Earthbound is a game where the hero, Ness, is just an average 13 year old kid from the suburbs... until the night a meteor lands in his backyard. The local wildlife starts attacking him, he begins to realize psychic powers, and a mysterious messenger from the future tells him that he must save the world, but before he faces any of that Ness has to change out of his pajamas. With a baseball bat as his weapon, Ness begins a quest to stop an evil alien presence from destroying the world. He will later meet with Paula, a girl with strong psychic abilities, Jeff, a young genius with the ability to repair broken things, and Poo, a prince from far, far away, which also happens to have strong psychic abilities.
First of all, you can download the savestates for each of these scenes
HERE.
Scene 1 - A Rude Awakening (Onett)
Old Stuff This first part of this scene was recorded a while ago, in early January 2006. It was part of a past attempt at TASing this game. However, things soon proved to be too difficult and complicated for me to go on, but I kept the beginning, which I used in this TAS.
The Cracked Bat You might question if it’s faster to get the Cracked Bat or not, well I can assure you that it is faster to get it, because Pokey won’t let you leave the house if you don’t have it with you. Also, it is faster to equip it, because Pokey says some things about "equipping and stuff" if you don’t have it equipped.
Enemy manipulation In this scene, we weren’t aware of the B-Button trick we discovered early in Scene 2. So in this one, what we did is go back and forth over the "enemy generating line", which is the exact point where enemies are determined.
Starman Junior This being a TAS, the obvious choice was to manipulate Starman into being "On Guard", because this "attack" is a lot faster than any other he has. We also had to manipulate Buzz-Buzz to SMAAAASH!! his guts out, because it allows for a 4-round battle instead of 6.
Scene 2 - Shark Bait (Onett)
The Tee Ball Bat Buying that bat was necessary to defeat Frank and Frankystein Mark II in 2 and 3 rounds, and to kill single attack slugs instantly in Giant Step (read "Attack Slugs" in "Giant Step" below). That bat saved a lot of time early in the game. It was also necessary to SMAAAASH!! Yes Man Junior to death in one turn.
Level-up Manipulation We manipulated the level-ups before Frank to get as much offense as we could. We needed that 1 more offense point to make more damage and therefore kill faster. Note that these are the only level-ups we really needed to manipulate. Later in the game, 1 point doesn’t really make a difference given the variety of attacks we have.
Frankystein Mark II Killing it in 3 rounds was faster than in 2 rounds, because the SMAAAASH!! in round 2 was way too long to reach. Moving in the menu to reach it was longer than killing in 3 rounds.
Scene 3 - One Giant Step for Mankind (Giant Step)
Attack Slugs Ah! The Attack Slugs! What would we do without them? They have a 1 in 128 chance of dropping a Bomb. This is why we used the B Button RNG Trick for that big amount of time. We collected 2 of them to use against Titanic Ant.
Enemy Manipulation This is the first and last time we will write this. You will see a lot of B Button RNG tricks here, and everywhere there are enemies. This is to manipulate the enemies NOT to appear, or to manipulate the enemies into being what we want them to be. Get used to it: it’s used throughout the TAS.
Titanic Ant (1st sanctuary) Having 2 bombs, this fight was a fairly easy one. The hard part was to manipulate the ants not to use Lifeup on Titanic Ant, while manipulating Titanic Ant not to hurt Ness, while manipulating the bomb to do enough damage to kill in 2 rounds. Other than that, it was a piece of cake.
Collecting Bombs When leaving Giant Step, we collected a total of 4 bombs that we will use later in the game. Yes, we planned everything (almost) in this TAS. Remember, the bombs on Attack Slugs are 1/128 items. This is an impossible scenario for a console run. Do not try this at home.
Scene 4 - Police Brutality (Onett)
Da-bomb! We used 3 bombs here: one for each of the first 3 cops we fought. We gained a level after the third, which gave enough offense to SMAAAASH!! the next cop to death in one turn.
The Fourth Cop As we said, we SMAAAASH!!ed it to death in one turn, but the amount of RNGs we had to use to get there was a little too big, so we used the bat from the Goods menu. Doing so adds a few characters of text, which also adds a few RNG uses, getting the SMAAAASH!! earlier than if we used "conventional" menu movement.
The Exit Mouse Of course, we collected an Exit Mouse here. We will use this one in Lilliput Steps.
Scene 5 - Kidnapping Is Wrong! (Twoson)
ATM Pit Stop I withdrew some cash from the ATM in preparation for the Apple Kid ($200). This was the fastest ATM to go to before Apple Kid.
Cycle Shop Photo Don’t Shoot There is a photo shoot in front of the Cycle Shop normally. Since this is totally useless and takes a lot of time, we had to go around the "trigger", which is why Ness takes such an odd path to enter the shop.
Everdred Skip This is a big discovery for us here. We (well... Nitrodon) found that we could totally skip fighting Everdred. It saves a whole lot of time!
Answering the Phone The Telephone Receiver cannot be answered any faster than that. It will be answered at the same speed throughout the TAS, because that’s the fastest it can get.
Scene 6 - A Not-So Peaceful Rest (Peaceful Rest Valley)
Enemy manipulation There’s not much to say about Peaceful Rest Valley really. The enemies were easy to manipulate, and... that’s it.
Scene 7 - Cracking the Cult (Happy Happy Village)
RIP, Bicycle This is the last time Ness will ever ride his rented bicycle, since he can’t ride it if he’s not alone.
Franklin Badge This item is really cool. It’s one of the coolest items to have with you, really. At a few places, we were wondering how to kill the next enemy really fast, until we saw it could use PSI Thunder. In these cases, the Franklin Badge answered all our problems.
Near-Death Experience When fighting the two Insane Cultists and Spiteful Crow, Ness was dealt mortal damage. His HP went down to 0, but the enemy died before Ness’ HP scrolled down to zero. In these cases, the "dead" character receives 1 HP, and doesn’t die.
The Skip Sandwich At a few places you’ll be wondering why oh why do we take time to collect different items in boxes or from enemies? These questions will be answered in scene 24.
Suicidal Cult Master We manipulated Mr. Carpainter to use his Crashing Boom Bang attack on Ness. Ness didn’t do a thing in this battle. Mr. Carpainter committed suicide.
Scene 8 - A Spot of Spelunking (Lilliput Steps)
Moles We had a lot of trouble with the first two moles here. You’ll never see the second one, but that’s what was difficult. As for the first one, it was hard to get it to spawn far enough so that it can’t reach the group.
Tag, you’re it! The bears are "it". They try to tag Ness or Paula or the Teddy Bear, but somehow they’re too slow to catch them.
Mondo Mole (2nd sanctuary) "Paula is so weak when you get her!" right? Wrong! Never underestimate the power of manipulated prayer! Two dazzling lights, one bomb and a bash (which happened to be a SMAAAASH!!) were too much for the Mole.
Scene 9 - Homeward Bound (Twoson)
Everdred This is what happens when you skip the fight with Everdred. He jumps off of his roof, and gives you 10,000 bucks. Isn’t that a cool dude?
The Runaway Five We know they aren’t that great, but we can’t skip their shows. This is the first show, and we’ll see a total of 2 from the Runaway Five, and one from Venus. Plus, we get a cool bus ride after the show!
Scene 10 - Zombies Ate My Heroes (Threed)
The Minor League Bat Ness will keep this one all the way to the end of the game. That’s right. The offense bonus it gives was sufficient for our needs.
Zombies The trigger for the zombies that stare into Ness’ soul was discovered, and we saved a bunch of frames by going back as soon as it was triggered.
Scene 11 - Call To Action (Snow Wood Boarding House)
Short Scene The only thing necessary to get from the locker room was the Pop Gun. Tony won’t let Jeff leave until he has the Pop Gun.
Scene 12 - Southward Journey (Winters)
Making Some Room We took a small amount of time to make some room in Jeff’s inventory. He had a lot of useless stuff already on him. We also took the opportunity to equip him with the Pop Gun he just acquired.
Enemy Manipulation There was a Gruff Goat soon after Tessie dropped Jeff that was a 100% encounter (we supposedly couldn’t avoid it). However, we found that it was a trigger that spawned that enemy. We just went around the trigger, therefore the enemy wasn’t spawned.
Unavoidable Enemies In Brickroad’s dungeon, there were a couple of enemies that were unavoidable. The way the game works, they’re not really enemies. They’re sprites, like NPCs, except they disappear after the fight. Luckily, we were able to manipulate the duck into "not seeing" Jeff.
The Bottle Rocket Once again, planning was a huge part of this run. There was a Bottle Rocket in a gift box on Jeff’s path, so we took it to use it on a future boss fight.
Scene 13 - Step Into My Circus Tent (Threed)
Enemy Dodging This dodge is one of the coolest to watch. It is right after exiting the Sky Runner crash site, also known as Ness and Paula’s prison. We did this because it was faster than manipulating an enemy-free path; it was not originally intended "for the show".
Boogey Tent With a lot of manipulation before the battle, it went down with two prayers and two PSI Rockins. It didn’t even harm the group.
Sleeping At the Hotel This is the first of two forced hotel stays. These two are the only times Ness and his friends take some time to relax in the whole game.
Scene 14 - Graveyard Shift (Threed & Grapefruit Falls)
Mini Barf It was one of the hardest fights we had to manipulate. 3 prayers and 2 bashes did the trick. Oh, and RIP, Teddy Bear. However, the Teddy Bear not being a main character, we don’t count this as a death (for our goals/aims).
Scene 15 - Livin' It Up In the Valley (Saturn Valley)
First Photo Shoot This is the first of 3 mandatory photo shoots. As much as we don’t like it, we don’t have much choice.
The 3-Minute Wait We are terribly sorry for that boring part, but it’s mandatory. You can’t move at all during that part, or else the "secret password" to enter Belch’s factory doesn’t work. You can fast-forward through this part without missing anything at all.
Scene 16 - Welcome To My Underground Lair (Belch's Factory)
The Mostly Bad Fly and Slimy Pile Fight You may wonder why we chose to fight this group of enemies. To make it simple, it was for the pizza. Once again, your questions about this will be answered in scene 24.
Master Belch This one was a somewhat easy fight. Two SMAAAASH!!es, a Bottle Rocket and PSI Freeze Beta did the trick. Note that Jeff got nausea from Master Belch, which would have killed him unless I used Lifeup on him. Since this is a no-death TAS, I couldn’t afford to let Jeff die. Plus, using Lifeup was faster than him dying (there is some text saying that Jeff’s condition is bad, and then some when he dies).
Scene 17 - Milking a Well (Milky Well)
Forced Fights There were a couple of 100% encounters here. We didn’t have a choice but to fight them. Luckily, we got a surprise opening attack on both.
Trillionage Sprout (3rd sanctuary) This was a somewhat easy fight. PSI Rockin twice, Freeze Beta twice, and a Big Bottle Rocket did it here. We had to manipulate things a lot though, but at this point we were pretty used to this.
Scene 18 - Desert Trek (Dusty Dunes Desert)
Mole Damn moles ... this one is always there at the beginning of Dusty Dunes Desert. Ness’ offense wasn’t high enough to instantly kill it.
Cool Gift There is a Big Bottle Rocket in a gift box here. We gladly accepted this gift and took the present along with us to serve in a future fight.
Scene 19 - The Big Banana (Fourside)
What About That Title? We don’t quite understand why the guys at Starmen.net named this scene "The Big Banana", but we decided to keep the title anyway. This scene is fairly short too. All we had to do is talk to the manager and get out.
Scene 20 - Whack a Mole (Desert Gold Mine)
Useful Gift The Big Bottle Rocket we picked up in Dusty Dunes Desert turned out to be handy. It took out a Guardian Digger in one shot.
What? Another Gift? What do you know! There was another Big Bottle Rocket in the Gold Mine! Looks like another Guardian Digger is going to get it!
The Exit Mouse Once again, we picked up an Exit Mouse here. We will be using it in Magnet Hill.
The Other Guardian Diggers The 3 remaining Guardian Diggers were taken out using PSI Rockin Beta and PSI Freeze Beta. They were not too difficult to manipulate at all.
Second Photo Shoot This second photo shoot could have been avoided, but the way to avoid it is pretty tricky. It involves getting everyone to die from poison or nausea right before the photo or something. We decided to take the photo instead of breaking our no-death rule.
Scene 21 - Keepin' It Real With Miss Fake (Fourside)
Lesson of Generosity Isn’t Ness generous? He decided to give a diamond to the manager to free the Runaway Five! Right after that is the second Runaway Five show, featuring Venus.
Scene 22 - Gwaaaaaaaaargh! (Fourside Department Store)
Stocking Up On Victory Stuff Here, we made a pit stop at the army stuff selling guy. We bought a lot of Big Bottle Rockets there. These will come in very handy up until we can buy Multi Bottle Rockets in Deep Darkness.
Enemy Dodging Enemies here are fairly stupid. Their movements are basically straight lines. That’s what we abused to get past them (because they’re unavoidable otherwise: they’re 100% encounters).
Dept. Store Spook I, Halamantariel, remember that boss to be a fairly hard one. You don’t have PSIs except Ness’, and Jeff isn’t very strong, and the Spook’s attacks are dangerous. Well, for all those who feel like I do, enjoy the fight! It died using one manipulated Big Bottle Rocket. Isn’t that cool?
Scene 23 - Welc Ome To Mo Onsi De. (Moonside)
Weird B Button RNG Trick Use You might wonder why we used the trick at the last teleport guy before the room without a door. It was to manipulate the guy into walking down, closer to Ness. That way, it was faster to talk to him. Weird, but it saves time.
Evil Mani-Mani On this fight, we manipulated the turn order so that Ness and Jeff acted before Evil Mani-Mani did. After that, we manipulated the Big Bottle Rocket and Rockin Beta to do enough damage to kill it in one round.
Scene 24 - Monkey See, Monkey Do (Monkey Caves)
Answers! Looking for answers to previous comments? All right! All the things we collected that "made no sense" earlier make sense now. Everything we collected was used in the Monkey Caves. The monkeys have strange needs, and we needed to collect a few items for them. So instead of buying them in shops or something, we collected them on our way to the cave.
Scene 25 - Mucking Monotoli (Monotoli Building)
Sentry Robots All the Sentry Robots were skipped. The first one was pretty tricky though. Do not try to skip the first one on console: you WILL get caught.
Clumsy Robot Honestly, this is the one big mistake we’ve done. It’s more of a bad planning than a mistake though. We had to use 4 SMAAAASH!!es, 1 Bomb and 1 Rust Promoter on this little bugger to destroy it. This is because we didn’t know in advance that Big Bottle Rockets didn’t work on it.
Monotoli Bug This one is a cool bug. It happens when Ness talks to Monotoli before he has a chance to move away and besides Paula. What happens is that Monotoli stays where he is, and then talks to Paula (which is on the left) by looking at the right (??). Then, Paula walks through the table to join Ness. Pretty funny stuff!
Scene 26 - Saved For a Rainy Day (Threed & Winters & Rainy Circle)
Wobbling... ...was used when Jeff had to repair the Sky Runner. This way, Jeff was closer to the Sky Runner to enter it and then make repairs, and after that Ness and Paula were closer to enter it too. Frames were saved, but we don’t know how many of them.
Shrooom! (4th sanctuary) This fight was relatively easy too. We used 2 Big Bottle Rockets, PSI Freeze Beta twice, PSI Rockin Alpha and PSI Rockin Beta. Plus, it got frozen each time Paula used Freeze on it. The enemy never had a chance to attack us.
Scene 27 - Ness, Marriage Counselor (Summers)
Entering Our Name We wanted to enter "Halamantariel and Nitrodon" but it didn’t fit. So we thought we could enter "Halamantariel & Nitrodon" but there were no & in the letters we could choose. We decided to enter "Halamantariel / Nitrodon" instead. We could have entered something faster like "A" but it wouldn’t be cool. We wanted to leave our signature somewhere in the movie. There it is.
Scene 28 - Dalaamish Paradise (Dalaam)
Nothing There’s nothing to say here. We followed the storyline, nothing special happened, nothing special could have happened.
Scene 29 - Museum Mayhem (Summers)
Shattered Man Normally, we should fight 2 Shattered Men here, but it’s fairly easy (even on console) to fight only one. Just read the sign after the first fight, and then get out. As for the fight itself, we used a prayer (been a while since we used that!) and a Big Bottle Rocket. It wasn’t much of a threat.
Telephone The telephone is ringing when exiting Summers’ museum. We don’t need to answer it for events to unfold, so we didn’t.
Scene 30 - Seasickness and the Kraken (Summers & Toto)
Kraken This is where it’s fun to have the Franklin Badge! Kraken went down using 2 Big Bottle Rockets, and some thunder attacks that reflected off of Ness’ Franklin Badge.
Scene 31 - Another Desert Welcomes You (Scaraba)
Dad Calls Ness’ dad called on the Receiver Phone when the group arrived in Scaraba. Our favorite quote from the game is right there, when Ness answers "no" to his dad asking him to take a break. His dad says: "Well, it doesn't make me happy, but I understand your point about the fate of the world being at stake."
Master Criminal Worm One of the rarest enemies in all the game and we managed to get one without manipulating anything! We decided to fight it, so that Ness could gain enough levels to have Flash Beta when we reached Deep Darkness. Flash Beta has the ability to kill in one shot. It died from a single Freeze Beta.
Pyramid Photo Don’t Shoot There usually is a photo shoot in front of the Pyramid, but it can be skipped by teleporting over the hot spot. This trick is very hard to do here. It required a lot of re-records.
Scene 32 - Indiana Ness (Pyramid)
Guardian General It went down pretty fast. Freeze Gamma, Freeze Beta and a Big Bottle Rocket took care of it.
Enemy Skipping All the enemies we encounter in the Pyramid are NOT avoidable, except one. The avoidable one is the Lethal Asp Hieroglyph after we receive the Hawk Eye. We decided to fight it for the same reason we fought the Master Criminal Worm: to get Ness to receive Flash Beta.
Scene 33 - The Ultimate Dungeon (Scaraba & Dungeon Man)
Caught In The Palm Trees? This is a very cool bug here. Normally, Dungeon Man would get caught in the palm trees, but we found that it wouldn’t if we hugged the trees and then went straight right. Dungeon Man then follows the gang and ends up getting "caught" in nothing. We also used the Wobbling trick to get it further to the right, so that it didn’t reset its position to the "In the trees" position after we talked to the "Tribe Guy". This saved a bunch of frames since we didn’t have to walk back further.
Scene 34 - We're In Deep... Darkness (Deep Darkness)
Speeding Through! Using the Teleport trick, we were able to speed through Deep Darkness in only 2 minutes and 20 seconds, including the boss fight!
MBR Bonanza! This is where we bought all the Multi Bottle Rockets (MBR) we needed for the rest of the game. Yep, we bought 4 of them (and a Super Bomb).
Master Barf ... There’s nothing much to say here, except that it died very quickly because of Flash Beta. In fact, it didn’t die quickly. It died instantly.
Scene 35 - Shy... That We Are... (Tenda Village)
Nothing There’s nothing here... move along!
Scene 36 - Eradicating the Plague (Fourside & Magnet Hill)
Third and Last Show Here is Venus’ solo show. I don’t really know what the point of this show is, except to enforce the museum guy’s crush on her. Anyway, after her show she gives Ness a signed banana and a kiss.
Plague Rat of Doom (5th sanctuary) Once again, it died instantly because of Flash Beta. Talk about a plague eradicating PSI!
Scene 37 - Danger! High Voltage (Dalaam & Pink Cloud)
Unavoidable Fight There was one unavoidable fight right before the boss. These were a 100% encounter, but they went down quickly.
Thunder and Storm (6th sanctuary) Did you guess it? That’s right! They got flashed too.
Scene 38 - Ness, P.I. (Winters)
Weird Trajectories The enemies here were all 100% encounters, so there was no "enemy free" zone. We had to move away from them for them to disappear from memory. That’s why we took such odd trajectories at a few places.
Scene 39 - Starman Infiltration (Stonehenge Base)
Mook Senior This one was a 100% encounter. We couldn’t avoid it. It got flashed, and the other enemies were all skipped anyway.
Sorry Guys! For those who hoped to see us get the Sword of Kings on the first try, sorry guys! We didn’t get the Sword of Kings because it wouldn’t have been used anyway.
Exit Mouse This is the last Exit Mouse we’ll ever get, and we used it here in Stonehenge Base.
Starman Deluxe It received a Multi Bottle Rocket! It died in a single blow. Oh, I think this is the appropriate time to say "Told you!" to those who suggested that Jeff should be killed and left dead for the whole game. Jeff is the second best guy on this team!
Scene 40 - Professional Bookworm (Onett & Tenda Village)
Third and Last Photo Shoot This one is automatically triggered after we talk to the Tenda Chief (which is mandatory). The photo shoot is annoying, but mandatory.
The Talking Rock For those who are wondering, we had no choice but to talk to that rock because it wouldn’t let us through the door if we didn’t talk to it.
Scene 41 - Writing On the Wall (Lumine Hall)
The Rabbit’s Foot This item is the most precious of this TAS. It gives a +40 speed bonus to its wearer, in this case: Jeff. That makes Jeff attack before anyone else and increases the chances of the MBRs doing more damage (yeah, it’s determined by the speed).
Electro Specter (7th sanctuary) Did you guess it? No! It didn’t get flashed. Yes! It got an MBR in the face! But that wasn’t enough for this one. We manipulated it into using the Neutralizer, which neutralizes (duh) its shield, allowing Poo to use Freeze Gamma on it, which was the fatal hit.
Scene 42 - Really, Really Lost (Lost Underworld)
Speeding Through! This area took 56 seconds to cross, thanks to the Teleport trick. Other than that, we skipped the mini-Tenda Village, which is totally useless by the way.
Scene 43 - Seeking the Final Melody (Fire Spring)
Unavoidable Fights There are a few unavoidable fights here, but they all got killed pretty quickly (flashed and frozen to death).
Cool Enemy Dodge Immediately after the first unavoidable fight, there was another 100% encounter, but we managed to skip it "intelligently". Normally, it would hit Jeff and enter a battle, so we decided to stop moving when Jeff was about to touch it, and then it started to run after Paula. Then, Ness entered the door. The enemy got skipped!
Carbon Dog & Diamond Dog (8th sanctuary) Carbon Dog got flashed. Diamond Dog received a Freeze Gamma, a Multi Bottle Rocket and a Starstorm. Enough said?
Scene 44 - It's All In the Mind (Magicant)
Enemy Manipulation There was quite a lot of enemy manipulation here. However they were all manipulated to be absent. Therefore, it was an enemy-free zone.
Scene 45 - Overcoming Thyself (Sea of Eden)
Krakens? Nah, they’re stupid. The first one got stuck in a wall, the second one was manipulated to move away from Ness, and so was the third one.
Ness’s Nightmare It took a while to get to the good RNG value, but we did it. It will take some time in the B Button RNG trick, but it’s worth it. Ness’s Nightmare died in the first round. It got flashed. We know, it has a psychic shield, but we manipulated it to use a physical shield first, which canceled his psychic shield, allowing the flash to get through.
Scene 46 - Dark City (Saturn Valley & Onett)
Unavoidable Fights... Yeah Right! There are three 100% encounters in Onett now. They’re the only enemies you will see. However, they all got manipulated into getting stuck in trees! HAH!
Scene 47 - Last Call (Saturn Valley)
Odd Bug Somehow, answering "Yes" or "No" to Dr. Andonuts does the same thing the first time we talk to him. Therefore, we had to talk to him twice, and the second time it worked correctly.
Triggers You have to walk up to a trigger and come back for the Phase Distorter III to appear. This trigger was found and stepped on for 1 frame.
Scene 48 - Back To the... Past (Cave of the Past)
Manipulation! All the enemies were manipulated into not appearing. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.
Scene 49 - What an Almighty Idiot! (Giygas' Lair)
This Is It! The final battle! The Almighty Giygas... right... We’re not spoiling anything on that one. Go watch it if you want to know what happens.
Scene 50 - Endgame
Statistics - Last frame of input, before the credits: 703775.
- Last frame of input, including the part after the credits: 742151.
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