EarthBound

EarthBound is Shigesato Itoi's charming, cult-hit RPG about aliens, teenagers, and psychic powers.

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Using Game Genie codes, severe glitching, or an IPS patch, three debug menus can be found in the game:

Unused Sprites


All of the other Chosen Four characters have this animation, but Poo is the only one who doesn't actually use it. Ness and Paula jump during their name entry screen animation, and Jeff jumps over the fence when he's escaping from his boarding school. The developers probably created the jumping sprites for all characters, just in case.



Variations of the Chosen Four's normal ghost sprites, plus one for Everdred. The variations of the Chosen Four's ghost sprites are exactly like the regular jumping sprites except for the transparency, ghostly trail, and halo; they could just be jumping.

As for Everdred, the game leaves it unclear as to whether he died following your encounter in Fourside, but this sprite would indicate that he did. Alternatively, Everdred might have been scheduled to join your party at some point, as every other ghost sprite is based on a party member.



Four sprites of King where you can obviously tell he's supposed to be climbing a rope or a ladder. This would suggest two things: either King was supposed to stay with you longer in the game, or Ness' original travels through Onett were supposed to include something to climb. However, it could be that these were created just in case they needed to be used.



Since there are no "sleeping" sprites for the other characters, these were probably meant to be used in special sequences early in the game, possibly waking up from Paula's psychic calls. Alternately, Ness may have been intended to be asleep when he first arrived in Magicant, as he is completely naked except for his cap during the Magicant portion of Mother 2.



Ness's mother sitting, a better (but unused) alternative to walking around in random directions. May have also been meant for the prayer sequence involving Ness' family.



Ness and Paula sitting with their eyes closed. Since there is no Jeff or Poo equivalent, they were probably meant to be used in an event before Paula contacts Jeff, most likely when the two wake up following the zombie ambush.



Probably meant to be used when you talk to Jackie from the side, but it isn't used for some reason.



A capsule that looks exactly like the one containing Starman Jr. in Mother. This is found among the enemy-out-of-battle sprites, so it was probably supposed to be used as an alternative to the odd octahedrons used to represent enemies in the last areas of the game.

It could also have been used as the out-of-battle sprite of Starman Jr. and/or Starman Deluxe.



Probably just an asset they put in there in case they needed one, and it turned out they didn't.



"Puu Puu" (fart noise) is the sound the Mr. Saturns make in Japanese, so this sprite was likely meant to appear in Saturn Valley while the Mr. Saturns were walking around.



A tiny Ness posing and a tiny photographer hanging around, clearly meant for the Lost Underworld.



A tiny Escargo Express guy, also clearly meant for the Lost Underworld.



A flag, probably meant to be used as decoration somewhere, though it doesn't seem to fit anywhere in the game.



A beating heart. Maybe some romance sequences were planned, but didn't make it in.



A Sanchez brother cheering, meant for when you won something in the slot machine game.

Unused Enemy
The "Crooked Cop" or "ダーティコップ" (literally, "Dirty Cop") is identical to Captain Strong in every way but name. This may have been an earlier version of him.

Video Relaxant


The item with hex number goes unused. It does nothing when used, and the in-game description is an apt "What the hey is this?" The Japanese version calls it "Video Drug", but has basically the same description.

Temporary Goods
Unlike the Video Relaxant, the Temporary Goods has a clear description: "A key given to you by a maid who works at the Monotoli building." This indicates that Electra was supposed to give you the "key" in exchange for the Yogurt Dispenser, and this would have unlocked the second elevator (which is inaccessible beforehand) to access the path that leads to Monotoli himself; in-game, however, the second elevator is unlocked once Electra takes the Yogurt Dispenser.

Putting the item in your inventory before going into the building does nothing, and no other unused text correlates to the item.

Entirely Unused


An unused version of the "No Sounds" variation of the completed Sound Stone, never played because the game exits the Sound Stone after the melody finishes. It can be heard by using PAR codes at the File Select screen.

A scary-sounding variation of the cave music which, like some other tracks, is a remix of a theme used in Mother (such as in Podunk Zoo).

This short, non-looping variant of Pokey's theme is never used, or really needed. The engine-like noise used for the first few seconds would suggest it was meant for when he steals Monotoli's helicopter, or possibly an unmade cutscene where Pokey crashes it in the Deep Darkness and removes the engine.

Partially Unused
In the game intro, this plays before transitioning to a different track. This skips the last 15 seconds of the song.

The track used when Ness exits Magicant is cut off around the 23-second mark, leaving 15 seconds unheard in-game.

Leftover Music Data
Certain music tracks contain data that never gets played. Often, these unused portions are earlier drafts of the music in which they reside.

This would seem to indicate that the attract mode music was initially going to head in a different direction or have a different transitional section, but was ultimately replaced.

An unused section of the Belch battle music, probably an idea for an alternate transition into the repeat.

Seems to be a higher-pitched early draft of the Deep Darkness music, later replaced by the lower-pitched version.

A more complete idea that was never used in-game was this section of music from Magicant. It has the same quirky sound and feel of the final track, but a completely different melody.

This sounds like a potential ending for the music "Good Friends Bad Friends", the pre-credits sequence where the cast of the game appears. It was likely not used due to it being very brief and unsatisfying, and hence requiring the final version's ending to be rewritten.

The end credits music has an unused section that initializes all the instruments, indicating that it was used at the beginning, and plays the first three notes of the melody leading into the music. In the final, this was replaced with a more anticipatory section that fades in and builds up musically to match the cinematic of the scene.

Also in the credits music is an unused section that seems to be nothing more than the string section of a portion of the music, however the chord progression used is slightly different from the final. This would indicate that the music may have been slightly different there as the composer was trying different ideas.

Copy Protection
EarthBound is surprisingly heavy on anti-piracy measures, some of which are quite fiendish. None of this affects emulator users, both because the protection was targeted at copiers and because most copies of the ROM circulating the internet have these routines disabled.

Layer One - Region Protection
The first layer is pretty simple: it checks the console's PPU to make sure you're not running a PAL (Europe, Australia) SNES. If you are, it throws up this error message and freezes.

Layer Two - SRAM Check
This is the first real barrier against pirates. A subroutine at, called at startup, checks that there's only 8KB of SRAM (cartridge copiers, by their nature, tend to have more). If there's more than 8KB, then the game gives you this stern warning and freezes.

In addition, Movement Script 1 calls a subroutine at which takes a checksum of the code at. If there's any alterations to that memory range, a non-zero value is stored to, bringing up yet another copyright infringement screen.

Layer Three - Increased Encounters
A third, far more subtle layer of protection is activated if the game detects that the previous layers have been disabled. There's a check at to see if  is zero. If it isn't, random encounters are ramped up to absurd levels to make the game borderline unplayable. Some areas even have enemies that aren't supposed to be in those locations, like Spiteful Crows in the Pyramid.

Layer Four - Unknown
There's another SRAM checker at. Not quite sure what it does yet, but it's called six times during the game.

Layer Five - The Grand Finale
BmyoV1bkXNI And finally, should you brave everything else, there's one final, devious checksum routine at, checking to see if all the previous layers had been defeated, which is triggered after Porky/Pokey turns off the Devil's Machine and insults Giygas. If the game detects anything awry, it hangs and deletes your save files.

Regional Changes
Mother 2 is chock full of Japanese cultural references and seems to have a flagrant disregard for copyright law. That being the case, the differences between it and EarthBound are pretty vast. As little to no official information has ever been given from Nintendo of America for why the changes were made, the reasons listed here are largely educated guesses and should be taken as nothing more than conjecture.

The title screen was of course altered, although the Mother 2 one looks a bit more imposing.

The intro wording changed, possibly an overly-cautious attempt to avoid conflict with Lucasfilm over The Empire Strikes Back. More likely is that the wording was modified because Mother was never released outside Japan (although it was intended to), and it would be rather odd for a never-before-seen enemy to "strike back".

This truck sprite was changed to avoid possible lawsuits with Coca-Cola.

Cultists of Happy Happyism have the letters HH on their forehead (for "Happy Happyism"). EarthBound added a pom pom to the end of their hoods to make them look less like members of the Ku Klux Klan, and removed the HH as it could be mistaken for KK.

Threek changed to Threed, likely to avoid the possibility of misconstruing it as being a reference to the KKK (ThreeK, as in Three-K).

The Tonzura Brothers became The Runaway Five. The name and colors of suits were changed to avoid lawsuits over the Blues Brothers (and resulted in a kinda-sorta reference to Mario and Luigi), although "Runaway Five" is an odd name to pick considering that there are six people onstage.

Nintendo of America's strict censorship policy resulted in changing all bars in the game to cafes.

NoA's puritanism is also the reason most drug stores became shops, although the one in Dusty Dunes Desert still has a prominent "Drug" sign in front of it.

The sign of the Onett hospital changed to remove the red cross (as that symbol is protected by Federal law and owned by the Red Cross organization) and add a bunch of illegible text. Despite this, one screenshot on the giant Earthbound game boxes shows the red cross symbol.

Virtual Console changes
The Wii U Virtual Console releases of Mother 2 and EarthBound add a "blur" effect to several of the flashier PSI animations, such as PSI Rockin. This is standard policy for Virtual Console games, with the idea being to reduce the risk of causing seizures.