Play Earthbound Online

Earthbound came out on the Super Nintendo in 1994, developed by Ape Inc. and HAL Laboratory. It was part of that era when RPGs were really finding their voice on consoles, moving beyond just swords and sorcery to something a little more personal and strange.

You control Ness, a young boy with a baseball bat and psychic abilities, traveling through a modern, slightly off-kilter world. Your main goal is to stop an alien invasion by visiting strange locations, gathering melodies from sacred sites, and recruiting other gifted kids to your party. Combat is turn-based but streamlined, with a unique rolling HP counter that lets you potentially heal damage before it fully registers if you act quickly. The game paces itself deliberately, mixing mundane tasks like withdrawing allowance money from an ATM with surreal encounters against abstract enemies. It feels like wandering through a half-remembered childhood summer, where the ordinary and the bizarre sit comfortably side by side.