EarthBound (1995)
Adventure - RPG

Publisher	Nintendo
Developer	Ape

While known as EarthBound in the United States, it is the second game in the Mother series in Japan. EarthBound is a sequel to the original Mother, a Famicom/Nintendo Entertainment System title released only in Japan. Mother and EarthBound are not directly connected. One of the only connections plotwise between the two is Giygas, the primary antagonist in both games, who was also significantly changed between the first and second games.

EarthBound is set in the year "199X" in the small town of Onett, part of Eagleland. The main character, Ness, wakes up when a meteor falls close to his house in the middle of the night. He heads out to investigate the meteor, but not before his mother reminds him to change out of his pajamas. At the crash site, he meets an insect named Buzz Buzz from ten years in the future who sends him on a quest to defeat the intergalactic destroyer Giygas in this time, because he is too powerful in the time that Buzz Buzz came from. Ness must then journey through the world, seeking his eight "sanctuaries" where the Earth's power is strongest in order to unite his own powers with the Earth's and gain the strength needed to confront Giygas.

EarthBound breaks the escapist, fantasy-oriented tendencies and themes of most RPGs by placing the action in a modern day world. These changes to typical RPG stories are often taken to an absurd extreme in EarthBound, such as the inclusion of baseball bats and yo-yos as weapons instead of swords or magical staves.

Many of the RPG elements featured in EarthBound are very traditional. In towns, players can purchase items, recharge energy, or gather information from various non-player characters. Battles are not random because the enemies are visible in the navigation portion of the game (although some, such as ants, are only a few black pixels, and difficult to spot or avoid). When the characters encounter an enemy, a battle starts. The player can be at an advantage or disadvantage when the battle starts: If the enemy is approached from behind, the player gets an extra turn at the beginning of the battle and vice versa. As Ness and his friends become stronger, battles with weaker enemies are eventually won immediately, skipping the entire battle sequence altogether.