10 Reasons To Drop Everything And Play Earthbound

We're only twenty years late. That's fashionable.

It€™s been slightly over a year now since Earthbound finally found its way to European shores, albeit as a download for the Wii U€™s Virtual Console, and that€™s enough time for the novelty to have worn away. The novelty, that is, of being able to legitimately sample a title that Americans were able to physically unwrap way back in 1995 €“ that€™s a localisation delay of eighteen years, which is a leisurely amble even by Nintendo€™s standards. In retrospect, though, it€™s hard to blame Nintendo for its wariness €“ someone had made the questionable decision to over-exaggerate the cruder aspects of the game€™s humour as part of Earthbound€™s marketing campaign, leaving reviewers and gamers alone baffled by NES-quality visuals and vomit gags in an RPG landscape that had just seen the release of beautiful, sophisticated Chrono Trigger. Earthbound stood out a mile from its contemporaries, but for all of the wrong reasons, and sold poorly. Being stashed away in the download store of the Wii U €“ a console that€™s reached barely a fraction of its predecessor€™s audience €“ isn€™t exactly a second lease of life for Earthbound, but with sales figures slowly on the uptake thanks to Mario Kart, it€™s finally possible for Europeans to see what all of the fuss is about. Why has the game amassed a fanbase so dedicate and so vocal that Nintendo themselves called it out at E3? Is it actually funny? Is that character really called Poo? With the game currently on sale, there are lots of reasons to take the plunge:
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Chris has over a decade's experience as a game designer and writer in the video game industry. He's currently battling Unity in a fight to the death.