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Xenomorph · 01-11-2005, 11:25 PM

The first time you play through Earthbound, you really don't have any idea exactly what you're going after. You know that you need to complete the Sound Stone's melody in order to defeat Giygas, but you don't really know how it's going to work or what exactly is going to happen when you finally do play the song in its completion.

The payoff is excellent. Ness enters his own mind and destroys his doubts, his apprehensions, his past failings that nag and persist and slow him down. The entire Magicant sequence was the most thrilling part of the game, I thought, from when you're first trying to figure out where you are to the final climactic sequence in which Ness realizes his own power and you see his HP/PP sliders going berzerk and his stats increasing like crazy.

I can't help but admire the fact that APE did all this long before a cinematic game was even technologically possible. All they had were 16-bit sprites and a flimsy synthesizer and they can still get my blood pumping more than Sephiroth's stab or Malak's revelation can.

(Darth Malak, that is. I just noticed that he shares a name with a Final Fantasy Tactics character - another excellent game but I can't quite isolate any one moment of it that impacted me as much as the Magicant sequence of Earthbound.)

As for Fenix of Starcraft...I think most of us knew that he was going to come back as a Dragoon. That's the Zealot's reward for nobly sacrificing himself in battle. I wasn't so sure he was going to get whacked as a 'goon but the fact that they saved the Zerg campaign for last gave them the freedom to kill off any Terran and Protoss hero characters they wanted to...which they did.

01-11-2005, 11:25 PM	#95 (permalink)
Xenomorph Crazy Location: St. Louis, MO	The first time you play through Earthbound, you really don't have any idea exactly what you're going after. You know that you need to complete the Sound Stone's melody in order to defeat Giygas, but you don't really know how it's going to work or what exactly is going to happen when you finally do play the song in its completion. The payoff is excellent. Ness enters his own mind and destroys his doubts, his apprehensions, his past failings that nag and persist and slow him down. The entire Magicant sequence was the most thrilling part of the game, I thought, from when you're first trying to figure out where you are to the final climactic sequence in which Ness realizes his own power and you see his HP/PP sliders going berzerk and his stats increasing like crazy. I can't help but admire the fact that APE did all this long before a cinematic game was even technologically possible. All they had were 16-bit sprites and a flimsy synthesizer and they can still get my blood pumping more than Sephiroth's stab or Malak's revelation can. (Darth Malak, that is. I just noticed that he shares a name with a Final Fantasy Tactics character - another excellent game but I can't quite isolate any one moment of it that impacted me as much as the Magicant sequence of Earthbound.) As for Fenix of Starcraft...I think most of us knew that he was going to come back as a Dragoon. That's the Zealot's reward for nobly sacrificing himself in battle. I wasn't so sure he was going to get whacked as a 'goon but the fact that they saved the Zerg campaign for last gave them the freedom to kill off any Terran and Protoss hero characters they wanted to...which they did. __________________ The facehugger is short-lived outside the egg which normally protects it. Armed with a long grasping tail, a spray of highly-concentrated acid and the single-minded desire to impregnate a single selected prey using its extending probe, it will fearlessly pursue and attack a single selected target until it has succeeded in attachment or it or its target is dead Last edited by Xenomorph; 01-11-2005 at 11:27 PM.. Reason: respond to other post without double-posting