The EarthBound Society
Someone commented to me once how interesting it was that the EarthBound community on the Internet was either very quiet or non-existent for years and has suddenly begun to flourish. This prompted me to wonder: what could have caused this resurgence? Basically, a whole bunch of linked websites have suddenly sprung up to sing the praises of a game that's four years old? WHY? It's not as if anything new has happened. You hear of web sites springing up to sing the praises of games that are GOING to be released in four years, but not the other way around. So what's going on here?
Sure, one can argue that all the hoopla has been the product of the impending release of Mother 3. But is it, really? Does anyone actually believe that EB64 is actually going to even come out? Sure, I've been speaking of it as optimistically and with as much certainty as the rest of the EB community, but other websites, such as RPGamer and IGN64, imply that the chances of the game's seeing the light of the day are slim, at best. Nintendo tells us it's coming, but they're not to be trusted; they still say that the 64DD is coming! They'd probably still be telling us that Sony is developing and add-on CD-ROM drive/32-bit upgrade for the Super NES called Playstation X, if they thought they could get away with it, and if they weren't afraid that it would remind us how good the 16-bit games were as compared to the current crop, which would result in our shunning them.
But I digress; the point is that EB64 is probably not what's doing this. So here's my guess: the EarthBound Zero ROM. I won't document its history; there's plenty of such documentation elsewhere. But when the ROM appeared for DL on the web and became as popular as it did, all of the EBers out there were reminded of their favorite game. Also, SNES emulation was perfected, and EBers could suddenly play on their PCs, and rip graphics and sounds.
Also contributing to the growth of the EB Internet Community has been the growth of the online game music community and the general console RPG community. (Most of whom, incidentally, shun us and our game, dismissing it after a cursory glance at the graphics. They all served as a reminder of EarthBound's existance.
Lots more know EBers know HTML now than did 4 years ago. Hence, the EB community was born.
Someone commented to me once how interesting it was that the EarthBound community on the Internet was either very quiet or non-existent for years and has suddenly begun to flourish. This prompted me to wonder: what could have caused this resurgence? Basically, a whole bunch of linked websites have suddenly sprung up to sing the praises of a game that's four years old? WHY? It's not as if anything new has happened. You hear of web sites springing up to sing the praises of games that are GOING to be released in four years, but not the other way around. So what's going on here?
Sure, one can argue that all the hoopla has been the product of the impending release of Mother 3. But is it, really? Does anyone actually believe that EB64 is actually going to even come out? Sure, I've been speaking of it as optimistically and with as much certainty as the rest of the EB community, but other websites, such as RPGamer and IGN64, imply that the chances of the game's seeing the light of the day are slim, at best. Nintendo tells us it's coming, but they're not to be trusted; they still say that the 64DD is coming! They'd probably still be telling us that Sony is developing and add-on CD-ROM drive/32-bit upgrade for the Super NES called Playstation X, if they thought they could get away with it, and if they weren't afraid that it would remind us how good the 16-bit games were as compared to the current crop, which would result in our shunning them.
But I digress; the point is that EB64 is probably not what's doing this. So here's my guess: the EarthBound Zero ROM. I won't document its history; there's plenty of such documentation elsewhere. But when the ROM appeared for DL on the web and became as popular as it did, all of the EBers out there were reminded of their favorite game. Also, SNES emulation was perfected, and EBers could suddenly play on their PCs, and rip graphics and sounds.
Also contributing to the growth of the EB Internet Community has been the growth of the online game music community and the general console RPG community. (Most of whom, incidentally, shun us and our game, dismissing it after a cursory glance at the graphics. They all served as a reminder of EarthBound's existance.
Lots more know EBers know HTML now than did 4 years ago. Hence, the EB community was born.
