parts. There is one particular scene, however, that I want to note specifically, because I think it sums up everything about the nonsense I’ve been rambling about. Take a look at this screenshot of Ness’s house.
When you just look at a picture of it, it really doesn’t hold any kind of emotional power or anything. It’s just a cute drawing of a house. But add Ness’s mom’s loving, motherly dialog and the beautiful remix of Pollyanna (a song from the first game in the series that was a key plot point, with a beautiful melody, and which is later revealed to be a song passed down through the generations by Ness’s family), and, despite the fact that the music’s full of surging, spacey synthesizers, it’s the epitome of hominess. It no longer feels like you’re just playing some goofy little video game. It makes a very distinct emotional connection with you. It creates an almost palpable feeling of being at home. It (again, bear with me here, because I’m not used to being open with my emotions, especially in public writing) makes me almost tear up and even makes me want to call my mom. It makes me feel like a safe, loved child, like I’m having my hair dried by my mom after a bath, like I can smell cookies baking, like I never learned to swear or drink or fight, like I’m not corrupted and everything is still pure and good and right. This isn’t just from nostalgia or from memories of playing the game, because I never had any experiences like that while playing the game. I know this sounds contrived and overenthusiastic, and maybe it is. But I just can’t fully explain why some 15-year-old video game that features a talking pile of vomit has touched me so deeply, and this is about as close as I’m ever going to get. This game has some incredibly emotionally resounding moments, and still, to this day, I can’t think of a single other piece of art that could ever mean so much to me, and this is exactly why. It’s that type of emotional resonance, that heartfelt, meaningful spirit, that I want my game to have at its heart. I’ve been given the best possible example I can think of; all that’s left is to see if I have the skills to actually do it.
By the way, this seems as good a time as any to mention that Starmen.net have just started selling some awesome Mother 3 books. More info can be found here, and the books can be ordered here. They get free advertising cause they’ve just been so good to me (and the community at large) in the past. >_>
And to those of you who are pissed off about the lack of humor lately (haha, I know, you don’t exist), don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten what this site is for. I’ll be back with dick jokes and old games soon enough. I’ve just got other things going on too. Suck it up and hold on. I’ve got something extra special coming up as soon as I get my hands on a camcorder. =O
Developer’s Diary, 3/23/09: The Beginning.
Well, I’ve finally sat down to write about what I’m doing with this game. This is the first entry in what I hope will be a long, interesting, and most importantly, money generating diary. I never thought I’d get an opportunity to write one of these myself.
Anyway, enough bullshitting; you came here to hear about the game (or by accident while searching for “catchy name for newspaper”). I haven’t quite thought of a title yet. The (very tenative) working title is Navaratna (for some reason, things named after Indian concepts fail at least 100% of the time). The game is about the legend of the Nine Unknown Men. An ancient organization referred to in Sanskrit myths and related by 19th-century author Louis Jacolliot (or possibly just completely made up, scholars in the 19th century were careless assholes), the legend goes that, around 270 BC, the Indian emperor Asoka the Great had a change in philosophy after a horrible massacre in a battle intended to unify India, in which over 100,000 men were killed. After converting to Buddhism, Asoka took it upon himself to do everything in his power to prevent mankind from damming itself with advanced technologies (in some versions of the legend, his motivation for doing so was also influenced by the tales of the Rama Empire, a legendary Atlantis-esque Indian society with incredibly advanced technology that was ravaged by its own progress). In this spirit, the Society of the Nine was formed. For the past 2000 years, these nine men (or, presumably, their descendants, unless they live forever, which is also possible, I guess) have gathered knowledge they consider to be dangerous to mankind if allowed to reach the wrong hands. Nine books were made, each entrusted to a different master and each concerning a different topic. These topics were (direct quote from Wikipedia, for I am lazy):
- Propaganda and Psychological warfare
- Physiology
- Biology
- Alchemy
- Communication
- Gravitation
- Cosmology
- Light
- Sociology
So, now that you know the legend (or, alternatively, now that you’ve wasted 10 minutes reading about something you already knew), I can talk about what it has to do with this game. Navaratna is set in a world that isn’t intended to be any particular time period in reality, as evidenced by the fact that the skies feature both airships and planes, an impossible scenario that could never happen in reality.
The Hindenberg Disaster is an example anachronistic impossibility of airships and planes sharing the skies. As a result of this paradox, the ship simply ceased to be.
In addition to being completely original, this setting also allows me to write in whatever anachronisms I want, from swordfights with guns to riding a horse to a laser rock show. Additionally, it makes it slightly more acceptable for me to use everything in the RTP (for those of you not familiar with RPG Maker, the RTP is the set of components included with the program, and releasing a game to the RPG Maker community using only the RTP is like going to a fashion show wearing only Hefty bags). If I ever find someone who’s good at designing tilesets at the very least, then hopefully it’ll look a little bit more unique. (Anyone who feels up to the job can feel free to submit an example to me at ninjapocalypse@catchynamenews.com. All I really need are tilesets.)
I don’t have everything created yet, or even tentatively laid out (I just don’t work that way) but here’s an example map I’ve made, from the first town. Again, it’s still tenative, so don’t freak out that it doesn’t have a river running through it or whatever:
Please note that there aren’t a bunch of completely random placements of grass and flowers. Despite what the community seems to think, I think randomly laying out a bunch of flowers and tall grass to make it look less planned makes the town look like it’s filled with garbage. More realistic? Perhaps. But considering I’m making a town in a video game and not bringing up from the Earth a town created in my own image, I don’t think it’s that bad of a problem if I sacrifice a little realism for the sake of superior aesthetic value. I kept it looking a little random, but just planned enough that it doesn’t look like I just took the tile brush and waved it around randomly. So there.
I’m also not totally finished with the characters, but I have finished the Nine…
Pretty cool, no? What? You want to hear more about them? Too bad. Wait until next update. Or the one after that. I pull the strings here. ಠ_ಠ
On Earthbound: A Precursor to a Developer’s Diary.
Well, I’ve mentioned it to some people already, but on the off chance that the site is being read by someone other than a few of my close friends, I’ll say it again: I’m making a game. I’m making it in RPG Maker VX. Yes, I know of the stigma associated with RPG Maker. I’ve worked with RPG Maker for somewhere around 10 years now, beginning with RPG Maker 95, and I can honestly say that, if you’re looking to just write a game, like I am, it’s phenomenal, because someone of my limited programming knowledge can make the game just about as complex or simple as they want. I still have trouble doing what I want here and there, but for the most part I can get just about whatever I want out of the system.
At the core, my feelings on game design are that it doesn’t matter how complex the game is, you can still make valid, even exceptional art out of it. Case in point? Earthbound.
A quick history, for those disturbed individuals who are somehow uninformed:
Known as Mother 2 in Japan, Earthbound is an RPG centering around a boy and his friends saving the world, just like pretty much every other RPG of the era. However, that’s where the similarities end. Instead of the same boring-ass fantasy setting every other game has (An aside: Final Fantasy is different. It’s usually a steampunk environment. Steampunk rules.), Earthbound was set in a modern environment, a skewed interpretation of America called Eagleland. The main character, Ness, is a 13-year-old boy who has to fight furious cups of coffee and deranged mummies to defeat the personification of evil and his right-hand man, Ness’s fat, cowardly neighbor, Pokey. The world of Earthbound is one in which you’ll encounter aliens, ghosts, demons, zombies, possessed statues, and monsters, right alongside the more “mundane” aspects of life, such as deranged cops, angry old women, exorbitant resort town prices, demented hippies, cultists, and pizza delivery.
The Mother series is quite popular in Japan. In America? Not so much. The original game in the series was originally set to be released in America (also under the name Earthbound), but was cancelled at the last minute. Literally. As in, the game was fully translated, localized, put through Nintendo of America’s censorship process, and even had a manual/strategy guide written. All that was left was to manufacture and ship the game. Then they decided, with the launch of the SNES in the same year, gamers would be too distracted to buy NES games, which is a valid concern, I guess, but considering that at the time Nintendo was sitting on top of a pile of money tall enough to be a hazard to aircraft, I don’t think releasing a game that likely would have been at least a minor hit would be a huge hit to the Big N’s profit margins, especially since most of the work was already done. For whatever reason, it wasn’t to be, but in 1995, Nintendo decided to give the game’s sequel a chance, and released it in America as Earthbound.
Nintendo has a reputation for snubbing Earthbound fans, but to be fair, they seemed to really try hard with the game’s release in America, giving it a gigantic, attention-grabbing box, including a free strategy guide with every purchase, and using a novel print advertising method, including a scratch-and-sniff page and a $10 off coupon. Unfortunetly, this kind of backfired, and honestly, I can see why. They went for a gross-out angle, using the tagline “This Game Stinks”, and the ads contained phrases like “not only does the game of Earthbound stink like some foul creature of the sewers…” and “burping, belching, gaseous monsters”. I understand the gross-out angle, it probably seemed like it would work pretty well, if the target audience was the under-12 crowd (and also idiots), but mother of Christ, they made it sound like someone just shit in a box and included a strategy guide. I, however, was 7 at the time, so I unashamedly enjoyed the advertising.
Anyhow, the game didn’t perform as expected, so NOA callously threw its hands up and said the game was dead to them forever. So far, across nearly 15 years of begging, pleading, and incredible displays of devotion, they haven’t reversed their position. In the meantime, a remake of the first two games and a sequel, Mother 3, have been produced for the Game Boy Advance. Part of the leadup to both involved the tireless work of the ever-optimistic, incredibly dedicated Earthbound fanbase, centered around what is quite simply the most amazing fansite in video game history: Starmen.net.
Founded in 1999 (as earthbound.net) by Clyde Mandelin (Tomato) and Reid Young (Reidman), Starmen.net is more than just the regular Geocities fansite that you still see sometimes from that era, with dizzying parallax backgrounds and content stolen from various places. In fact, it has a tremendous amount more content than even any video game website I’ve ever seen, official or unofficial. Enormous collections of fanart, animations, music, comics, fanfics, and even entire fangames. Most interesting to me, however, is the enormous collection of articles. Themed around any number of things from the state of the community to theories about mysteries in the game to comedic essays concerning character relationships. (The article section, dear readers, is what inspired me as a kid to become a writer. In fact, were it not for this article section, it’s possible that none of you would be forced to read this article as a polite favor to me right now.)
Perhaps most remarkable about Starmen.net, however, is the extraordinary work put into making the world (and NOA, especially) acknowledge Earthbound’s greatness. Several letter writing, envelope art, and call-in campaigns (The newest iterations of which are still ongoing, and I suggest you participate), 3 petitions (1 with 1850 signatures, one with 10,013, and one with an amazing 31,338, including 1200 that were handwritten), interviews in several major media outlets, and, perhaps most representative of the what this community can do that others can’t, the Earthbound Anthology, a gorgeous 268-page collection of fanart and information about the series and its seemingly cursed history in America. In addition to about 750 pages of art, it includes 6 CDs of fan-created music (SM.net’s own Rock Candy series and the Bound Together project) and 2 DVDs of various clips (one featuring xfixjmg6’s /earthbound live action prank series and one featuring a select group videos from SM.net’s fan videos section). This staggering collection, meant to represent the dedication, loyalty, and talent of the community, was sent to various media outlets, including EGM, Nintendo, Kotaku, Destructoid, and Gamespot, with the intent of creating an acute awareness of the series in the media which, hopefully, would lead to stories creating a big buzz around Earthbound’s then-pending Virtual Console release (which is now, sadly, a lost hope).
I would like to take this time to mention that, as a member of the press, I have not yet received my copy of the Earthbound Anthology. As a long time member of the Earthbound community, I feel that this wrong should be righted. I don’t think the book should be withheld from me just because I’m not an “important” press outlet with a “large readership” or any “influence”, or just because I have a “drinking problem” or “unpaid child support”. I’m still a member of the press, dammit! I will have my book! Or, alternatively, I won’t. It could go either way.
Now that you’re essentially caught up on Earthbound’s history, you might as well read the rest of developer’s diary, assuming I ever finish it. It’s related to Earthbound, because that is my primary influence in the game I’m making. If there’s one thing I can draw on for inspiration, it’s Earthbound. Case in point: all of the information in this article was drawn from memory. I’ve been fanatical over the series for nearly 14 years, so hopefully I’ll be able to figure out what it is that makes the game so magical. Next entry we’ll examine the game’s essence. Ok desu ka?
