{"id":61,"date":"2012-07-05T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-05T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terry-torres.com\/plays\/2012\/07\/05\/your-name-please\/"},"modified":"2023-09-07T15:44:58","modified_gmt":"2023-09-07T15:44:58","slug":"your-name-please","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/terryplays\/2012\/07\/05\/your-name-please\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Name, Please"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fZzkvizjazg\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I think what&#8217;s really exciting about the naming process at the beginning of Earthbound is the music. They don&#8217;t just carry over the same <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=KDPchbLPzn4\">tune from the file select screen<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Not only does the change in music signify a new relationship, a collaboration between the game and you, but it&#8217;s also the first really good song you hear in the game.<\/p>\n<p>Not only is it a <i>great<\/i> song, it introduces you to the kind of sound you can look forward to for the rest of the game. It starts with sampling (pretty advanced for the Super Nintendo), accompanied by a sweet bass line, chirping and percussive parts that almost seem like sound effects, and a legendary hook (01:00).<\/p>\n<p>The song teaches you that, although the graphics seem to be low-fi, the sound design is actually pretty advanced and varied. It lets you know that the aesthetics are not a result of technological limitation, but a specific choice.<\/p>\n<p>Naming your characters at the beginning of the game is unlike what most other popular (Squaresoft) RPGs of the time did. Usually you would not name a player-character until they appeared in the story. Instead, Earthbound does what it will turn out to be extremely good at doing: setting up expectations.<\/p>\n<p>You know right from the beginning that you will meet a girl who likes music and hops straight into the air when she&#8217;s surprised, a four-eyed preppy who doesn&#8217;t always know what to do with himself, and a dignified and stoic warrior from a classical version of &#8220;the Orient&#8221;. In meeting your party at the beginning of the game, you are given the means to measure your progress.<\/p>\n<p>Many of those who worked on Earthbound would join Creatures, Inc. and create <b>Pokemon<\/b>, another game in which you name yourself and another character (your rival) at the start of the game, intertwining your fates indefinitely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I think what&#8217;s really exciting about the naming process at the beginning of Earthbound is the music. They don&#8217;t just carry over the same tune from the file select screen. Not only does the change in music signify a new relationship, a collaboration between the game and you, but it&#8217;s also the first really good&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/localhost\/terryplays\/2012\/07\/05\/your-name-please\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Your Name, Please<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/terryplays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/terryplays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/terryplays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/terryplays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/terryplays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/terryplays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":179,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/terryplays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions\/179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/terryplays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/terryplays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/terryplays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}