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My history with Earthbound is a bit roundabout and silly and it goes something like this. I didn't play Earthbound during its US launch year of 1995. I don't recall seeing any ads for it in print or on TV and I definitely don't recall seeing it on shelves at my local Wal-Mart. I do, however, remember seeing it at Blockbuster (which is a very old sentence). June of 1995 would put me at 8 years old and on summer break, gearing up for 2nd grade in the public school system in a small town in Louisiana. So I was still really young, pretty new to video games and lived in the boonies. Week after week, month after month at that Blockbuster on a Friday evening, I would browse the shelves, walking by the oversized game box on display. Occasionally I would pick up the box, look at it front and back cover and feel hesitation to try the game. Not because it looked unappealing visually; quite the opposite. I was curious about this brightly colored, strange cover with cutesy cartoonish clay models on the back. My hesitation came from the size of the box and the intimidation it stirred in me and here we get to the silly part. Mind you, I was, again, 8 years old and very imaginative. Something about the big game box compared to other SNES game boxes gave me the assumption that this is big game. Not like a physically big cartridge, I mean like big in terms of the scope and complexity of the game. I made some weird, uninformed, 8 year old assumption that this game would be absolutely massive! Like it would take hundreds of hours to finish, have really difficult gameplay backed by really complex puzzles that you have to be really smart to be able to solve! Obviously we know this is completely untrue. As a JRPG title, Earthbound is moderate in its length and generally pretty beginner friendly the whole way through with only a few points in the game having a notable spike in difficulty for the uninitiated. But hey, the leaps in logic that a kid makes sometimes just don't make sense. So, week after week, month after month, year after year, I would browse those shelves at my local Blockbuster, curious but wary of Earthbound's big, intimidating box. There were plenty of other games to try. Jump forward 4 years and its 1999. This is a big year for Nintendo and a pivotal moment for me because this is the year that the original Super Smash Bros. drops in the US. A game we all on the playground knew was coming and couldn't be any more stoked for because it would finally give us the chance to put to rest those recess debates over which characters in these mutually exclusive universes could beat the other in a fight. The roster of fighters in Smash's debut title is completely laughable compared to the all encompassing roster we see in Smash Ultimate. With only a mere 12 fighters after getting the unlockables, representation of Nintendo's IPs for this first iteration of the series was at its absolute core titles. It doesn't help that the Mario franchise alone took up a quarter of the slots. Despite being a commercial flop, Ness managed to make the roster of playable characters, most likely due to the fact that Hal Labs was the developer for Smash Bros. The kid got very lucky and frankly so did I. I recognized Ness as a character from that game with the intimidating, oversized box that at this point, I wasn't paying much attention to anymore because there were so many other, newer titles to play. As a playable character, I thought his off-beat play style was fun to mess around with and got a small kick out of the weird things he said when he used his magic attacks. After playing the game and as Ness for a little bit, curiosity about his game replaced the now numbed fear I had for it previously. I rented it from that same Blockbuster for the first time late in the summer between 6th and 7th grade. I still have the cartridge that I've had since I was a kid. A neighborhood teenager, I met through some friends my dad had owned a copy of the game. I don't remember the name of that neighborhood teenager, I don't remember the names of the friends of my dad's, I don't remember the relationship between that neighborhood teenager and those adults. I don't really remember any of that. It's all one giant blur. It was and is all irrelevant to me anyways. All that matters is that local teen had a copy of the game I had absolutely fallen in love with and that he was ambivalent about his ownership of the game. As soon as he told me that, I informed him, "I have money." I do remember using that exact phrase. That phrase was true. At home, I was using an old, plastic biscotti jar as a piggy bank. Inside of it was some amount of loose change and dollar bills. Some amount, I don't know how much money was in there all I know was that I wanted that game. In hindsight, I was likely never going to find it anywhere else for quite some time given that Earthbound was old hat and didn't sell well to begin with. I told that local teen, "I have money," and I ran home, literally, grabbed that piggy bank, ran back, and years before Fry ever said, "shut up and take my money," I slammed that plastic jar with an unknown amount of loose money into his hands and told him to give me that cartridge. And he did. I had acquired a physical copy of a North American Earthbound cartridge for an indeterminant sum of cash and also got the players guide as well which I didn't know was something that was included. The players guide itself was in pretty rough shape. The cover and first handful of pages was missing, a few pages hanging on to the binding by a thread and there was some writing on some of the pages. The cartridge itself was just as bad. Local Teen had done a number to this cartridge having both scratched the label and written what I assumed was partially his home address on it with a permanent marker. On the back was some kind of...I don't know dirty looking, hardened, bumpy...something. Food? Dirt? Melted plastic? I have no idea. And again I don't remember what Local Teen's name was but I do think his initials had to at least be C.V. because that was exactly the letters that were CARVED DIRECTLY INTO THE PLASTIC OF THE CARTRIDGE! I received a copy of an Earthbound cartridge in a condition that I certainly wouldn't maintain my games in but I didn't care. I had the game. I had it. This copy of cartridge was mine. I still have that cartridge to this day. I've been able to clean up a few small things about it but for the most part it still has most of the scuffs and marks it had when I acquired it. It's not perfect by any means but it's my cart. The same cart I had since I was kid, the same cart that I completed my first playthrough on, the same cart that has my save file with everyone at max level, the same cart I've always reached to for comfort when I was having a tough time at any given phase of my life so far. There were times in my early adult years where I would be struggling to make bills. In truly desperate moments, I even resorted to selling off some old games that I knew would move quickly and get me a good chunk of money that would be immediately be burned up by uncaring, never ending oppression of rent. No matter how desperate things were though, I never for a second considered selling my Earthbound cartridge despite knowing it was probably one of the most valuable games I could have pawned off. I echo Bob Mackey's sentiment in that I would have gone homeless before I gave up this game. [can I hyper link a time stamped link to a podcast?]