Tribute to the EarthBound Player's Guide (Part 1)

man i could talk about earthbound and why it's such an amazing piece of art all day and i will even in this video in fact however today we're actually not going to be focusing on the game itself but something that came with the game today we're going to take a look at the strategy guide for earthbound yes the strategy guide which was actually bundled with every copy when it was sold for the snes in the 90s and actually inflated the price which is honestly the more likely reason the game didn't sell so well in the west however what i want to talk about today is the incredible intricacies and artistry of this book and to take a deep dive into it because i've never really read it super closely before other than when i needed help at the game at certain points so without further ado let's take a deep dive into the earthbound strategy guide the first thing i want to mention is even before you open the book this front cover man is kind of hilarious to me because it has all these pictures in the background and you can just see the same pictures of the clay models constantly plastered over them and even kind of weirdly distorted in some of them and i just find it funny there's also some kind of weird slime covering the whole thing like it's some sort of nickelodeon product or something and in the center of it all is a starman deluxe i've never been quite clear on why these star men have become such universal symbols for this series it's even the box art for the game and i'm just not quite sure why that is i guess it is your earliest exposure to aliens in the games in the form of starman jr and you don't see a whole ton of aliens for the next hour or so of the game so maybe that's it something else i just find really funny is i never noticed that they have these little elf shoes my brain just always kind of auto corrected it to just being kind of smooth and while the title of the book is in all capital letters we can actually get an official clarification at the bottom of the manual that the title is in fact spelled with a capital b straight from the source already now that i'm done judging this book by the cover let's get into it the first interesting thing i want to note is actually on the very first page if you look at the screenshots in the one of the runaway 5 you can actually see it's using a japanese screenshot because they're all in black unlike in the official game where the localization changed them to be red and green to avoid conflicts with the blues brothers alrighty on to the next page welcome to earthbound the first thing that sticks out to me is the clay models when you know ness and paula were redesigned for the american audience it just becomes so ridiculously clear that they're in such a different art style and are even lit completely differently i don't have a problem with this and in fact i think it's pretty funny and enjoyable i like it a lot actually something i want to mention though about this is that it does kind of mess with the continuity of the game a little bit because ness is portrayed here as being a bit thinner than he is in his other model a running thing throughout the game is that people call ness a bit chubby and call him thinner towards the end so technically this is ness from the end of the game jury's out on paula though the four spunky kids have the fate of mankind in their hands and the weight of the world on their shoulders so it's a good thing that they have psychic powers and you on their side i want to draw special attention to this line in particular because it's actually something i think is kind of cute this isn't a simple break the fourth wall cute and you here it actually is part of the game you the player are just as much of part of the actual game and its story as their psychic powers are as portrayed in the gigas fight not sure if this is intentional at all but i want to draw attention to it because it is something i appreciate also wait earthbound is spelled here with a lowercase b oh damn it alright i guess that just means it could be spelled anyway according to the game alright compromise all you want manual you already know this manual is awesome because you don't even get two pages in before there's a picture of a monkey as well as some pretty hilarious photoshopped snow on the snow henge this clay model of paula is also always hilarious to me because the way she's holding her hand looks like she's about to pull a gun on you page three actually has some really cool custom postage stamps for each area of the game which is really cool this page also features this picture which some 13 year old boys who own this game probably very much enjoyed when they were younger page 4 has the controls and shows you that you can use l to actually just talk and skip the menus in our to bell this is actually because according to the manual right below the r button only has one function in the game when riding a bicycle pressing the r button will ring the bell give it a try you'll almost feel the breeze blowing through your hair i love this detail and think it very much captures the energy spirit and humor of the game i also just find it really funny that they found it important enough to put in the instruction manual when realistically you're only going to be riding the bike maybe in tucson for a little bit before paula joins the party and maybe if you even think about it at the very end of the game when you're all alone something else i like is that the bottom corner of this page describing the l button actually does mention that you can play the game with one hand because you can use the l button to check and talk to people it is lacking any sort of mention of playing while eating pizza though at the top of page 5 you can see yet another inconsistency in the spelling of the game's title again not sure if this is intentional or not but i like the screenshot they chose for the opening screen is one of shigesato at toy's credits in the game file selection they spell pack and game pack pak which is actually interesting to me because it starts to make me reconsider whether the bubble gum pack in winters is actually some sort of reference to this rather than just a lack of typing space pages six and seven detail the four main characters which is pretty neat starting on page six it actually gives you some information about nest which is interesting which is the detail that he likes to wear baseball caps with his favorite team's logo on the front now while the backwards cap was clearly a design choice to make him look cooler this piece of information actually ends up making this design make more sense because now they don't have to worry about actually putting a baseball team logo on his cap and the official artwork very little detail but something i just find interesting i also liken these screenshots that they put power as their favorite thing so it's psi power in all caps and for also some reason the space between the favorite thing and the greek symbol is missing page seven features this weirdly out of place sentence in the middle of jeff's bio which is between winter's is the home of the son of a famous scientist is he is the same age as ness so they naturally have a lot to talk about followed by jeff's own scientific knowledge is tremendous it just is reads weird to me because it feels very out of place like they don't want you to think he's a nerd even though he's a scientist this page also makes the ingenious artistic decision to have pooh's name in brown font an interesting piece of laura in this version that i never knew is that apparently pooh is a little bit older than this and since ness was even aged up for the american release to be 13 this probably means poo's 14 or something i also like that the end of his bio actually hints at that regular foods aren't going to heal him as much i don't know whose idea was to put this cave of the past screenshot in the end because it feels very spoilery like yeah a lot of these are late game enemies in these screenshots but it feels like this one is a bit more this one has a bit more information that's a little bit more problematic to be revealing this early on page you know seven at the top of page eight this text suggests that you name the characters after your real-life friends which i think is just kind of cute even emphasizing that this makes the game more realistic this page also shows that they named king baby which i think is also really cute and even made muffins their favorite food i just still find it funny that they made power in all caps for some reason none of the others are like that and that's because probably most of these things are actually defaults except for muffin which is a custom thing they put in because that's not part of the don't care entries so they did that right but then put power in all caps for some reason it was a conscious decision either that or it suggests muffin was an option in earlier translation page 9 has a pretty cool breakdown of the entire status screen and actually even reveals what some of these things do that i think a lot of people probably don't know like luck affecting your miss rate skipping to page 11 it breaks down the battle system and menus and on a very surface level explains to you how to specialize each character in battle i find it interesting though that the section where it describes jeff's spy ability does not note that it can find potential item drops in the bottom corner of the page it actually describes the rolling hit meter which is pretty cool i just find it really interesting to see how this was explained back then and the manual does it pretty well all things considered though it doesn't tell you you can just heal as opposed to having to defeat all the enemies before you die a welcome detail on the top of page 12 is that it actually gives you a very easy to understand explanation of phones that are free and phones they had to pay for by simply telling you if a phone's black it's free and all other ones cost a dollar though its explanation of the doctor nurse and healer is pretty unhelpful because it just says that they can help you but doesn't really detail what they can do for you and i just find this funny because i'm going to be honest i can't think of anyone who's ever had to go to the doctor in this game i feel like you're always going to the nurse or the healer also what the hell is this clay model of tracy this thing is absolutely hilarious she looks like she's just about to dash at the screen super fast i'm just saying appeal probably knows but this is my first time ever seeing this clay model for tracy and i just think this is absolutely hilarious and with that on page 14 we finally get into the strategy guide for the actual game the first thing i noticed is that it specifies that before waking up ness is dreaming about cookies and birthday presents which ends up giving it kind of a weird connotation to what it means that the crows drop cookies and every item you find on the overworld isn't a present like is this supposed to be doing some sort of implication that ness is hallucinating part of this page 15 has a couple of interesting things i want to note which is that the text itself actually writes starman jr's name wrong as two words instead of one and this bizarre screenshot where the the is in parentheses for some reason something else that's weird is that at the bottom of these last few pages have been this weird you're very european looking town and the bottom of page 15 has this pretty hilarious rendering of the meteor a weird phrasing thing at the end of page 15 is it's your complete guide to nessa's world when you're earthbound you won't want to be without it that's right when you are earthbound see this is actually a moment where i think it's actually meaning to use the other form of the word earthbound but it uses the title so i don't understand what this sentence means i think it's meaning to use the actual word earthbound but even then what would that sentence mean and then we get to the amazing page 16 the one at times the first of several newspapers throughout the book it's just a really fun way to kind of have a lore dump and i think it's really fun and stylized and there's a lot of funny lines on here particularly the section about the sharks long time bad boy frank leader of the notorious sharks gang claimed today that he and his gang have reformed long known for terrorizing women and children the sharks claim they will be organizing a food drive next month it even mentions ness having to fight five police officers and the chief though i must say this journalist is taking this a lot better than most people would my favorite part however is this advertisement for the one at house that has this real picture of a rundown house the next page begins the winnette travel brochure which is also pretty great and even goes out of its way to mention that the wanette arcade has killer instinct one that's also home to a criminally low amount of dogs though the next page has a map of one now which actually still features the red cross symbol on the hospital this whole section of the book actually features some pretty weird stock images to use for onenet a lot of them don't look anything like it like this one that looks like it's more akin to summers a weird error in the giant step section it says that magic butterflies refill your psi completely when even earlier just in this book it says it only refills them for 20 pp these pages also include some pretty awesome bios of a bunch of the enemies and give you really cool closer looks at their clay models including these ones of the shining spots which i think look pretty cool something really weird in this section is that it calls psi rock in drill psi when you're fighting the titanic ant and i have no idea where this comes from but yeah i really no explanation for this maybe that's what they called it and they just thought that that didn't matter i don't know this section about frank reforming and now healing you is funny though that's fabulous frankie also there's something really weird about all the photos of the policemen so far i don't know why but they don't look like american policemen i feel like these are not from an american source and i i'm just very i'm very intrigued by where these might be from because they don't really fit in with the aesthetic of onenet at all page 25 has a pretty awesome clay model for the attack slugs i love this thing the tucson tribune page has a pretty great section about the innkeeper in happy happy village tucson's travel brochure reveals that it has somehow an even more criminally low population of dogs this burglar park section has a pretty unfortunate typo for cookie that i'm surprised nobody picked up on page 30 has a pretty hilarious poster for the runaway 5 concert something i love about this manual is how much character it gives to ness when ness bunks at hotel tucson he has a strange dream that will haunt him every time he stays in this dream he hears a girl calling out to him for help the weird thing is that he doesn't even know this girl he can tell that she's in trouble though and it puzzles him the longer he stays in town after first hearing the message the more frantic he becomes to find out about the mystery girl something i find funny but also kind of disappointing is that one of the pages about happy happy village doesn't even attempt to pick a picture of a blue house a pretty cool thing though is that the manual does actually encourage you to use the chicken trick something i actually didn't know is that in the insane cultist temple the ones you're supposed to talk to actually move a little bit quicker than the others it's pretty subtle but it is actually there something surprising to me that the manual actually does mention is that paula is intended to be a sacrifice to the happy happiest which is something that is actually in the game but is kind of glossed over the manual incorrectly calls the key to the cabin the jail key an interesting tidbit is that the bios for the happy happiest actually is the japanese designs instead of the american redesigns the section about the wada bills and the runaway 5 is still using their japanese sprites in the screenshots and after that you're in the three section and i think that's about all i'll do for now i just wanted to pay tribute to all the hard work that clearly went into this manual even if it's not perfect if you guys would be interested in a part 2 to this video i'd be happy to go over more of it so let me know okay i won't waste time with outros see you guys next time [Music] you

Channel: MonkeyNess

Views: 16,556

Keywords: earthbound, analysis, book, novel, strategy guide, walkthrough, playthrough, lets play, cybershell, mother 2, nintendo, shigesato itoi

Id: GBDpzF9dOhc

Length: 15min 23sec (923 seconds)

Published: Mon May 09 2022