50 Fun Facts About EarthBound

Which gimmick did Nintendo build into magazine ads for EarthBound's 1995 launch in North America?

Scratch-and-sniff panels gave off foul smells on purpose, and GamePro said the ad drew more reader complaints than any other it ran that year.

What does a pirated copy of EarthBound do to the player during the fight with the final boss?

Deletes the saved game: the copy protection resets the game near the end and wipes the file, after first flooding the pirate's playthrough with extra enemies.

In EarthBound, the maze builder Brick Road fulfils his dream by having himself turned into what?

A dungeon, and a walking one: he travels with the party as an ally for a while and keeps a submarine inside him that they borrow to sail on.

What is Master Belch, the burping boss who commands the zombies in EarthBound, actually made of?

Vomit: Master Belch is a large living pile of it who leads smaller piles, and he comes back later in the game under the new name Master Barf.

To survive the trip back in time to fight Giygas, EarthBound's heroes move their souls into what?

Robots house the four friends' souls because time travel would destroy living bodies; Dr. Andonuts's Phase Distorter then carries them into the past.

How is Giygas, the cosmic destroyer and final boss of EarthBound, finally defeated?

By prayers for help: Paula calls on the friends and family met along the way, and the last plea reaches the player in person.

In EarthBound, who deposits prize money into Ness's bank account after every battle the party wins?

His father pays in the winnings from afar, so the cash has to be drawn from an ATM before Ness can spend any of it in a shop.

Ness, the hero of EarthBound, became far better known as a playable character in which other Nintendo series?

Super Smash Bros. has had Ness on its roster since the first game in 1999, and in Europe, which never got EarthBound on the Super NES, he was known mainly from it.

Which 2015 indie RPG was made by Toby Fox, who built EarthBound ROM hacks as a teenager?

Undertale wears the influence openly: Fox has said its title copies the way EarthBound sticks two words together into one.

Which piece of sports equipment is the main weapon of Ness, the young hero of EarthBound?

Baseball bats are his usual weapon, with yo-yos as an alternative, in a game that swaps the swords of fantasy RPGs for suburban toys.

EarthBound's character and world design has been likened to which classic American comic strip?

Peanuts is the usual comparison: critics describe the character and world design as Charles M. Schulz-esque, and Ness's outfit has been said to evoke Charlie Brown.

The Mother series that includes EarthBound took its name partly from a song by which former Beatle?

John Lennon's song Mother moved the series' creator to tears, and he set out to make a game that could move its players in the same way.

The writer and director of EarthBound voiced the girls' dad in which Studio Ghibli film?

My Neighbor Totoro cast him as Tatsuo Kusakabe in the Japanese original; he was a famous copywriter who also wrote taglines for Ghibli films.

Which ailment, unique to Ness, can strike after battles in EarthBound and make him waste turns?

Homesickness leaves Ness daydreaming about home or his favourite food instead of fighting, until he phones his mom or visits her in person.

Who is credited with saving EarthBound from cancellation after joining its troubled development team?

Satoru Iwata joined as lead programmer when the project was in dire straits; two decades later, as company president, he announced its worldwide rerelease.

Which studio programmed EarthBound together with Ape Inc. for Nintendo?

HAL Laboratory, the studio behind Kirby, wrote the core game code while Ape built the text and maps, and the two teams held regular retreats at HAL's office in view of Mount Fuji.

Mother 3, the sequel to EarthBound, finally came out in Japan in 2006 for which handheld system?

Game Boy Advance owners in Japan made it a bestseller, yet it was never officially released in English, a sore point for the series' fans.

Before its cancellation in 2000, the sequel to EarthBound was being built in 3D for which console?

The N64 version, announced as EarthBound 64, was planned for the 64DD disk add-on, then moved back to cartridge before repeated delays ended the project.

Mother 3, the sequel to EarthBound, was never localised, so how did English speakers get to play it?

A fan translation patch arrived in 2008 after two years of volunteer work led by Clyde Mandelin, a professional game translator.

Which visitor from ten years in the future sends Ness on his quest in EarthBound?

Buzz Buzz barely outlives his warning: Pokey's mother swats him flat, mistaking the visitor from the future for a dung beetle.

What do the Mr. Saturn of EarthBound wear on the single hair that sprouts from their heads?

A red bow tops every Mr. Saturn, along with a huge nose and four whiskers; the game's creator has called the gentle species a symbol of innocence.

Under which name is Mr. Saturn, the big-nosed mascot of EarthBound, known in Japan?

Dosei-san means much the same thing: dosei is the Japanese word for the planet Saturn, and san is a polite title much like Mr.

What does Master Belch force the captured Mr. Saturn to produce in his factory in EarthBound?

Fly Honey is the one thing Belch cannot resist, so the party offers him a jar of it in battle and attacks while he is distracted.

The wobbly script Mr. Saturn speaks in, in Japan's EarthBound, was modelled on whose handwriting?

The creator's young daughter was the model: her childish handwriting inspired the shaky Japanese characters, which the English version imitates with an odd font.

Which kitchen item does Paula, the psychic girl of EarthBound's party, normally swing as her weapon?

Frying pans are her standard weapon, though her real strength lies elsewhere: she is the fastest of the four heroes and a powerful PSI user.

Poo, the martial artist who joins last in EarthBound, holds which rank in his homeland of Dalaam?

Prince of Dalaam, he joins only after completing his Mu Training, and later leaves for a while to learn the mighty PSI Starstorm from the Star Master.

What is the name of Pokey Minch's younger brother, whom Ness helps find at the start of EarthBound?

Picky is the younger but more mature of the Minch brothers, and at the very end of the game he is the one who hands Ness a taunting letter from Pokey.

Which colour does the Happy Happyist cult of EarthBound want to paint everything in the world?

Blue is the cult's obsession: its leader, Mr. Carpainter, believes painting the whole world that colour is the key to happiness, and he starts with his own village.

Which trait keeps EarthBound's Tenda tribe from speaking to Ness until he brings a library book?

Shyness silences the whole village, so Ness has to borrow a self-help book on overcoming it from the library in his home town.

Which EarthBound town is overrun by zombies until Master Belch is beaten in his factory?

Threed stays dark until Belch falls; before that, the party clears its streets with Zombie Paper, an invention that works like flypaper for the undead.

Which writer and director created EarthBound and the Mother series it belongs to?

Shigesato Itoi was a celebrity copywriter in Japan, not a game developer by trade, and he wrote the script in conversational kana with a deliberately quirky and goofy tone.

EarthBound was said to be the first role-playing game ever finished by which Nintendo designer?

Shigeru Miyamoto liked the game, its writer told Weekly Famitsu, making it the first RPG the man behind Mario and Zelda had ever played to the end.

On which console's Virtual Console did EarthBound finally get a worldwide rerelease in 2013?

The Wii U release followed years of fan campaigning, and the company's president credited demand voiced on its Miiverse network with making it happen.

The Player's Guide packed in with every copy of EarthBound also doubled as which standard booklet?

The instruction manual was folded into the guide, and the book's size is one reason EarthBound shipped in an unusually large box.

In EarthBound's American version, references to alcohol were replaced by which drink?

Coffee or cappuccino stood in for every drink, one of several edits ordered to keep alcohol, religion and brand logos out of the American release.

Which California band's albums Smile and Smiley Smile shaped the percussion in EarthBound's music?

The Beach Boys came up again and again between the two composers, and one of them often listened to Brian Wilson's solo album on his way to their sessions.

Which EarthBound composer also wrote the music for Metroid, Kid Icarus and Dr. Mario?

Hirokazu Tanaka shared the EarthBound score with Keiichi Suzuki and two newcomers, and the team wrote enough music to fill about two compact discs.

Which device in EarthBound contains Giygas's power until Pokey switches it off in the last battle?

The Devil's Machine shows Ness's own face as the party approaches, and shutting it down unleashes a foe whose mind has been destroyed by his own power.

In the backstory of EarthBound Beginnings, which abducted woman raised the alien Giygas as a child?

Maria was taken from Earth with her husband George in the early 1900s, and it is her song, the Eight Melodies, that weakens Giygas at the end of that game.

The creator of EarthBound based Giygas's final-battle dialogue on which unsettling childhood memory?

A violent film scene he saw by accident at a cinema as a boy shook him so badly that his parents worried, and years later he put that feeling into the script.

Which aliens are the main foot soldiers of Giygas in both EarthBound and EarthBound Beginnings?

Starmen are the invader's main agents, and the first one Ness meets, a Starman Junior, has travelled through time to hunt down the insect who warned him.

Which key item, a dying gift from Ness's insect guide, stores each Sanctuary's tune in EarthBound?

The Sound Stone plays back the tune so far when Ness holds it to his forehead, and it vanishes after the eighth part is recorded and its purpose is served.

Which neon mirror image of Fourside in EarthBound, where yes means no, is really an illusion?

Moonside is conjured by the Evil Mani Mani statue hidden at the back of a café, and its muddled residents break the fourth wall by talking about hit points.

Which surreal realm, formed from Ness's mind and memories, does he enter alone late in EarthBound?

Magicant can only be left by defeating Ness's Nightmare, the evil within himself, and winning there awakens his full strength for the final fight.

Which gift from Paula bounces lightning attacks back at enemies in EarthBound?

The Franklin Badge, named after Benjamin Franklin and his experiments with electricity, is what lets Ness survive the lightning of the cult leader Mr. Carpainter.

The EarthBound theme fans call Pokey Means Business opens as chiptune, then erupts into which style?

Heavy metal drums and distorted guitars crash in partway through the fight with Pokey; the track has no official title, so the name is the fans' own.

The official EarthBound Player's Guide introduces each town with which tongue-in-cheek feature?

Fake newspaper articles run under mastheads such as the Onett Times and the Twoson Tribune, ahead of the walkthrough for each area.

Pokey Minch, the bully from EarthBound, ends Mother 3 sealed forever inside which device?

The Absolutely Safe Capsule works too well: nothing can ever harm the aged villain inside it, but he can never get out of it again.

Which boss guards Giant Step, the first Sanctuary that Ness reaches in EarthBound?

Titanic Ant waits at the end of a cave that Ness can reach only with a key from the town's mayor, and beating it lets him record his first melody.

What did EarthBound fans send to Nintendo in 2007 to push for an English release of Mother 3?

A fan-made art book of 270 full-colour pages, The EarthBound Anthology, went to the company and to the press as proof that buyers were waiting.