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A review by cortjstr
EarthBound by Ken Baumann
2.0
This is a book about the wonderful SNES game Earthbound. Kind of. Really it's a memoir for an actor I've never heard of that is tangentially about Earthbound. If anything it's more likely to drive readers to the Earthbound fan sites where it's implied the backgrounds, stories, and references are actually explained.
The chapters are divided by areas of the game though some are barely touched on or only mentioned in passing (including the area where you explore then control a giant living statue) yet it includes a several page discussion on Earnest Scared Stupid.
I get that discussing other media, games especially, contemporary to EB and establishing the author's age and state of mind during the original consumption can be useful and interesting but I shouldn't know more about the author's parents' love life than I do about the game's unique Pray command or the significance of The Runaway Five. He needs to write more about the localization process or the other games in the Mother series and way, way less about the first he smoked pot a decade after playing the game.
This book is the first in a series all by different authors and all about different games. I really hope they only get better from here because if things stay the same there's no way I'm slogging through all of them.
The chapters are divided by areas of the game though some are barely touched on or only mentioned in passing (including the area where you explore then control a giant living statue) yet it includes a several page discussion on Earnest Scared Stupid.
I get that discussing other media, games especially, contemporary to EB and establishing the author's age and state of mind during the original consumption can be useful and interesting but I shouldn't know more about the author's parents' love life than I do about the game's unique Pray command or the significance of The Runaway Five. He needs to write more about the localization process or the other games in the Mother series and way, way less about the first he smoked pot a decade after playing the game.
This book is the first in a series all by different authors and all about different games. I really hope they only get better from here because if things stay the same there's no way I'm slogging through all of them.