EarthBound/Headscratchers

• OK so Buzz-Buzz comes from a bleak future and sends you on a quest to do that. Thus the Excuse plot. Now...YOU, with Ness' help, change the world and save it HOWEVER not only had you created a paradox (erasing the reason you were sent on this quest) NOW you travel back home and NO-ONE should remember you or how you saved the world, if anything these kids live out quiet lives from an adventure long past and that should mean the only thing that comes from this is Porky leaving and his message at the end of the game shouldn't even exist.
  • Are you implying that Giygas is a baby when you fight him? He is an adult, if I remember correctly. Or else he probably would have destroyed Po(r)k(e)y.
• Fly honey?!
  • An NPC in Threed explains that it's honey collected by flies.
    • Collected from where? I don't think bees would take kindly to flies collecting their honey. I'm being facetious. Actually, the NPC says "made", not "collected". "Bees make bee honey, and flies make fly honey!" Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to make some "human honey".
• How does dad know you're beating people up and why does he encourage you for it by giving you money?
  • A Contrived Coincidence, maybe. While you fight/tame/whatever, dad makes money and puts it in your account before he calls. I only remember the dad saying to work hard or something, not 'here's money for hurting others.'
  • The game says that he gives you money for the enemy's bounty. So, Ninten/Ness/Lucas are bounty hunters? Who knew.
• Why does Paula get kidnapped twice in the game? When you meet her, she's kidnapped, and that's understandable. But the second time is completely out of nowhere and makes the game harder until she's back with Ness and Jeff. Is the second kidnapping really necessary?
• How does Ness get his hat back? He gets turned into a robot, sent into the distant past in another dimension, and his robot body is blown up centuries eons ago, hat with it. Then he wakes up in the Saturn Village still wearing it. What the heck?
  • Andonouts probably gave him another hat, but a better question would be why the hell would he give the robot Ness' hat in the first place? That'll just tip the enemies off that the robot is Ness!
    • Oh, like they wouldn't attack him anyways...
      • I'm guessing the hat was not in that other dimension and was just to tell which of the bots was Ness. Ness would know which bot he is, the audience...not so easily.
        • Well, technically, Ness has been at the front of the party the whole game, so it wouldn't be TOO hard.
          • Actually, I think Andonuts mentions that their spirits are in the robots. In fact, this IS the case, considering he couldn't transport living beings with the Phase Distorter. Perhaps Ness' hat is part of his soul?
      • I got the impression from the flashback scene to Ness' childhood (when he'd just been born), in which he displays his psychic powers right after his parents put the hat on him, that the hat was a source for his psychic powers, or a part of his soul. It's been a while since I played though, so I may be wrong.
• More a bit of brain wonderings that anything that actually bugs me... But, during the Giygas battle "music" ,which is more background noises than anything, features electronic, machine-breaking type noises, right? And, during the final battle the Chosen Four are in robot bodies, right? What if these noises aren't the Devil's Machine (like I first assumed) but actually the noises of Ness and Co.'s robot bodies being torn apart by Giyga's attacks?
• In ONEtt, you meet Ness, the first party member. You meet the second one in TWOson, and you meet the third when you go to THREEd. So why do you not meet the fourth party member in FOURside? There aren't even any battles between the last time you're in Fourside and the town you meet your fourth member, so why couldn't they just have the sequence where he goes and meets the other characters happen like 10 minutes earlier to complete the theme?
• Why does Buzz Buzz come to warn Ness anyways? Isn't Giygas just going to destroy Earth, or the universe? If only the Earth, then why does Buzz Buzz bother?
  • Giygas is a threat to the entire universe, as he has the power to "send all to the horror of eternal darkness." Therefore, it would be worth the effort of coming to Ness, one of the only four people in the universe capable of stopping him.
• What's the deal with the Mani Mani battle sprites? On the overworld, it's gold, but when you fight it, it's blue. Okay, but when you fight Ness's Nightmare, it's a pallete swap of the Mani Mani, recoloured to be...gold. Did they mix up which was which?
  • No. Moonside's messed-up color scheme is part of the Mani-Mani's attempt to Mind Screw with Ness and Jeff - down to the point where it changes its own color.
• Why does Lucas have a Japanese name in his games (excluding Brawl which gives him a western one internationally)? I thought he was supposed to be a typical white, American boy.
  • Mother 3 does not take place in Eagleland. Neither Lucas', nor his families' ethnicity or nationality is never stated.
  • The Japanese version uses the French pronunciation of Lucas' name. Since the French usually don't pronounce the "s" unless it's followed by an "e", it's pronounced /ly:ka/.
• Am I the only guy who got annoyed by that damned photographer? I'm trying to have a quirky adventure here! Stop interrupting me! And I can't insta-skip his deal either...
  • But all those memories...
  • Yeah, those'll come in handy for the end credits, but otherwise I still think it's jerking me right out of the game and immediately start mashing the D key.
  • I always thought of it as another parody of video game traditons. (For other examples, there's the eternally-full bathrooms and a few characters berating the main characters for taking items that didn't belong to them. In multiple video games, the end credits go by over several pictures (or, occasionally, videos,) of the adventure that took place, with no explanation. Earthbound is showing us, for a change, where those pictures came from, and possibly how annoying it is for the heroes to have to stop and get in the right position for the camera, just so you have pictures to enjoy during the credits. (If that last is the case, then the roles are reversed in Earthbound, since gamers are often annoyed by the camera man, while Ness, at least, seems to have no problem posing for the instant memories.)
  • That's a great explanation, I never thought about it like that.