Welcome to a new edition of Horror Gaming and let’s check out an Earthbound CP. Nintendo finally added the series to the Switch Online service after many kept asking for nearly two years. We are taking a break from Nintendo’s well known IPs to focus on another horror theme from a lesser popular game. It’s not often to find Earthbound CPs since there are so few of them. In gaming CPs most writers focus on the big names such as Mario or Pokémon. It’s either those that get written or an original story about a made-up game like the Theater is published. In actuality, EB is quite morbid if you pay attention to the tiny details in the background. The heroes are dealing with an alien invasion that has already begun where an overlord named Giygas wants to send humanity into darkness. Of course, we can’t forget the controversial theme surrounding Giygas stands for despite what many claim isn’t there. The story focuses on a man named Nick who looks back at the time he borrowed a copy of Earthbound. One of the things that sticks out regarding the CP is the theme centers around a dark ancient place called the Crypt of the Ancients. Will this be about a man catching up with his missing childhood or will something eerie occur? The story is about a person who starts out claiming he was never into video games because the guy thought they played the same. Nick does realize the same comment could be applied to movies and TV shows too? That was until his friends showed Nick EarthBound for the Super NES it immediately hooks him. One day the character's friend lets him borrow his copy of EarthBound as he was going away for vacation. The guy immediately heads home to play the game for hours without stopping. The story receives the first strike from the way the writer explains how the game gets destroyed. It happens one day when he wasn't home as the guy randomly leaves the cartridge on the floor. As his Dad was gathering the boy's dirty clothes from the room, the father would accidentally step on it. According to the guy, his father alone shattered the cartridge into pieces by the weight of a shoe. It’s bad enough in the Super Metroid CP that a “heavy” metal chair split the cartridge in half while in the system. However, I can tell the author had little experience in owning an old system’s carts. I say that because this form of media was durable to withstand such damages and it's widely known too. Was the father wearing sledgehammer heads for shoes? I’m guessing he couldn’t “step over top of it” enough? Who also leaves expensive games lying on the floor, especially ones that are borrowed? Before anyone brings up, he was a kid, when I was young not one time were games ever on the floor. Unfortunately, the first one leads into a second strike and it’s the way the plot sets up the whole thing. After Nick finds out what happened and learns of a local game store that repairs cartridges, he immediately rushes over to the place. He hands the game over to a man named Bill at the counter assuming it’s one of the workers. Nick thanks Bill pays for the fee and leaves hoping the man will fix it. A week goes by and the store calls the guy to let him know the cartridge was ready to pick up. When he arrives, Bill is nowhere around and the guy then asks about him, but the store clerk states no such man’s works there. Either you are a lousy business owner or really that incompetent of a person to allow unauthorized workers to freely roam around restricted areas. So, the author is telling me a store like this that usually has three people working wouldn't know a strange guy entered? You could argue all the workers were on lunch break or were in the back, so they didn't know. However, the workers wouldn’t stay missing from their position for long to realize someone who isn’t authorized to work there was handling the transaction of money. Sometimes it's these illogical gaps that can hurt the CPs more than one thinks. They can claim all they want that people just want to listen to no sleep stories, despite the logic gaps. That doesn’t change the fact it is terrible writing and these authors need to stop justifying this with excuses. Fortunately, the author makes up for those strikes by explaining in detail how this version was. The strangeness doesn’t begin until Nick enters Threed and gets captured at the Hotel. It’s here we get the slow build to the Crypt of the Ancients starting with Jeff. Everything in Winters plays as it is supposed to until Jeff reaches the dungeon, and this is where things start. Now, each time Jeff interacts with an enemy and tries to kill them, the Monkey that accompanies the kid tells him to stop. That is when two choices were given to kill or spare something the game isn’t known to do. After getting annoyed by this option, Nick chooses to destroy one of the enemies but only for the Monkey to jump in front of Jeff’s attack eliminating him. I always point out how much I enjoy the slow build to these stories considering the dialogue and the music changing to Threed’s first song. Once Jeff arrives in the cavern where Ness and Paula were held, a crawl-like hand grabs the main protagonist into the darkness. Despite a good build to the creepiness, the author does drop the ball here as Ness and later on Poo getting dragged by the claws was rushed. Poo doesn’t even join the party before being taken away because his fear was the reason. The author explains that the game plays normal afterwards with a higher difficulty because Ness wasn’t there. Normally, this writing would annoy me but for once something like his situation is possible. I base this off playing the EarthBound: Halloween Edition rom hack where you start off against powerful enemies with just one character. It is no doubt Nick had to grind a lot to even reach the later areas of the game. The problem with the rest of the buildup comes from nothing happening until the climax in the area of the final battle against Giygas. The writer should have let Ness and Poo each get dragged by those claws until reaching the climax. Once he manages to get to the Cave of the Past, those same dark claws begin dragging the rest of his party into darkness from the chasm. Nick finds Paula the only party member left in a dungeon colored in an odd green color. That is when he sees cage-like prisons in a hallway and the game tells him it is the infamous Crypt of the Ancients. It turns out the three male characters are locked in these prisons dead while being tormented for eternity. I find this a shame that Humbold didn’t build the place up through the plot enough. The pyramid in Scaraba Desert making a reference and explaining those who weren’t pure would suffer could’ve, went a long way. The best thing about this scene is playing up to the main cast’s personality weaknesses as seen by Ness and Poo. However, Jeff’s was forced a little based on his action when accidentally killing the Monkey in Winters. We have come to the third strike, and the climax was for nothing just like in the Super Metroid CP. The author gave a hint at the beginning with a hacker named Bill possibly changing the program entirely. However, there is no end game at all for Bill and everything leading to the Crypt of the Ancients meant nothing. The hacker simply posed as a store clerk and changed the game up for literally no reason. It also wasn’t to show his strange work in a creepy way as seen from Pale Luna. I mean, the game deletes the file after Nick gets past the Crypt for no reason just because it could. That is simply a cop out for Nick to not prove his experience didn't happen—The scene is no different than a cartridge getting destroyed in a ridiculous manner. The next thing to bring up is the game shutting off after that event. I’m pretty sure that isn’t how rom hacks on cartridges work. The Super NES and its format weren’t capable of such a feature for either the console or the game’s circuit board. What the writer should have done was take the guy back to the main menu so then it would come off plausible. The story ends with the guy finding nothing as the main protagonist wonders why the game was changed for that play through. Unlike the last CPs we went over this was pretty decent as for once a writer didn’t use half of the cliché tropes. It actually started not with a gamer wanting to relive their childhood but would end up in a terrible situation. Instead, it’s about a guy recalling a time he had a weird experience with Earthbound during his youth. I found this a breath of fresh air to read a story that does not play out in the same manner. Yes, it is true he makes a rather disingenuous comment about gaming considering the same could apply to any media. However, the plot didn't revolve around wanting to experience their childhood with a torn label trope. The buildup was following the usual blueprint whereas the story progresses the stranger this hacked copy would become. Using Bill to pose as a store clerk was a perfect hint as to why the game started acting up. I also loved the way the author explained how different this hack was with the narrative changing. Using the idea of talking about this Crypt kept me hooked through the plot and was a nice build up to the climax. However, the story had quite a few problems as Bill had no reason to make his version of Earthbound. Never mind the fact the guy was able to get behind the counter of a private business without the employees knowing. However, the supposed antagonist made this hack because he could and that’s the only possible hint found here. Even then stupid things like Nick’s father destroying the cartridge on his own weight and the game shutting off passed the Crypt was unbelievable. If it was a game from the modern era like Eternal Darkness that can do such features, then I wouldn’t question this. Rating: 7.2/10 Solid Sources Someordinarygamers.fandom.com. EarthBound: Crypt of the Ancients. Humboldtgaming https://someordinarygamers.fandom.com/wiki/Earthbound:_Crypt_of_the_Ancients
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Retro Gamer has over 25 years of gaming experience and played many classics since the Golden Age. She has been an avid fan since the day the NES graced her life and changed it forever.
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