I think it’s probably been a whole week since I’ve told anybody how much I love Earthbound. That may sound silly, but if Stephanie were actually listening when I tell her about it, at this point she’d probably know just as much about the game as someone who’s played it. (Not that I mind her zoning out or anything. I rarely listen when she talks about shoes.)
I don’t really have anything planned today. I was just thinking about Mr. Saturn and how cool it would be to master handwriting the Mr. Saturn “dialect.”
I did have an Earthbound-related dream earlier this week though! It was kind of weird, because my party consisted of myself and Stephanie, with Jeff and Britta from Community. Maybe it wasn’t that weird. Steph’s in most of my dreams, and we watched the entirety of Community season 2 last week. I don’t remember exactly how the dream went down, but the first thing I remember was coming out of the cavern in Threed’s graveyard. We walked about the town for a bit and then headed northwest from the graveyard. Earthbound’s geography isn’t perfectly charted, but I surmise that we should have ended up somewhere in the vicinity of Happy Happy Village. Or back in Twoson, depending on how long that tunnel really is.
Where we really ended up though, was another village called “Frank.” The folks there were pretty average, and Frank (the character) was nowhere to be seen. The majority of the village was laid out along a single road, and had a sort of Japanese culture to it. That part is kind of weird because Earthbound is sort of a Japanese caricature of American culture. Anyway, the town ended up leading nowhere, or at least we didn’t venture past the end of the road. We headed back and on our way out I noticed that the village was actually populated with Happy-Happyists! Spooky.
That’s when I woke up. I’m not sure what the dream means. I’ve played Earthbound enough times to know that Frank (the village) does not exist. Maybe it’s my mind trying to convince (or remind?) me that there are still secrets that I haven’t found in the game. But I’ve played it several times, and have put a lot of effort into exploring the world thoroughly. Anything I didn’t find on my own I’m sure I’ve read about. If there are still things I don’t know about Earthbound, they’re probably pretty tiny.
Anyhow, I just figured I’d share that. It was a pretty cool dream.