Also, I clearly don't “get” Earthbound, because the love for it here is intense, and the love for it in me is… nonexistent.
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@“kyleprocrastinations”#p126892 is 2017 the new 1994??
Had a look on Wikipedia and I think you might be onto something...
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@“marurun”#p126901 We will probably both get our IC membership cards torn up for this, but I‘m mostly in this same boat: I appreciate Earthbound, and I’ve played through it several times over the years, but it's never really clicked with me as a masterpiece. I find it to be a good, very well made RPG of its era, but it was an era with a ton of extremely good RPGs, so…
Likewise, and I'll spoiler text this to give myself the slightest of fig leaves, >!I find most if not all games inspired by Earthbound to fall on the side of being way too derivative without innovating nearly enough. No shade for folks who love them though! We all love different things!<!
2025 comes: it's time to bring Earthbound… back down to Earth. 
@“Karasu”#p126906 why hold back? It's scientifically proven you have the most cred here for the next 2 years
@“Karasu”#p126906 I agree with everything you said here about Earthbound. In the game‘s favor, though, I’ll say that at least it‘s a pleasant play experience decades later, unlike Ocarina of Time (another perennial list-topper that I don’t fully personally understand).
It‘s kind of funny given the nature of these things that although every top ten list in the nomination thread was interesting, compelling, and well put together, the cumulative top ten, while maybe a bit better than last time’s, is pretty hard to argue for
@“deepspacefine”#p126915 Oh, absolutely! Earthbound has extremely good bones! I also extremely appreciate its commitment to the bit, and I love that it‘s folks’ favourite because it‘s an extremely strange game in a bunch of ways. As for OoT, I agree that it’s maybe a bit too prevalent, but it‘s probably just a matter of taste. I’ve never really loved it, but it might just be a matter of when I played it, which was years after the game came out and after I had played a bunch of games that I found more impressive or exciting that I found it to be.
@“connrrr”#p126881 I was surprised not to see ||Twilight Princess|| on your list, though including it and Colossus together would seem like too much of one thing. Substitute Trico for Colossus, problem solved
OoT has the issue of solving a lot of the problems with 3d action games in a way that was immediately copied by everyone else. So much of that game is spent teaching you how to play a 3d action game and, if you already know that, it all feels very flat
@“yeso”#p126884 is the distribution generally bell curve-y?
@“phylaxis”#p126926 more of a camel shape
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@“yeso”#p126939 Camel by way of a dragon, perhaps.
While we‘re confessing, I will also say that I don’t really see what‘s so special about Earthbound either. It’s good! It‘s got jokes and cool places, but it didn’t change my life or anything.
However, and maybe this makes a point about those sorts of games, I tend to really enjoy the Earthbound-derivatives! I thought Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass, Omori,and LISA were all pretty amazing. And there's also Undertale, but everybody loves Undertale.
Thanks for all your hard work putting this together! Fun to dive in and see whats going on and breathing a sigh of relief that a couple games still made it
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@“Mnemogenic”#p126948 but everybody loves Undertale.
i, uh....
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@“Mnemogenic”#p126948 but everybody loves Undertale.
Yes, um… <nervous laughter> …of course they do. Yeah.
@“phylaxis”#p126950 @“Karasu”#p126952 Nobody here counts as everybody.
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@“Mnemogenic”#p126948 but everybody loves Undertale
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I don't love Undertale
Undertale rules, but then again I played it having never heard of it. I think by now its reputation precedes it and if I played it now, it may have caused me to approach it with more cynicism then it deserves (which is zero cynicism). I had never even heard the word “doggo” before playing it, so I had no baggage.
Other Mother likes usually don't hit for me, they always feel like they're trying hard to be precocious (I think because those truly inspired by earthbound are still young indie devs). Itoi approached the game with his authentic life experience and perspective as a Renaissance man outside of the world of games, which lends it a very different flavor then you get with someone under 30 who grew up with games. It's like how Hayao Miyazaki laments that people making anime watch too much anime and don't look at the real world as an inspiration. People making mother likes tend to be more informed by games then they are about the process of living... But it might be an age thing. I think treefroggy made a good post about this.