Cleaning up the town of Sharks involves a various step measure. First the streets and then the arcade. Real consequences presented themselves during the fight with Frank. Frank had two knives and then killed Ness! “Ness decided to return after summoning all the courage and energy he had.” I do not know how mustering up courage is enough to return from a knife attack.
After various multiple attempts Ness finally defeated Frank. However, a second battle takes place with Frankystein Mark II. That also took several attempts.
Frankystein Mark II
There were various important things to do that were overlooked over the course of the three gameplays. I had access to an ATM and I was carrying a debit card that my in game dad had loaned me. It contained about $210 but it felt as if though the amount would fluctuate. This was important as I was able to upgrade to stronger weapons with the new found allowance. The town of Onett has so much to offer yet I still felt completely lost.
When attempting to make sense of Ness’ adventure thus far, the comparison I can make is to the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Remove the bloody death scenes, stealing cars, sex and add a meteor and psychic abilities and you get Earthbound. You get the violence early on by “taming” wild animals and eventually the “Sharks.” But as an adult playing through it, I definitely know Ness was not a match for a gang leader with two pocket knifes and the alluded to gun earlier in the arcade.
The game does not take itself too serious which really makes Eagleland worth discovering. Sadly, the Earthbound series was a victim of translation problems, specifically lack of translation and localization of the final game in the series, Mother 3: “Nintendo’s American branch decided that translating the game would be too much work, and too expensive a project, given the limited audience they expected the game to have.” [1] The reason why this is a dilemma is because Earthbound has a great following as well as its potent ability to send the video game community into chaos at moments notice. [2] Maybe if Nintendo has any faith left, they might decide to translate after summoning all the courage and energy they have of attaining success with the localization.
In all its un-localized glory
1. Anna Anthropy, Rise of the Videogame Zinesters (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2012), 80.
2. Jason Schreier, “The Mother 3 Rumors Are Getting Intense,” Kotaku, February 4, 2016, http://kotaku.com/the-mother-3-rumors-are-getting-intense-1757072418.
