Entertainment

Games: Nintendo's 'lost classic' Earthbound finally makes it West on Switch

Earthbound
Earthbound Earthbound

Earthbound (Switch)


By: Nintendo

FOR over two decades the Super Smash Bros series has seen Mario, Bowser, Zelda and the like knocking seven shades out of each other. But when Irish players first fired the game up, its who's who of Nintendo characters featured one "who's that?".

Bug-eyed all-American oik Ness may have been handy with a baseball bat, but he was a mystery to European joystick junkies, given his adventures never saw the light of day on these shores.

Forever spoken about in hushed tones, the legendary Earthbound is now available for free through the Switch's online service, giving role players a chance to see what all the fuss was about.

And there's pedigree behind those pixels. Created by the Japanese Don Draper, Shigesato Itoi created some of the country's most famous ad slogans, including taglines for all of Studio Ghibli's films.

Itoi agreed to work for Nintendo in 1987 if he could pitch his own game idea, named Mother after the John Lennon song. At a time when RPGs were riddled with knights, castles and dragons, Mother was set in a small US town, crammed with Americana and modern cultural references. It was a roaring success, but its sequel is the stuff of legend – particularly for how Nintendo cocked up its release in the West.

Landing Stateside in 1995 as Earthbound, Nintendo hitched their wagon to 90s teen-baiting advertising culture, with gross-out buzzwords that would have embarrassed Poochie the Dog. Scratch and sniff magazine ads proclaimed "This Game Stinks", while a competition invited kids to identify a "mystery smell". This for a critical darling that's since been compared to Catcher in the Rye.

It didn't help that, in order to accommodate the included player guide, Earthbound's beefy box wouldn't fit on most retailers' shelves. The game tanked and was never released in Europe – one of gaming's greatest shames.

Earthbound's brand of adventure had never been seen before: shop-worn swords and magic were replaced with hippies, drunks and Klansmen, and in dealing with everything from politicians and religious cults to xenophobia, its themes have never been more relevant.

Brimming with bonkers set-pieces and Easter eggs, Earthbound's DNA can been seen in Pokemon and Animal Crossing, while its earworm soundtrack was one of the first to employ samples.

A legend of gaming and an equally legendary marketing misfire, Earthbound's simple visuals may put modern gamers off, but it was years ahead of its time and well worth a blast – if only to convince Nintendo to finally release its 2006 sequel in the West.