This Post Stinks: The Curious Case of EarthBound

Caveat Lector: This Post Really Does Kind of Stink

I feel the need to start this post by defending what might otherwise, and understandably, be seen as a stretch of the definition of UX, a term which needs no further help being stretched. Celia Hodent, in her excellent book “The Gamer’s Brain,” applies the term to the whole experience humans have with a given product, whether it is an object, a service, a website, an application, or a video game,” contrasting it against Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) in that it covers the whole shebang, from “first hearing about [a game], seeing it in the store or online, buying it, opening the box or launching the application, using it, telling somebody else about it,” et cetera, et cetera. See? Someone with Real Authority said it. So there.

While I’m at it, I’ll throw out a second caveat. If you’re a games nerd and an RPG nerd in particular, nothing I’m going to write here will be especially surprising to you. The story of the fall and rise of EarthBound (1994) has become something of a cliche in gaming lore. (Also, I really need an editor to break me out of this habit of prefacing everything I write with probably unnecessary caveats. “But Ajai, if you know the caveats are unnecessary, why don’t you cut them yourself?” Because shut up, that’s why.)