Earthbound Zero is the first game in the Mother/Earthbound series. It was localized, but never released in the US. Technically, the game was localized as Earthbound, but the sequel was localized and released as Earthbound, so this game generally goes by the name Earthbound Zero.
  • Aims for fastest time
  • Manipulates luck
  • Does not abuse programming errors

Battles

Lamp

It has 6 HP, and I can deal up to 3 damage. I just kill it in 2 turns, while advancing the RNG as much as possible for the Doll battle.

Doll

It has 12 HP, and I can still deal up to 3 damage. I manage to get a SMAAAASH on the third turn, dealing 6 damage to finish the battle.

Starman Junior

The starmen.net walkthrough incorrectly states that he can be killed by a reflected PK Beam gamma. It turns out that he is immune to Beam gamma, so I don't need the Franklin Badge yet. However, he can be tied up with the Rope, leaving him defenseless and allowing me to SMAAAASH him into oblivion.

Stray Dog

This guy is a pushover in normal play, so it's easy to forget that there is a forced battle at the entrance to Duncan's factory. I could have killed him with a SMAAAASH, but using the bottle rocket was faster than the manipulation would have been.

39x LastStarman

Ninten needs to be at level 25 to wake the dragon, so I need to powerlevel. The 4x LastStarman encounter gives the most exp, and is very easy to defeat with EVE and the Franklin Badge (from Duncan's factory). EVE kills the ones that are too smart to commit suicide. Often, winning the battle in 2 turns is faster than the manipulation required for a 1-turn victory.

Star Miner

I needed a Super Bomb for later, and Star Miners drop them. EVE makes short work of this guy.

R7038XX

This battle ends when EVE is destroyed. She has 1000 HP, and R7308XX deals 425 +/- 24% damage, so it was barely possible to end this in 2 turns. EVE will only miss 1/256 of the time, so it wasn't worth manipulating.

Giga Borg

Beam alpha = dead Ninten.

Dragon

Super Bomb = dead dragon. The backlash kills Lloyd, so we don't sit through a bunch of levels.

Giegue

His inexplicable attack deals 28-46 damage with PSI Shield, and 14-23 damage with PSI Shield while defending. With some manipulation, Ninten's 181 HP allowed him to survive the first 9 turns (6 attacks while defending and 3 without defending). Giegue becomes vulnerable after his action on turn 8, so I start singing then, and heal with LifeupCream when necessary. I only need to survive 5 attacks from full HP after the first LifeupCream, so luck manipulation becomes practically unnecessary for the rest of the battle.

Thanks

  • Starmen.net, for their maps and other data about the game.
  • Floogal, for helping with the route and informing me about using LifeupCream to survive the Giegue battle.
  • Everyone who posted in the EB0 topic on TASvideos, for their support.


TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #2252: Nitrodon's NES EarthBound Beginnings in 47:56.08
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I wish I had a bit more experience with the game to know all the sequence breaking being done, but I was entertained watching it. Yes vote.
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I am having a very hard time not reminiscing about this game on this board. A very hard time. Anyway! Fantastic! I'm amazed at just how open ended this game really is. Yes, and published alongside Pirohiko's run.
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Thank you for nice work. I looked forward to it really very very much and yes yes vote! By the way, may I upload your movie to nicovideo?
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Tristal wrote:
I wish I had a bit more experience with the game to know all the sequence breaking being done, but I was entertained watching it. Yes vote.
There aren't really any sequence breaks in this run. I merely skip random encounters and defeat enemies at low levels. Going to Rosemary Manor before Duncan's factory could be considered a sequence break, and I skip several optional things, but that's about it.
pirohiko wrote:
By the way, may I upload your movie to nicovideo?
Yes.
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Aren't you skipping recruiting two entire characters?
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Yeah, and all the stuff in their towns, and all the stuff in the desert... I remember you could ride a train, a plane, and a tank, too!
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Maybe I'm using a different definition of sequence breaking. The game is very open-ended after Magicant, so nothing that I skipped is actually "required". However, I did skip several events that are very much expected in normal play, including recruiting Ana and Teddy.
Joined: 2/14/2007
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Ah, this was a great run. Okay, to be honest, people who haven't played this game won't be entertained much (except by the music), and those that have played the game will probably watch most of it at double-speed. But that's just the way the game is -- it's still amazingly well-planned and optimized, and emphasizes one of the things I love about this game: its nonlinearity and freedom. Also, bread crumbs are the best things since ...sliced bread. The powerlevelling requirement was unfortunate, but seeing how awesome EVE is makes up for it. The battles are less the problem -- the long level-up messages are more annoying. As for the Super Bomb on the Dragon -- was it my imagination, or did it say that Ninten dropped from the backlash, not Lloyd? I should have save-stated nearby, as I can't be bothered to restart the movie file to watch it again. I guess the game designers never planned for you to die from using the Super Bomb, and so the game just defaulted to the name of the first party member. Oh, and, once again, thanks for trying to vary the menu cursor (luck manipulation) and walking movement, without going overboard. That long, slow menu display before one of the later starmen fights seemed like a tease....
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It was confusing to see two submissions for the same game on the Workbench at the same time. And only four submission numbers apart, too. Did you guys plan it that way or did it just happen because of the SDA thing? So this one features power leveling and more luck manipulation, and the other uses a sequence breaking glitch? If both are published I think all the traffic is going go to the shorter one.
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I really enjoyed this, so yes vote. Also, I find it funny that the dad says "You're just like your mother, you never stop".
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I didn't find this movie interesting. I also would probably prefer only having the Japanese version as the sole any% version. So I vote no. Now I will go publish this...
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Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [1302] NES EarthBound Beginnings (Prototype) by Nitrodon in 47:56.08
Joined: 2/26/2007
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adelikat wrote:
I didn't find this movie interesting. I also would probably prefer only having the Japanese version as the sole any% version. So I vote no. Now I will go publish this...
Lol. No to publication, just before publication. Clearly you are not a neutral judge!
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
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adelikat has such a big heart!
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Finaly EBZ run, I myself like (eb)zero more than EB, becuase eb's music and battles makes me feel sick.
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L337 wrote:
eb's music and battles makes me feel sick.
Motion sickness? Nothing to be worried about. I literally got motion sickness from some other runs in this site (Namely, the SitD one).
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i find the publication text a bit confusing... will watch the run ASAP
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This run has the good ending despite u don't meet Ana and the other guy (i can't remember his name). How curious!!!! Nice run, brought me very nice memories when i played this game. It actually takes some weeks or months to beat it and here u finish the game so quickly... lol.
Joined: 8/23/2008
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Finally watched this. Man, this game has so much running around... ugh. Was moving the cursor in tune with the music during levelling on the Starmen fastest, or an entertainment/speed tradeoff? I was under the impression that the RNG was not affected by time, but this part made me unsure of that. Good run, overall. Fun to watch, less fun to play.
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The RNG is manipulated by spending a certain amount of frames with a cursor visible. Moving the cursor around has exactly the same effect as just sitting on the intended menu option and doing nothing for the same amount of time. Hence, I could freely make the menu movements as entertaining as possible (well, at least better than nothing) without losing any time. Mother 2 / Earthbound works exactly the opposite way, so that's probably what you were thinking of.
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Now that this game has been re-released as EarthBound Beginnings, should we change the game title on the site? Suggested revision to the publication description: "EarthBound Beginnings is the first game in the Mother/EarthBound series. It was originally localized for a 1990 release, but was not officially released outside of Japan until 2015. The English translation's original title was EarthBound, but this name was instead later used for the English version of Mother 2. In retrospect, the first game was subsequently referred to as EarthBound Zero by fans, before being re-titled EarthBound Beginnings for its Wii U eShop release." (Wording is only a suggestion.) Edit: Hellooooooo? Anyone read this?
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EgxHB wrote:
Now that this game has been re-released as EarthBound Beginnings, should we change the game title on the site? Suggested revision to the publication description: "EarthBound Beginnings is the first game in the Mother/EarthBound series. It was originally localized for a 1990 release, but was not officially released outside of Japan until 2015. The English translation's original title was EarthBound, but this name was instead later used for the English version of Mother 2. In retrospect, the first game was subsequently referred to as EarthBound Zero by fans, before being re-titled EarthBound Beginnings for its Wii U eShop release." (Wording is only a suggestion.) Edit: Hellooooooo? Anyone read this?
I just learned of this today. I'm more curious on how different is the original NES prototype compared to the GBA "Mother 1 + 2" release. I recall that "Earthbound" had new glitches compared to the original, so I'm curious how this might also occur for Earthbound beginnings. Speaking of which, are the glitches the Earthbound TAS(es) use fixed in the GBA version? If so, it might make more sense to TAS the GBA version for Mother 2 as well, since people have been wanting a relatively glitchless TAS for a while.
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jlun2 wrote:
EgxHB wrote:
Now that this game has been re-released as EarthBound Beginnings, should we change the game title on the site? Suggested revision to the publication description: "EarthBound Beginnings is the first game in the Mother/EarthBound series. It was originally localized for a 1990 release, but was not officially released outside of Japan until 2015. The English translation's original title was EarthBound, but this name was instead later used for the English version of Mother 2. In retrospect, the first game was subsequently referred to as EarthBound Zero by fans, before being re-titled EarthBound Beginnings for its Wii U eShop release." (Wording is only a suggestion.) Edit: Hellooooooo? Anyone read this?
I just learned of this today. I'm more curious on how different is the original NES prototype compared to the GBA "Mother 1 + 2" release. I recall that "Earthbound" had new glitches compared to the original, so I'm curious how this might also occur for Earthbound beginnings. Speaking of which, are the glitches the Earthbound TAS(es) use fixed in the GBA version? If so, it might make more sense to TAS the GBA version for Mother 2 as well, since people have been wanting a relatively glitchless TAS for a while.
Some differences are documented here: http://starmen.net/mother12/diff/ I recall Mato also mentioning once that the zombie tent glitch didn't work in the GBA version. I think I also heard something about GBA Mother 2 having a completely different engine, which is one of the reasons that nobody really touches it for hacking until recently. I'm not entirely sure about that, but I do know for sure that the text scripting for the game uses completely different command codes, thanks to the project going on right now for porting Earthbound's text to GBA Mother 2's format in preparation for a VWF translation patch.
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Egix wrote:
Now that this game has been re-released as EarthBound Beginnings, should we change the game title on the site?
I think we should. This game never had an official English title. Now that it does, we should use the official title as is the standard for all games on the site. The description should definitely mention "Earthbound Zero" too, like you said.