14 thoughts on “Earthbound

  1. Wolf says:

    For me it wasn’t the distance to the local rental place, we had once 10 minutes away in town. It was the length of time my parents alowed me to actully play a game. One hour. One lousey stinkin hour to play a game like The Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past. Jeez, just imagine that kinda time limit now with todays big name titles…

    1. knuxkitsune says:

      To be fair though, your parents’ generation of games were repetitive couple-minute games. That mentality sticks even though the medium changes. My mom had Intellivision, I had SNES. They have very different libraries of games. Intellivision had a lot of single-screen arcade-style games while SNES had epic masterpieces like Final Fantasy III, LoZ, and Chrono Trigger. But that mentality of what a video game is will stay based on personal experiences.

      Now let’s say you have parents whom never played games. They’ll base it on things like TV shows, or completely not understand, passing it off as mindless colors and noise.

    2. gabe says:

      …and that’s why I just don’t have the time to game any longer–the games are just too long! I remember being able to sit down and beat Bionic Commando in like 2 hours. So nice!

      1. The games really aren’t that long Gabe, you just need some dedication!

        Batman Arkam City took me a few days to beat. I played it for a few hours every night after work and in 2 or 3 days I beat it.

  2. Obos says:

    Yes! This is a tale most true! And what a worthy game, and an amazing strat guide. I’m looking at mine right now and sighing in happiness.

  3. Chris Sobieniak says:

    I suppose I should be lucky I live in a city with over 300,000 people 20 years back. and it wasn’t a toughie to get games at all.

    1. gabe says:

      You are so lucky. Our video store was 30 minutes away and they had maybe, maybe 20 games.

  4. Wolf says:

    knuxkitsune wrote: “Now let’s say you have parents whom never played games. They’ll base it on things like TV shows, or completely not understand, passing it off as mindless colors and noise.”

    Right there on the nose.

    1. gabe says:

      Aw, I give my parents a little more credit than that 🙂

  5. Amauriel says:

    Thanks again for picking my story! You really did it justice!

    1. gabe says:

      I tried! So glad you liked it!

  6. Great story! I loved Earthbound with a passion, it was actually the first RPG to turn me on to console role playing!

    I remember not only having to rent it, but then having to fight to rent it cause the rental place only had one copy and everyone wanted to rent it. It was such a pain in the ass having your save files deleted and having to start over and over.

    Around my 18th birthday my Dad had a really wild gift for me, a sealed, in a box copy of Earthbound. I couldn’t fucking believe it, because even then the game was hard to find.

    I played through that game maybe 30 times before I finally traded it for a copy of Breath of Fire 2. I don’t regret it, I am glad I got a crack at BOF 2 and I was happy to pass on such an iconic RPG so other people could experience it.

    1. gabe says:

      Man, I always liked getting a code you could write down, then if you rented the game again, you could start from where you left off! Genius!

Leave a Reply to gabe Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *