Saturday, February 14, 2009

Earthbound

When I was 10 years old, I visited my uncle's place in Shah Alam (if not mistaken) and came acrossed what was probably the best game ever existed in the history of mankind. I slept at his place on that night. I went into this room where I found a lot of CD-ROMs and VCDs, mostly illegal. The room was kind of in a mess and it was kind of dark. There was this computer at end of the room, an old 64 rom computer, probably just enough to play Red Alert 2. I saw this CD called emulator king where it was full of SNES emulators. There were many fun games in CD, Bomberman being my Dad's favourite since it reminded him of his childhood. However, there's this game called Earthbound that really got stuck to me.

The game revolves an average American teenage kid called Ness battling an alien commander by the name of Gigas and his army of Starmen. I do not know why but I some how feel connected to the main character. (No it has nothing to do with killing hippies) When my family came back to Kuching, I installed the SNES emulator on the family's computer. My Dad played bomberman for hours and I got stuck on Earthbound. My friends in those days were so into Red Alert and other stuff in the CNC series but Earthbound was in my heart. Yeah, I had a fair share of CNC (For goodness sake, I still have Tiberium Wars and Generals installed in my laptop) but Earthbound had that special connection.


The town of Onett, the place where Ness lives.


Was it because of Ness's quiet town of Onett? Onett sort of reminds me of Kuching a bit. Small city, but filled with fun and things to explore. I remember when I was in primary school, me and my friend Julius would go to the forest at the back of the residential area we lived in and explore the area. Maybe that's why I could relate to Earthbound. Not to mention I was into sci-fi stuff like Ness does when i was a kid. I wish people could make more games like this in where I could relate myself to it. Average homeboy who has big dreams. Yeah, I had big dreams. I wanted to be a Sailor or a Pilot when I was kid. I wanted to travel the world, like how Ness did.

Ness travelled to many places in the game. He went to cities that he had never been to like Twoson and he went to enchanted places. Those are the kind of stuff I wanted to do as a kid. When I was a kid, I was seen as an easy target by bullies. Playing Earthbound some how is an escapism to me. When I get back from school I would put on some Nirvana or Red Hot Chilli Peppers (they were famous at that time) on the radio and switch on the computer and beat up bullies. Having bullies as one of the bad guys in the game some sort becomes an escapism where I beat up the bullies.

My good friend Julius was more interested in Bomberman like my Dad but Earthbound is connected to me. I wish more games were designed for average homeboys like this game. A game about an average person doing extraordinary things. An extraordinary adventure by an ordinary schoolboy. That is Earthbound. My life is Earthbound. I want to travel the world and see the wonders of the world. I want to fight bad guys like in this game. I want adventure in my life.

Now as a grown up man in university I some how regret not being the explorer I wish I was. However, I some sort of appreciate the life I'm living right now. Quantity Surveying, the course I'm taking up now is some what interesting and me being a Kesatria Commander, I hope I can have great adventures after this.

No comments:

Post a Comment