/vr/ - Retro Games

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>>4734934
How exactly did it fail?

>>4734934
AVGN fanboy detected.
Stop watching jewtube idiots and form your own opinions.

>>4734943
It had really poor sales (due to fudged marketing and prohibitive pricing) when it first came out and SNES was still the main Nintendo console. Americans only started giving the game a second chance after Ness was in Smash Bros. It's a great game though! And so is Undertale.

I rejected it at the time because the graphics looked like a children's book and I was an edgy 13 year old. Finally played it in my mid 20s and loved it.

>>4734934
>>4734949
i too watched AVGN

>>4734946
Kek, you too and me. We all watched the new episode.

>>4734949
>prohibitive pricing

Do you know how much most RPG games went for at launch during those days?

Did any Snes RPG succeed in the West?
I remember them being quite niche, some of my friends used to laugh at those tiny characters and turn-based battles.

>>4734934
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B0UGq1Cu3g

>>4734949
Disgusting tranny freak. Your opinion is not wanted. Go back to plebbit, faggot.

>>4734934
RPGs had a very small market in the U.S. at the time. It was also poorly advertised.

>>4734960
This. Fucking Phantasy Star IV was $99.99 at launch and Chrono Trigger was $80. Earthbounds price was the least of its problems.

>>4734960
Like $90-ish, usually? Earthbound had a recommended retail of over $100. Which would have been a lot of money to spend on a game that isn't part of an established brand, like Final Fantasy (which had just dropped its latest entry a few months prior to Bargainbinbound).

>>4734934
It doesn't have mainstream appeal.

>>4734960
I remember FF6 running 64.99 at Toys r Us. and I picked that up a year or two after the game came out.

>it's another stealth e-celeb thread
>they out themselves in the thread anyways
Reminder that e-celebs aren't /vr/ and never will be.

>>4734949
>prohibitive pricing

>>4734934
The game STINKS

>>4734971
This. Tired of that faggot shitting up the board.

I'll give my two cents. I was born in 1987 and me and my friends were intrigued by the Nintendo Power ad. None of us were into RPG's or really even knew what they were, excluding Zelda type games. I rented it and it just didn't click with me. I didn't get the point of turn based combat and thought it'd be more fun just using the baseball bat like the sword in Zelda.

Eventually Mario RPG came out and RPGs began to click with people a bit more. I remember a lot of people getting heavily into them when Final Fantasy 7 came out. I actually wanted to give Earthbound another chance after that so I bought a used copy at Babbages for $20. It finally clicked and I was thrilled when Ness appeared in Smash Bros.

So yea, if I had to guess a lot of the initial failure had to do with RPG's not being popular with gamers back when it came out. It's probably why they included a player's guide with it. I may have liked it more if I bought it on a whim and had the guide instead of getting stuck at the arcade without one.

>>4734934
It was intentionally sabotaged by people who didn't appreciate the cultural impact it was designed to have.

>>4734946
Contrarian hipster faggot detected
Why don't you form your own opinion instead of piggybacking off of everything that gets attention
>>4734934
>Why did earthbound fail?
lack of marketing

>>4734980
I remember Phantasy Star IV being insanely expensive everywhere, but Chrono Trigger was the standard $54.99 - $59.99 at places that weren't mall staples like Babbages, Walden Software / Electronics Boutique, KB Toys, etc. In other words, cheap at Wal-Mart / K-Mart / Target, expensive at the mall.

>>4735024
$80 for Tetris and DR.Mario
$60 for Super Mario Kart

Nintendo and its manufactured artificial bullshit.

>>4735026
They dindu nothing

>>4735098
You almost cant have an RPG thread without that autistic faggot showing up.

Earthbound is okay, but not that good. Especially considering DUAL ORB 2 came out prior

>>4735108
best meme.

>>4734946
I'm not an AVGN fanboy! I've never even heard of James Rolfe or Mike Matei.

>>4734934
Because it sucks.

It only ever appealed to hipsters like this literal faggot: >>4734949

>the Nerd triggering contrarian hipster /v/ kids
Based James

>>4734934
>a/v/gn

Wow. I've played through Earthbound twice, and also replayed just the Giygas fight a good ten times just because I liked it so much... yet I never noticed that baby. That's creeping me out.

my circle of friends had no idea who the character in smashbros was, despite the fact that we had all loved the snes
then some kid told me the name of the game, I googled it and I remember saying, "that's gay why did that put that in smash bros"

I tried playing it recently and I just kept getting the feeling like I was forgetting to do something that would cause problems later on, so I quit playing it

Actually the thing about mother series that always surprises me is why Nintendo didnt remove Ness from the smash games. They could have easily replaced it with any other characther in the original or in Brawl in the western releases, because lets face it, nobody gave a shit about him in the west at the time. Yet they kept him. And its actually that faith that now made the mother series popular outside of Japan. Too bad that wasnt enough to release mother 3 too.

>>4734949
Kill yourself, Kike.

>>4734934
e-celebrities are fucking cancer!

Why is suddenly talking about e-celebs on an Earthbound thread? Did I miss something or it's the same old bitterness about the US EB cart being expensive and people blaming e-celebs for it?

>>4736241
No reason in particular.

>>4736072
"nobody gave a shit about earthbound in the west before smash" is extremely revisionist.. it was a known, at least semi-popular game

>>4736116
Best post.

Why does he wear the mask?

>>4734934
Aside from marketing it was a jrpg that didn't appeal to strict jrpg fans. Pokemon worked because cute animal friends that can still kick ass appealed to kids. Also, as far as pokemon goes, earthbound didn't have a massively popular card game and anime associated with it. As far as jrpgs go it didn't have a traditional setting, a franchise or a well known developer. It didn't have dragons, mages or square. It had kids, telekenesis, and exploding trees while being fairly simple. I like the game a lot, but they didn't have a market or the advertising to create one. People still bought it, a lot of people, but not enough for the developer to keep making new games. It's well documented and most people know that there was almost a Mother 64 and the story eventually became Mother 3 years later. It wasn't a pure failure, it just wasn't a success. They failed to develop a big enough dedicated fan base.

If you can connect to the game it's really good even if the gameplay itself isn't demanding, but if you can't you'll probably just see a boring dragon quest knock off and pop in something with more challenge or a setting that interests you.

>>4736298
last post best post, or at least closest to what I was going to say

It wasn't so much that Americans weren't into RPGs at the time. We were, although not as much as other genres maybe (this has not changed, relatively speaking). The real issue was that the U.S. wasn't ready for the Japanese style of anti-game yet. Take a look at Goemon for example, which enjoyed some mild popularity in the U.S. in the N64 era, but was too obscure to maintain the foothold it had in Japan, where it's a big series. Or Seaman after that, which was popular enough to garner a sequel in Japan, but was never remotely close to being brought here.

It wasn't until maybe Viewtiful Joe or Katamari Damacy that Americans started to truly appreciate games that were willing to twist up conventional genres and have awkward humor or styles.

>>4736253
"Nobody gave a shit before Smash" is untrue.
"Nobody gave a shit on release" is probably fairly true for most regions, though.

>>4736284
Hey that's a fun reference to the Chrissy Nolan Batman film

because it's a shitty game

>>4736356
It's a cool movie. My favorite scene is near the beginning on the plane.

>>4736049
>I just kept getting the feeling like I was forgetting to do something that would cause problems later on, so I quit playing it
Really lame.

>>4735024
I live in the Midwest so that might have something to do with it, but I only saw one $70 game for snes in my life. All others were $50.

Review of the time- "It's mediocre-- too smart for kids, too easy for adults"

>>4736563

>>4736563
Some other reviews, basically, "It looks like a childrens game but it's actually good".

It wasn't very good and they made you buy the strategy guide with it. Nobody wanted it at any price. I got my copy brand new for $20 (twenty dollars) and it remained pristine for a decade until I sold it for $500 to buy drugs right after my grandma died.

>>4736578
Nice blog gramps, nobody cares.

>>4736563
>the game is a portover of an 8-bit Japanese Famicon title

>>4736253
"nobody gave a shit before Smash" is extremely true.

>EB released in '95
>SSB released in '99

If anyone gave a shit about it during those 4 years, no one ever saw it. You cant even bring up accurate game sales for it, because that's how much no one cared.

>b-but it was in muh gaming mags

Even less people gave a shit about that pretentious garbage.

>>4736606
You're calling magazines pretentious? What the fuck?
Anyway, I'd say it's more complicated than just "it's because smash". I think it's because of what this anon said: >>4735051
People warmed up to RPGs over the years, and started retroactively playing SNES RPGs on emulators in the 2000s.
I think Smash was a factor, but it's also the fact more people started getting into RPGs more.

>>4736606
If you weren't a complete retard underage you'd know that kids were emulating a fuckton of games on their home PCs and in school computer labs after 1996 and that's how most people played earthbound

if you don't know what happened in 1996 you should be banned right now

>>4734934
Poor marketing
towards the end of the life cycle
several other big releases in the same year
the gimmick of it being quirky and different didn't really resonate with western audiences because most had only only played a handful of jrpgs anyway
Game takes forever to take off, with a really drawn out introduction sequence
dated combat even by jrpg standards and even dated inventory mangement

Earthbound is something only known for its "dark" final chapter and it's quirkiness which may not even appeal to everyone.It's really no shock it failed overseas.

>>4734949
You're an idiot, I swear you just type shit up without thinking.

>>4736608
Mhm, you were in every kids' house and knew what they were doing, like every other diddler.

>>4736640
anon were you molested or are you just being vulgar?

>>4736049
>I tried playing it recently and I just kept getting the feeling like I was forgetting to do something that would cause problems later on

Me too. And in the end it turned out I had skipped a shitload of events. Got the seventh song before the sixth.

>>4734934
It only failed from a business perspective - Shit marketing, their main tagline in magazine ads in the U.S was literally "THIS GAME STINKS!" and people thought the graphics were shit so they avoided it.
>>4734943
It sold like shit.

>>4736418
Midwest here too. I remember every game being $60

Would it be wrong to call Earthbound a sleeper hit? I feel like it's only popular now. Even when I first played it in 2008 it still seemed relatively unknown, and it's fandom contained to starmen.net

>>4734968

Damn, Tom Brier videos make me super depressed

>>4737031
I think cult classic is more appropriate.

Should I play mother 3? I never completed earth bound yet.

>>4737058
Yes you can.

>>4734941
The marketing was a terrible idea

>>4737058
Mother 3 is more fun imo

>>4737076
I prefer Earthbound, but I think I'd like it equally as much if I could pull off the rhythm-based hits. I'm not sure if it was the emulator or me, but I could barely ever get more than a few hits.

>>4734934

Yay, another e-celeb-inspired thread.

>>4736578
maybe she died because yod didnt let her play the game tripfag ...

>>4734956
well good for you, then. but what's your point?

>>4736049
>I tried playing it recently and I just kept getting the feeling like I was forgetting to do something that would cause problems later on
Literally me trying to get into any classic JRPG.

Like, go to some tiny island on the edge of the world map at some very specific plot point, talk to an NPC over there 3 times until a special dialog option appears, at which point you can present a certain item...

Naaaah, I'll just play something else.

>>4736606

It wasn't being sold new during those years. I would have loved a new copy but like I said earlier in the thread I found the last used copy at Babbages around 1998. You don't know what you're talking about.

>>4735024
>people used to pay 65 dollars for an ms paint simulator
>today you can download adobe ps2 for free from adobes website and buy better steam games for 15$

No one knew who ness was until he was unlocked in super smash bros 64.

Not enough Monkee references.

>>4737102
Emulators can mess up the sound syncing, but there are audio settings you can change to fix it. Just Google it and that practice with the battle memory book.

>>4737102
Yes emulators have input lag, but I still could land many 16-hit combos when I played on emulator. You just need to get good.
But anyway, the combos aren't even that important, they are a neat feature but you don't really to make them to win battles. They only add 1 point of damage or so, and you have a limit of 16 hits.
You can perfectly enjoy and beat the game without pulling a single one.

kids, adults, even older sisters

>>4737102
its not even necessary sure it makes it easier but the game is passable without it. Shit i had no idea about the mechanics and I was lucky enough to have a friend lend it to me back when snes was functional.

>>4734965
FFVI sold almost half a million in North America. That's a far cry from 3+ million for FFVII but still respectable as a secondary market. Chrono Trigger did OK as well though not as well as FFVI.

>>4734996
I would say "didn't" at least. In the 90s, the western JRPG audience was young, optimistic, and hadn't played many JRPGs before. Most had played maybe one or two of the short list of games available (Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior for NES, FFIV and Mystic Quest SNES, Phantasy Star IV or Shining Force for Sega). They wanted fantasy or sci-fi settings and straightforward stories of heroism, not quirky parodies of the genre set in the real world.

Today, there are a lot more jaded English-speaking JRPG fans who can appreciate Earthbound's style.

>>4736607
>People warmed up to RPGs over the years, and started retroactively playing SNES RPGs on emulators in the 2000s.

very true all my friends where about fighting games and platformers when this came out. none of my peers looked at that game or played it. It was too foreign for most of us. it wasnt until i saw a buddy play secret of mana that i got into rpgs. and even then turn base took several years for me to actually play it. FF6 broke my ignorance.

>>4736608

in 1996 having a PC with internet, or even with a CD-R unit was very expensive. Not to mention, ZNES worked like fucking shit and it was unknow outside of USA. 80-90% of the people who played Earthbound on a computer was way after the 00's when Internet went worldwide and the price of the Pentium 3 units dropped.

>>4737471
You mean technology has advanced so current computers and software are able to do more for less money? How shocking! I bet you'd laugh at people from 300 years ago because they're still riding on horses instead of driving cars.

>>4736608
>>4737873
In 1996 I downloaded Chrono Trigger to floppy disks (it took 3 of them) in order to get it to my home computer to play on zsnes. It was slow but a hell of a lot faster than snes9x which really was shit back then. Regardless, I didn't actually play it very far. It was more of a novelty to prove I could do it. To actually enjoy playing the game I just played it on the real console.

I don't think I started really playing 16-bit era games on emulators until 1998 or 1999, and even performance wasn't always the best. But it was good enough for jrpgs. I recall playing FF5 (RPGe) to completion sometime during 98 or 99 on zsnes, as well as FF4(J2e).

>>4737570
by god you don't need to be "jaded" to appreciate earthbound

it just is a witty and charming game

EB was "dated" by the time it was released, since it was stuck in development/localization for plenty of time, not to mention the poor marketing.

>>4734949
>And so is Undertale.

>>4738068
I never said you had to be jaded to appreciate it, just to bother to look twice at a JRPG that wasn't hero's tale in a fantasy setting.

>>4738148

I genuinely enjoyed Undertale and it was probably my favorite game of 2015. I don’t understand the incessant hate it gets here, especially when it was ridiculously popular on /v/ during the original demo release and the first few weeks it was out

>>4734965
Well, secret of evermore, terranigma and illusion of time were pretty big inspain due to them being translated. Not rpg at all but mire or less...

earthbound failed?

never appealed to me. the aesthetic is the first thing that didn't gel with me. i get that there's some fucked up stuff in the game, but people who had consoles when this game came out wouldn't appreciate it until you get to the famous last area/last boss.

the japanese are a lot different than westerners when it comes to games.

a lot of japanese tutorials are extremely...autistic/specific/dry. i understand why. it's part of their culture to start from extreme basics and work your way up to violin-tearing professionalism. i respect that, and i hate anime/weebs.

i guess i'm just saying it's not my thing.

>>4734934
Lots of reasons contributed I think, but I'd like to talk about the graphics.
It was of a genre that was pretty niche in the west, but doesn't necessarily doom the game if it had impressive features that the marketing team could use as pulpit to gather support for the game.
However, it was probably one of the most technically unimpressive games for its era, being brushed off due to the crap graphics. I mean, compare EB to something like FF6, which was used the full gamut of the SNES's graphical capabilities, detailed spritework, and competent animations that used more than two frames...
EB has a really juvenile style that's sorta like a kirby game, but without having the chops that make kirby such a joy to look at.
The marketing team couldn't piggy back on the game looking good, which is actually major setback in the 90s arms race for better and more realistic graphics, so whatever they came up with was probably destined to fail. That doesn't excuse how genuinely bad their effort was, but it gets over-weighed I think.
Personally, I'm unapologetically charmed by the poor graphics. I appreciate that Mother 3 sought to beef up the pixel art to an admirable standard, and how it somehow maintains a lot of the quirkiness while being aesthetically pleasing. However, there's something I find amusingly mischievous or even downright devilish about a game that commits to looking so humble, with batshit inconsistent perspective or NPC sprites that border on MS paint garbage. I derive great joy from it.

>>4737047
Why?

>>4738649
I wish you would stop talking about things you do not understand.

>>4738724
Anon, you're being malicious. I can't say I know everything, and I'm open to relearning everything.

>>4734949
I still like Undertale (particularly the music), but after playing through Earthbound myself, I was kind of amazed how many times Toby just copied things over. They weren't just nods, they were directly ripped from Earthbound.

>>4738758
Earthbound ripped a lot of its own music. It was a pretty major thing in the 90s

>>4738730
it's both insulting and frustrating when you act as though a game has poor graphics when the graphics as they are appeal to you personally and were obviously designed as such intentionally, I struggle to comprehend what "good graphics" would even be if apparently visually appealing to a human being is not a valid means of qualifying it

why can't you just say that earthbound has good graphics, but at first you were too dare I say, naive, presumptuous, short-sighted, inattentive or ignorant? Why do you do this entire circular paddle around to avoid acknowledging that you were stupid at a certain point in time and had to be mistaken and learn something after

>>4738827
I think it's fair to say they didn't have mass appeal in the 90s us market.

>>4734956
OBSESSED

>>4734934
Not Mario
Not Final Fantasy
Look at the graphic, literally plebs filter

>>4738875
(((James Rolfe)))

>>4734949
>prohibitive pricing
Helloooooo underage, you know, once upon a time Earthbound was not MUH SUPER RARE GHEIMU

>>4735148
>>4735150
>>4736231
>NO MORE THREAD ABOUT EARTHBOUND ON /vr/ BECAUSE THE VIDEO OF ROLFE
No, /you/ are the cancer

>>4738875
BALDING KEKOLD

>>4738858
not all art is made to appeal to all people, some art is only made to appeal to people who are important.

at some point in your life you were unimportant, but at a different time you became somewhat important, and then later probably forgot what it was that is important

you don't just get a soul, you have to make your soul to have a soul, if you don't make a soul then you die in obscurity and are forgotten by god

>>4734934
too crazy and out-there, initially based in a reality style world rather than fantasy. expensive.

It was a cult game so didn't exactly fail. It just wasn't initially a commercial success.

>>4738715
Because a reckless driver rear-ended him and gave him severe brain damage, so now he effectively can't play the piano anymore.

>>4738649
>one of the most technically unimpressive games for its era
You do realize it was quite amazing how much data it could hold for all the music tracks it has, right? Try cramming in so many songs in a RPG for the SNES on cartridges that had less than 10 megabyte data. You most likely can't.

>>4739027
Sure. I can do what Earthbound did which is create lots of short, sparse, or minimalistic tracks with simple orchestration. They're digital instructions for sound hardware, remember, not prerendered audio. Also when you're not using as much space for graphics that leaves a lot left over for music.

Because it isn´t that good

>>4738896
He has female fans. You don't. End of discussion.

>>4739157
>not using as much space for graphics
Are we sure about this?
What about the battle background? Aren't there like almost a hundred of different ones?

I had just played Paladins Quest when Earthbound was coming out. I was already not too thrilled with Paladins Quest and Earthbound wasn't very aesthetically pleasing based off the ads either.

>AVGN releases a 40 min video about earthbound
>the Gen Z pretend they loved it for many years and make hundreds of threads about the game

>>4739286
>there is always a Mother thread on /vr/
>gen Z notices AVGN releases new video
>pretends that every Mother post on the internet is because of AVGN
Stop being so pending on what AVGN does, anon. He's enjoying his life, and you aren't.

>>4739286
But it has been loved by internet people for quite a while now. Only semi-recently did it come under more scrutiny, but even then it's still generally reviewed as a good game.

Unless you're talking about normies in which case I have no idea what the general consensus for them is.

>>4739292
uh huh, tell me more seething zed

>>4739297
He also has female fans and you don't.

>>4739286
https://desuarchive.org/vr/search/subject/earthbound/

Oh man, look at all these Earthbound threads in the past that James caused with his time-traveling powers.

>>4739286
The fuck are you talking about? There have been Earthbound threads here for quite a while.

>>4739157

>not using as much space for graphics

Oh boy. Have you not played it to the end or something? There is an absolute fuckload of unique graphics in the game, especially in backgrounds and special effects. It's actually massively sophisticated on a technical level, the simple graphics are part of why it can pull off so much of the shit it eventually does. Iwata got involved in the project specifically because they couldn't fit all the shit they wanted in the game and he could pull off miracles when it came to that stuff. They used every byte, rest assured.

>>4738827
I tried to segment the argument so it was clear that this was purely my perspective.
We have no clue what thought went into the graphical design of the game. The devs, as far as I know, never addressed this aspect of the game at all. Which isn't very strange, but yet there's an apparent ubiquity of something about the art being off, perhaps even on a technical level. You can see it in contemporary reviews, post-mortem analyses, and real anecdotes by people who've played the game today and in the past.
What I've been thinking about is what possibly causes this. You've stated that people go overboard with their first impressions instead of looking deeper and recognizing the real talent and sweat that's actually contained in something. This is very true of Earthbound to some extent, the game is known for not impressing well at first glance. People can come with different diagnoses for this when it comes to Earthbound. Don't you think this is something worth talking about?

>>4738827
>>4739542
Actually, I shouldn't have said you stated what I said you stated, it was merely implied.

>>4736563
>"It's mediocre-- too smart for kids, too easy for adults"

And that would still be the general consensus, but because it was unpopular and Ness was added to Smash it suddenly became a "le hidden gem".

>>4737284
Maybe stop looking up guides and walk throughs for every game you play. The only way you would know if you missed something like that is if you read about it online.

>>4739542
Earthbound is designed graphically as it is completely intentionally. Ness has 2 frames for his walk animation, this is intentional. Every enemy monster was created as a real life sculpture before being turned into sprite art. The game literally changes perspective multiple times without changing the graphics, because the silly looking graphics can fit regardless.

It is just simplistic enough to entice the brain to imagine more detail while playing it, and clean and polished enough that it would always be easy to look at.

Cartoons don't look like cartoons because photorealism is too expensive and time consuming, they look like cartoons on purpose. It's an act of expression that utilizes the abstract and gestalt functions of the brain to communicate and entertain.

What people don't like about Earthbound is the fact that it asks them to do any work at all to relate to it. They don't want to imagine anything.

>>4736608
What happened in 1996?

>>4736418
I paid $80 for Super Street Fighter II Turbo, all others were $50-60 upon new release

>>4736298
>Pokemon worked because cute animal friends that can still kick ass appealed to kids.

Wrong. Pokemon succeeded because it appeals to child psychopath's innate desires to watch animals fight and see them suffer. Pokemon was a mistake. Is it no wonder that we have all the school violence and crazy thing going on today? The programming started in 1996 and is just now coming to fruition within the last decade. I deeply fear what will come of all the sequels and even the mobile game. I imagine within a generation we will have to have martial law just to keep the blood from flowing in the streets.

>>4736328
>It wasn't until maybe Viewtiful Joe or Katamari Damacy

I'd say my interest in "weird japanese games" started with the ps1 underground demo of Mr. Mosquito. I was born in 1980 and this was kind of my first exposure to oddball/fun japanese culture.

>>4736578
>until I sold it for $500 to buy drugs right after my grandma died.

Gramps, not even shitting you, you should make some kind of memoir of your degenerate days. I'd read it.

>>4740162
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996
It was basically the breakpoint at which the internet was now able to become something ubiquitous and started to grow exponentially as internet service became a free market for privatization. This was where we transitioned to an online society and by the start of the 00s, emulation of all those SNES games you couldn't afford was easy as pie due to no shortage of incentive and the general ease of doing so.

The vast majority of people who claim to be SNES fans or Genesis fans actually got their first taste of almost all those titles via emulation in the fresh and hot years between 1996 and '99~'01 when the 6th gen dropped.

>>4740473
Oh, I was born in 1991 and the games I mostly remember from the early days of the internet stuff around 1991 was my mom and dad playing Doom and Duke Nukem, my uncle playing day of defeat, and me playing Hercules

>>4734934
The combat is honestly complete ass. It just distracts and gets in the way of the story. Being able to speed through all the combat and grinding on an emulator makes the game much more bearable.

>>4736328
The PC had plenty of adventure games with awkward and oddball humor like Grim Fandango and Day of the Tentacle.

>>4740473
> Telecommunications_Act_of_1996
well that has nothing to do with anything.

> and by the start of the 00s, emulation of all those SNES games you couldn't afford was easy as pie due to no shortage of incentive and the general ease of doing so.
easy as pie.. kek.

>The vast majority of people who claim to be SNES fans or Genesis fans actually got their first taste of almost all those titles via emulation in the fresh and hot years between 1996 and '99~'01 when the 6th gen dropped

fuck off, you wish m8. i've had snes and megadrive since day #1 of release, you'll find others here that also had such machines for so long. people were trading snes/megadrive roms during the bbs days. thank fuck for backup systems otherwise we would not have been able to play some of these brand new releases. your assumption is quite retarded.

>>4735024

Any other cool old ads like that? Any system/games is fine. Genesis, SNES, PS1, Saturn, etc. etc.

>>4734949
>undertale
>>>/lgbt/

wow, people are blaming the graphics? the graphics are great

the reason why nobody wanted to play this crap is because it's turn based.

>>4734941
EW IT SHTINKSH!!!

Americans were still high test and White back then. It took another couple decades of onions and poopyskinned immigration before it could gain popularity.

>>4734941
thread was already over right here but people still felt the need to post their wrong opinions for some reason

>>4740570
>fuck off, you wish m8. i've had snes and megadrive since day #1 of release, you'll find others here that also had such machines for so long. people were trading snes/megadrive roms during the bbs days. thank fuck for backup systems otherwise we would not have been able to play some of these brand new releases. your assumption is quite retarded.
I mentioned you indirectly when I said "majority", as in, you are a minority and that's why people are never talking about you or caring about your interests and beliefs.

Bad marketing because the US marketing team didn't know what to make of the game.

But bad sales in the USA is pretty much the only place where it really "failed"

Is there a good, uncensored translation of the Famicom/Nes version of Mother 1 yet? GBA version looks so garish and the music is terrible.

>>4741406
The prototype is flawless as is, but yes, the 'EarthBound Beginnings Uncut' ROM hack is what you're looking for.

>>4741424
Already played it as my first time, and I really enjoyed it, just thought i'd try for a more accurate version for a replay. Thanks!

>>4741430
You got it my friend, sorry for being standoffish. I love the prototype very much, but that hack is quite good. I like the smoking crows.

>>4740235
Mr. Mosquito, the PS2 game? Unless you were thinking of one of the other bug-related games like Bad Mojo,

>>4740540
Well, first of all, Grim Fandango wasn't awkward/oddball. It was actually very elegantly written, and rooted in real culture. Unusual sure, but not terribly abstract.

But as far as weird American games go, they stick because they're "our" wacky humor. You understand your own friends' inside jokes, but not those in other circles. It's the same principle. And games like Day of the Tentacle don't really support that point anyway, because those weren't blockbusters in their own time, either.

>>4738917
Who fucking cares? Certanly not target demographic.

>>4740226
For your own good i hope this is pasta.

Earthbound didn't click with people because is boring, even vanilla jrpgs like DQ where doing cool shit back in the day like monster taming, also the fact that jrpgs where lame to the average Joe back in the day didn't help either.

>play Earthbound Zero with the intent of going through the trilogy
>game blows my balls off with the difficulty
>struggle through it with no guide and eventually beat it
>goes down as one of my favorite gaming experiences ever
>start Earthbound
>game is so easy it basically plays itself
>get bored and stop playing

This happen to anyone else?

>>4741515
anon why do you feel so angry and inferior

>>4741628
no, simply because I played earthbound first. I didn't find mother 1 'difficult', but it is grindier at the beginning. At least for me, the first part of the game in the graveyard was literlaly impossible until i just grinded outside of the ninten's house until I learned heal, i think level 3 or 4, then I was able to progress mostly smoothly. I found myself forced to use the gadget kid's items much more than Jeff in Earthbound where i basically ignored that because it was too easy to be necessary. Overall I think Earthbound's combat was more enjoyable though.

>>4735091
>manufactured artificial bullshit
Yeah, fuck them. I only play organically grown games harvested directly from the Earth.

You fucking idiot.

>>4740532

This

>>4741507
>Mr. Mosquito, the PS2 game?

Yeah, I was a bit off on the details. It was actually a demo disc included with the playstation magazine. It was apparently ps2. This game did make me search out other "odd" japanese retro games.

>>4738881
He's not a jew you faggot. Rolfe is a basic German name, he comes from a US state where millions of Germans emigrated in the 1700's-1900's. Probably descendant of some Quaker or Amish family.

>>4734934
>Why did earthbound fail?
The video game crash of 1983.

>>4741628
I first gave Earthbound a serious try when I was like, maybe 14.
I was really bad at videogames as a kid, like, really AWFUL, and I was such a horribly sore loser, I'd always cheat in games if possible, but by my teens, I actually began to not suck so much in videogames.

So I gave Earthbound a try, and this time, I actually made progress, I understood what I was supposed to do, I figured out the fights and item management, but only to a short point.
That Iron Pencil got in my way and I didn't know what to do next, so I stopped.

Again I tried years later, inspired by actually getting somewhere that previous time, and this time around I had the presence of mind to actually look up online what the fuck to do with the Iron Pencil, and after that, it was like something came loose in my brain, some blockage broke free, I pretty much just made my way through the game on my own after that, and I loved it.

>>4740532
Arguably true.

>>4735024
That's Canada dollars. $80 Canada was like $50 US in the 90s.

>>4734934
The commercials in the US were absolute garbage. Nintendo did not know how to market the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60_WWLq3srE

Now compare it to the Japanese commercial for the original Mother. Actual effort!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQUN7QAnMp0

Even the US box art was kind of lame and didn't say anything about what Earthbound was, on top of the fact that the limited edition sold so poorly that they never released a standard small-box version without a strategy guide. Nintendo apparently expected the game to sell itself.

Not gonna lie I started playing it for the first time the other day because the nerd's review made it sound so cool. I just got to Twoson and so far I like the art style and overall flavor of the world but the combat, as someone else stated, really wears thin quick.

My impression so far is that it's not a difficult game but a "piss away time to win" kind of game. For example, to beat the giant step boss I needed a few more levels to not get 2-shotted by him. Only thing is, I was already 1-shotting all the vermin enemies in the tunnel. So I'm literally just running around stomping on bugs for an hour to get strong enough to take down this giant ant. Reallllllllllyyyyyy fucking lame, tbph senpai. "Collide with mouse sprite 20 times 2win" is not my idea of an hour well spent.

Still, the game world IS really cool and the dialouge has actually made me laugh out loud a few times. Should I keep going VRbros?

>>4743543
>NessA is his name in the US commerical

>>4743543
>Nintendo did not know how to market the game.
They literally did a bad job on purpose for petty reasons.

>>4744023

keep going brah. i don't remember grinding too much except in the fucking desert tunnel. fuck that fucking shit, although the mini-bosses were hilarious.

>>4744058

What were these reasons? What reason did they have to just flush money down the toilet the way they did?

...I believe you, honestly, I just want an explanation.

>>4744023
>My impression so far is that it's not a difficult game but a "piss away time to win" kind of game.
It's certainly a timesink of a game if you don't cheat, yeah.
Also, grinding usually solves a lot of problems in Earthbound.

>stomping bugs
Hah, that gave me a fun mental image.
What you should have been doing is to beat up gangmembers downtown for a while. I think they stop being hostile after you kick Frank's ass though, so there's that

The fight system is no prizewinner, but I'll be honest and say that juggling items and healing/buffing moves, while hurrying to outrun the ticking HP counter, actually engaged me later in the game.
Like I really had to think on the fly, and it usually worked, so that felt rewarding.

This was one of the better episodes in a while, by the way, he's kind of gotten back to form after the movie. I think I mostly enjoy the episodes where the subject is games he actually likes
It's interesting to hear someone explain how and why they like something, and also giving it criticism, explaining what parts could be better.
The episodes where he just plays something irredeemably awful aren't always as good, you can find good things in an LJN game or cheap cash in game, but something like Action 52 is really just one tone; all the games are really bad and not at all fun, and all of them carry the same low rent air. Action 52 is something that's really hard to get nuance or reflection out of, it's even hard to make fun of. A bit like the Garbage Pail Kids movie.

>>4744058
That sounds made up, Iwata was personally involved in the game, and he clearly was very fond of it (it was probably his idea to put Ness in Smash).

>>4743276
The point is that it didn't cost more than any other title at the time.

>>4744081
NO. 3

>>4744513
Nintendo of America is a different company with it's own debtors

>>4734934
it came out almost at the same time as Crono Trigger which is a better JRPG. Anyone that was into JRPGs bought that game instead.

>>4746065
stop making stories up, kid

>>4741363
>incorrectly using majority & minority when it's actually the reverse
>actually thinks e-pirates are a majority
Nice meme, senpai.

>>4737076
i preferred 2. i didnt like the story or characters as much as 2, and it kind of killed the atmosphere. as for gameplay, i never saw a problem with 2, but i guess 3 is an improvement in that regard.

>>4746128

I sold my copy of Earthbound to a pawn shop for $5 like 20 years ago.
Feels bad man.

>>4747024
I bought my copy of Earthbound for $15 at a pawn shop, 20 years ago. Coincidence?

>>4737076
I never finished 3, I should go back and play it.

>>4735051

i like you

anyways i found the treehouse in onett through my last playthrough

mind fucking blown

>>4735024
It's like no one had an Electronics Boutique at their mall. Either that or mine was cheap as fuck. Basically had a rule of thumb that new games were $50. Once in a while games hit $60.

The game had an ugly style, the gameplay was boring, and it wasnt Mario. I passed on it and don't regret it. Watching the AVGN review of it, I'm more convinced I wouldnt like it. Too many mechanics I would have quickly gave up on.

>>4747045
You should

>>4747630
It's not a flawless game by any means, mechanics are clunky, and unless you cheat, the game will demand quite a lot of your time.

It has some genuine strengths and charms, but it's not a game for everyone, simply by the virtue of how it plays.
A lot of people will hate me for saying this, but for some, the game would almost be better enjoyed as a Let's Play, as its strongest sides are in its setting, visual style, music, characters, and storytelling. It has some exploration to it, but consider that you'd spend a lot of your time grinding, fighting and managing inventory, too, occasionally wrapping your head around a puzzle.

I'm sad I never got to try it out.

>>4734934
>market your game by saying it's shit
L M A O

What a colossal and absolute failure. It gets me everytime. What the FUCK were they smoking?

>>4737478
have we reached a point where people don't even know of the beatles?

>>4747559
>It's like no one had an Electronics Boutique at their mall.
The majority of the population didn't.

>>4734980

>tfw in grade school and successfully saved up enough money to buy Chrono Trigger when it first launched

Feels amazing man.

>>4750023
I mean they haven't been exactly relevant in several years and their music doesn't really resonate with people under 30.

>>4750484
>triggerniggers
Fuck rpgs seriously
They arent even real games

>>4750502
>>>/v/