So when/why/how did Earthbound boom in popularity?

[Anonymous No.7324967]

I don't even remember ever hearing about it once until SSB Melee and even then I originally thought Ness was the kid from Paperboy.
No one I knew ever had it or talked about it, I don't remember seeing it in stores or in any magazines, but now it's hailed as not only one of the best games on the Super Nintendo, but one of the greatest rpgs of all time?

[Anonymous No.7324984]

"early" internet, starman.net, the rise of game youtubers talking about it etc. Just sort of took off, in the west at least. There wasn't much coverage of the game before then

[Anonymous No.7325035]

I think Smash Bros. had something to do with it. The majority of people who didn't know who Ness was would search for him online, and find all of what >>7324984 was describing. I believe the same thing happened with Fire Emblem when people started asking "who tf is Marth?"

[Anonymous No.7325141]

>>7324967
Unironically Super Smash Bros. 64

No one knew who Ness was unless you had the SNES Game, which costed more than normal games did. And back then I knew Moms that legit wouldnt buy games for their kids unless it had that Nintendo Quality Seal on the box after the DOOM and Mortal Kombat fiasco on the News about violence in Video Games. So even that dampened the audience.

[Anonymous No.7325190]

>>7325141
Today I learned/noticed Earthbound doesn't have a Nintendo seal.
That's interesting, any anons know why that is? Google doesn't know shit

[Anonymous No.7325210]

>>7324967
YouTubers around year 2009

[Anonymous No.7325224]

>>7325141
>>7325190
It's on the side, not the front.

[Anonymous No.7325267]

>>7324967
It was actually an overhyped and advertised game that bombed. From the outside it visually looked like garbage - the battle screens were considered *extremely* primitive for SNES, and this was a game that came out near the end of the console's lifecycle.

Games that get slammed for looking horrible for their time can acquire a kind of hindsight-popularity because people going back to play older games are much more forgiving about graphics than people were at launch. If there are other things about the game that are redeeming, like Earthbound did have, then they can become "cult classics" on this type of second-look based audience.

[Anonymous No.7325440]

>>7325141
Truth, it was 1999 when I first unlocked Ness in Smash, intrigued, I remembered my local video store was still renting out SNES games and it dawned on me , “oh that’s that game with the big box” I always thought it was a 4 player multiplayer game like Bomberman .

[Anonymous No.7325790]

>>7324967
show this boxart anywhere and you'll have people saying if that's an Among Us crewmate.

this is what Itoi wants for the series he concluded.

[Anonymous No.7326298]

>>7324967
It was 2008. YouTube, resurging hype for Mother 3 and Lucas, and 2 Smash games to go back to and study Ness. This also at a time where Flash animations on Newgrounds peaked, emulation awareness at an all time high and impressionable forum children. People began trying EarthBound on emulators and realized it was good and not shovelware like NoA's stink advertisement implied, so it shot up the price tenfold on second hand markets and perpetuated this myth that it was some super secret hidden Nintendo gem. People like Toby Fox were created because of this fervor with many an grim implication to come in the future. I actually believe Mother 3 did more to spread awareness to EarthBound than it ever could on its own because once Lucas was shown on the Dojo people were like "Huh? That little boy has a SERIES of games?".

[Anonymous No.7327195]

>>7325035
>>7325141
I actually had played Earthbound before playing SSB, and I never recognized that Ness was the main character from Earthbound until much later because I had never tried the "don't care" naming option.

[Anonymous No.7327242]

If it wasnt smash 64 it was melee, and if it wasnt melee it was brawl literally shoving a ton of Mother 2 and 3 lore down your throat in the subspace emissary. Some curious folks followed the trail and found the series.

[Anonymous No.7327297]

>>7324967
>don't even remember ever hearing about it once until SSB Melee
Because you're a normie who's first exposure to RPGs was probably FF7 because games that made you read seemed boring to you as a kid.

[Anonymous No.7327305]

>>7327195
> I never recognized that Ness was the main character from Earthbound until much later because I had never tried the "don't care" naming option.
Good grief.

[Anonymous No.7327312]

>>7325141
The fucking abysmal marketing didn't help, either. I remember the ad for it in Nintendo Power had a scratch and sniff blob that smelled like vomit. You have to really dump the bed to mess up marketing an RPG in the late SNES/PS1 era, and Nintendo found a way.

[Anonymous No.7327673]

No one ever played it. Hipster retards meme'd it into a revisionist history classic.

[Anonymous No.7328354]

The battle sequences suck pretty bad, but the game as a whole is quite amazing. Music, characters, mindfuck endgame. All the makings of a timeless classic.

[Anonymous No.7328370]

>>7327312
I doubt the marketing was the biggest issue. Grossout marketing was big in the 90s, it wasnt anything out of the ordinary.

How would you try to market this game anyways? An ironic RPG riffing on typical jrpg tropes with a childhood trauma inducing final boss?

[Anonymous No.7328372]

>>7325267
This actually makes the most sense out of everything I've read here. Well, except for the overhyped part but I'm pretty sure you're talking about the whole 'you stink' marketing thing.

[Anonymous No.7328379]

>>7327673
This, I don't even remember anyone who had it (and I knew people who had JRPGs), nor reading about it in the magazines.

[Anonymous No.7328385]

>>7324967
Oh great it’s another zoomers rewriting history thread

[Anonymous No.7328387]

>>7327195
Based and realpersonpilled.

[Anonymous No.7329035]

>>7328354
This. I loved almost all aspects of the game, other than battles, which felt like there were there to waste the player's time.

[Anonymous No.7329047]

>>7329035
I liked the battle system back when I first played it. I wonder if I'd still have fun with it...

[Anonymous No.7329048]

>>7324967
>1999/2001
Curious Super Smash Bros. fans
>2006/2008
Curious Mother 3 fans
>2016
Obsessive Cuckertale fags

[Anonymous No.7329061]

>>7329047
It's probably a different experience for those to whom video games involved stuff like that. I grew up playing PC games, and menu simulator JRPGs weren't a thing on that platform.

[Anonymous No.7329081]

there was a shit ton of people talking about this game online even before youtube was a thing, I remember the name floating around all the gaming forums i started visiting, youtubers actually picked it up because it was already a meme in those places.

All mother games were a thing on autistic forums actually. The only thing that changes with youtubers is that the Mother 3 shilling kinds subsided and now everyone memes Earthbound alone.

>>7327673
Is still probably true, most people shilling probably never played it, but it was still very talked about especially on the second half of the 00s.

[Anonymous No.7329107]

Sometime in the mid 2000s i think. I beat it in the 90s.

[Anonymous No.7329140]

>>7324967
It's what happens to 90's cult classics once internet and emulation became a thing. See SotN.

[Anonymous No.7329172]

Honestly what is the appeal of this game outside of being a hipster? Have i just not played enough RPGs to see whats so great? It seems like a bog standard old school rpg just with a rolling HP bar which, while pretty innovative, doesnt really bring the game to a whole new level above DQ. The locations felt really linear, you were literally just going left to right across the map from town to town, and the later quarter felt like a real slog and I just wanted it to end so I could get to see Giygas.

[Anonymous No.7329274]

>>7329172
I've had a copy of the game since it released. For me, it was the first RPG I had played that wasn't a medieval fantasy, swords & sorcery setting. The modern day setting, eating hamburgers instead of using potions, it was a charming concept. Plus it didn't take itself seriously, so while there wasn't much plot to follow, it was still exciting to see what kind of silly thing it would throw at you next. I really think it is a good game, but it has been severely bogged down by fans that grossly exaggerate it's quality. It doesn't help that many of them are pretentious retards who cannot grasp the concept that taste is subjective.

[Anonymous No.7329304]

>>7329172
The encounter system is a bit novel for its time as well and gave you ways and reasons to avoid them, as well as streamlining anything done in an area below your level, but I can see this as well. It's rather basic apart from that, and outright primitive for SNES in other ways.

[Anonymous No.7329305]

>>7329172
It's a pretty good game. The only real downside is the fan base, which is complete cancer.

[Anonymous No.7330531]

>>7329172
Literally no one cares about the gameplay.

[Anonymous No.7330559]

>>7329172
it plays cleverly with tropes and is generally just funny and silly, it gets imaginative in some later levels and the end is a psychodelic trip but you probably already ruined it with spoilers and memetuber reviews

[Anonymous No.7330565]

>>7329172
bog standard old school RPGs are legit fun. The game world is quirky and interesting with novel settings. The characters are likable despite being fairly flat. There are cool designs, great music and a very unique aesthetic to it that no other game on the snes matches.

[Anonymous No.7330570]

>>7329061
lol, PC was shock full of actual menu simulator garbage like Sierra Games and a bunch of garbae wrpg with no appeal at all

[Anonymous No.7330659]

>>7324967

Since Melee a lot of Nintendos less popular franchises boomed in popularity. The same with Fire Emblem.

At least for me it was. I knew a good half of the franchises and got into the rest through emulation or youtube.