Unless youre particularly into fart jokes, Earthbound is rarely laugh-out-loud funny. It does manage to be consistently amusing, though Itoi was one of Japans most famous and prolific copywriters prior to his work in game design, and the translators worked long hours to try and capture the spirit of his dialogue and kinks of the characters. I threw my slippers at the beast, one sailor confessed after a nautical battle against a kraken, admitting Maybe you didnt notice. Unfortunately, much like South Parks early seasons, its the poo and puke gags that people tend to focus on, missing the games cultural satire and love of the surreal ironically, Trey Parker cites Earthbound as being one of the inspirations behind modern-day RPG South Park: The Stick of Truth. The censors went to work, too, cutting out corporate logos that hit to close to home and tweaking sprites to remove a few of the raunchier references. Even so, theres a decent amount of cheekiness to be had in an adventure described by the localisation team as glass half full in tone; Nintendos patrician approach had only just started to shift under increased pressure from Sega, so while hostile drunks become Annoying Party Guys and pharmacies dont say DRUG above the door, theres enough hidden away thats quirky and subversive to keep even modern players entertained.
