EarthBound

JP Mother 2: Giegue Strikes Back

When a meteor lands near his home town of Onett, a young boy named Ness joins his neighbours to investigate. At the top of the mountain behind his home, Ness is visited by a time-travelling beetle, and attacked by a metal-clad alien being. Only by finding good friends, and improving his latent psychic abilities, can Ness save the world from the evil intentions of the alien known as Giygas.

The second in the Mother series, but the first released outside of Japan. This RPG set in wacky modern-day Eagleland sees you playing as Ness, a young boy with psychic powers.

You start in the suburbs of Onett, but your adventure will take you all around the world. As you travel, enemies attack, and you will have to battle them using a menu-based system. Select the moves your characters makes, including attacks, psychic attacks or using items. Deplete the enemy's HP to win each battle and gain experience, making your characters stronger.

Each town that you travel to features new creatures to defeat and new people to rescue. Eagleland, and all of its inhabitants, are slightly surreal, and may need your help solving their problems.

Screenshot
Developer HAL Laboratory
Genre RPG
Super Famicom / SNES
JP 27th August 1994
US June 1995

Cameos

Default Mario Names

When naming your character, you can cycle through a set of default names rather than name the characters yourself. In the Japanese version of the game, one of these default sets give you names of Mario characters:

  • Mario (Ness)
  • Peach (Paula)
  • Luigi (Jeff)
  • Kinopio (Poo) - this is Toad's name in Japan
  • Yoshi (Dog)
  • Kinoko Gohan (Favourite food) - Japanese for "Mushroom Meal"
  • Goal (Favourite thing)

One set is of the various members of UK band The Beatles. It is worth noting that in this set the dog is named Ringo. This was also the name of the dog in New Onigashima, so this may be a two-way reference.

Ness as "Mario"

Submitted by Fryguy64

Onett Arcade

The arcade in Onett features several game machines with miniature screens. If you look closely you can see that one of them is Donkey Kong and another is Taito's Space Invaders.

It is not clear what the third game is (the middle one in the screenshot). If you think you might know, then please contact NinDB.

Onett Arcade

Submitted by Fryguy64