🍔 Mother 2 / Earthbound (Game Club) - Week 7

Japanese Language Book Clubs
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(Image source.)

Welcome to Week 7 of Mother 2 Club

:house: Home Thread | :video_game: Game Club

Last week, we didn’t spend much time in Fourside aside from exploring, so let’s dedicate this week to Fourside.

Week 7 Jun 12th
Last Week Week 6
Start Point Visit the Department Store
End Point Get a phone call from :apple: kid
Next Week Week 8
A guide to this week (spoilers) 🏬 🍟 🌃

The department store should now be open. You’re in a big city now, so expect to spend some time in the shop. Check everything out, and when you’re done, head outside… unless something convinces you to stay?

Finish up the department store (ending with a boss battle), then you’re on your own to explore town and figure out where to go. Hint: visit the cafe, but be sure you have the Pencil Eraser on you first. Edit: The Pencil Octopus Eraser is actually for next week; I shifted something planned for this week to next week and missed updating this part.

Once there, talk to everyone inside, and then follow the story beat to see an old friend(?) outside. Do what’s needed there, then head back into the cafe to get on the path to this week’s second boss battle.

General tips:

  • Don’t forget: the Franklin Badge reflects lightning attacks
  • If you’re stuck on where to go next after defeating the first boss, visit the cafe

Walkthrough: English | Japanese

Script (with kanji!): Script

Participation :admission_tickets:

Will you be joining us this week?

  • Yes, I’m playing along
  • I’m still playing but haven’t reached this point yet
  • I’m just here for the discussion
  • I’m playing after the club has ended
0 voters

Set this thread to “Watching” to get updates

Fun Stuff

Fourside Department Store shopping guide

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Some of this week's monsters (spoilers)

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🌘 Map

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Trivia time, did you know The Beatles were big fans of Earthbound? Check out their version of this song!

I still need to play this week, but for now this is your reward for making it this far.

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よよううここそそ

If you forget about the franklin badge, those department store enemies are absolutely brutal. Even with it it felt like I needed a little luck; I died a few times trying to make it to the top. I miss Paula :sob:

Love this part though, it’s very memorable. The sudden alien appearance is unexpected and strange enough, but Moonside has such a cool surreal vibe. The game can just pull anything on you at any time; what’s particularly neat to me is how there aren’t big transitions for something so odd, just pressing behind the counter makes this start.

The teleporting monkey is kind of the punchline of a joke that doesn’t even make sense until you’ve played the game further to understand what’s going on with it, which I find really admirable.

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@TheNerdyNova, @VikingSchism, and @Vivacia: Do you feel a shorter week or two will help you catch up, or are you in a position where you feel it’s better to let the club keep going at current pace? (I know how it can be when falling behind, where in some cases it’s easy to catch up, and other cases it isn’t.)

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I think I’ll be fine, I just have to play this week’s content so I’m almost back up to speed

But if the others would like a gap week or shorter week then I’m not going to complain either

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I’m pretty confident I’ll be able to catch up this week so I think I’ll be fine as well.

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Ah, thank you for checking in!!
Honestly, I was kind of thinking it would be nice if there was a shorter week or something… :sweat_smile: but if everyone else wants to continue as normal, I bet I could catch up! I’m not that far behind. I’m in the desert right before fighting all the mini bosses. And I should have some more spare time than usual in the coming days!

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This has always been my favorite part of the game. It’s just so eerie.

Since the Pencil/Octopus eraser was mentioned, if Paula was holding it, it will get moved to the Escargo Express for you since you will need it before you find her.

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Week 7

Paula needs to stop getting kidnapped. Girl, you can shoot fire and lightning with your mind. This shouldn’t keep happening to you.

Moonside was trippy, and I can’t say I fully understood what every NPC was saying. A Jason Voorhees looking guy told me my HP was 0 and I believed him. Another guy implied he’d send me to the hospital figuratively and then he did it literally. I was killed once by a statue shining light into my eyes… meaning, the boss paralyzed Jeff on the first turn, and then I wasted Ness’s turns trying to figure out how to cure him while the statue killed me. Jeff had all the bottle rockets :frowning: the 2nd time went much smoother, though!

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This was a tough week, I died like 5 times and was busy so I had to split up a bunch of sessions so no pictures this time, but what followed was worth it, I think this might be my favorite part of the game so far, next to maybe the cult stuff, I liked Saturn Valley too

The pacing feels right but I’d be fine with a gap week sometime, I’ll be recharged next week but I’m wondering if we’ll all be trying to squeeze in Deltarune chapter 5 or something lol

Say cheese sandwich!

At the department store I was so ready to spend and manage my inventory, but I accidentally triggered the power outage early when trying to sell at the front counter, so then I ran it back to before (I’m usually reluctant to, but inventory comes first!) The groups of two were tough, and I died twice to a group of 3, until I finally made it to the boss

I thought it was funny when お茶漬け星人 or whoever told me he was going to kill me and send me to h̶e̶l̶l̶ heaven

Like @steckums mentioned with Paula holding the eraser, it happened to me and Escargo Express called saying they’d hold onto it but wondered if it was some kind of prank

While wandering around Fourside a bit more I forgot if I said it already but the isometric buildings and graphics blew my mind. Sure I’m playing it on NSO’s emulator and the pavement is just a diagonal line of pixels, but when I started moving they looked all parallel and perfect. It made me feel like I saw it the intended way and maybe ya’ll can test it out too if you want to see it, it kinda made me want to play it on a CRT (and now I’m thinking about what all those cool psychedelic enemy backgrounds would look like too)

And finally, Moonside, right when I got there the flaming enemies made the game lag and I thought it was just part of the experience, I thought it was supposed to be like when a character is drunk and disoriented and trippy neon lights phase through them, and then things got REALLY trippy. Yes and no became inverted and I accidentally paid for a night at the hotel lol, the good morning music became screwed up, people talked with a crazy accent, one talked in numbers, one said I was dead, even George Clinton of Parliment Funkadelic was there. All the madness and enemies and unexpectedly getting warped too, this part blew my mind

That boss at the end though was no joke though, iirc, PSI can’t heal paralysis (or at least not yet, maybe it can later, who knows) so I had no idea how to defend from it and the one shots

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I’m doing fine these days but will not object at all if we take a gap week or a short one or whatever.

Responses

I’m playing it on a CRT and yeah, it looks so nice. Honestly mine’s a little big and I think works best for later generation stuff, at least PS1 if not PS2, but still, the way the CRT smooths the image together and has such motion clarity and whatnot looks fantastic for those battle backgrounds.

There’s an Atomic Dog quote apparently? Glad you mentioned it haha, I completely missed that guy on this playthrough. We’ve got Parliament and Grateful Dead references so far, nice. I had been pretty excited for new players to see this section.

Seems I got lucky on not getting paralyzed though, whatever the boss did it wasn’t anything too strong or memorable and with the power of pencil rocket #5 it was gone by turn 2.

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Agreeing this was a hard week - might have been the most frustrating part thus far

Week 7

I started this week with a bit of sorting, making sure I had the Franklin Badge given the warnings in the main post, and putting away some bits I didn’t need. Then I went into the department store and had a good shop, before the power cut happened and ポーラ got kidnapped

Having to do this section with just スネス and ジェフ was very annoying - ジェフ kept dying over and over because his health/defence was relatively low compared to スネス so I kept having to go out to revive/heal at the hotel. In the end I travelled back to ツーソン on the bus and stocked up on ぬいぐるみ so they could take a few hits. I also moved the badge over to ジェフ and then tried to juke the enemies so I didn’t have to fight as much. That worked, and I was able to get to the top unscathed were I proceeded to unleash a ペンシルロッケト５ to the face, which made short work of the boss. I also managed to pull off some clutch healing from スネス to avoid ジェフ dying during the fight when he got iced

Then I went to the bar (calling it the cafe in the main post was a bit confusing) and got to ムーンサイド which was fun. The game got properly weird, and it was fun getting confused and not knowing where I was for a bit before eventually filling in a mental map of the area. Finding the right guy to teleport was a bit annoying, but the enemies weren’t too bad here. The boss was also relatively straightforward and went largely the same as the department store boss, just with a few more rounds (and more clutch heals)

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Oh no mb I just saw an NPC who I thought looked like George Clinton, but then after looking it up I saw that post too where somebody thought they remembered Atomic Dog in the game, idk if it’s real or just Mandela Effect though because nobody confirmed it

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English player habit; it’s one of those censorship changes.

Ohh I see! Yeah I was thinking he looked cool but it didn’t even occur to me that he really does look like him, nice. Had the chance to see George Clinton live a little while back and something made me miss it, can’t remember what anymore now but it’s a shame.

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I’d figured it was something like that but yeah this feels like one of the more puritanical changes to me. Maybe it’s just that over here in the UK it’s not that abnormal to see children at pubs etc, albeit accompanied by an adult and obviously not drinking (though the drinking age is younger, and you can have some alcoholic drinks with a meal from 16 or so)

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Sorry about that.

I need to read less manga with cafes and more manga with bars.

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Finished this week’s section! Honestly I had an easier time here than last week

Thoughts

Haha! Yes I thought that was funny, I was like aww how kind, it thinks I’d go to heaven, not hell, lol

Moonside was so cool!!! And cool that it was so unexpected and just shifts to it out of nowhere.

But yeah this week was honestly easier for me than last! I’ve been using the pencil rockets 5. They are SOO useful and do so much damage, and they’re only like $130! I also leveled up quite a bit with the five mole mini bosses and surrounding enemies.

Looking forward to continuing! Paula I miss youu :sob: