Xenophilia: They Might Be Pigmasks

Alot has been said about Mother 3 because... well, there's alot to say. It's a shame that it never got an official release outside of Japan, because it's clear that alot of care went into it. And an equal amount of care went into the fan translation. And I'm sure when Chad Concelmo wrote those two Memory Cards about the game, he probably took more care writing them than I did writing this. The point is, people love this game.

It's probably the first game to ever make me cry, and I'm honestly not afraid to admit that. What I am weirdly afraid of admitting is how that came to be. But here I am. I guess I'll start from the start. ...Well, I'll skip past the downloading of the not-ROM and applying the translation patch and throwing it on my Droid.

Literally, my experiences with the game began right when you name your happy family. For some bizarre reason, I kept Lucas and Claus as the default names, changed Flint to Chuck (mostly residual memories of all the Flint/Chuck Norris memes when people first started playing the game), changed Boney to Mickee (let's not retread that conversation), and then came Hinawa. Well, one of my favorite bands is They Might Be Giants, and I couldn't think of a decent name to fit with Chuck, so let's just name her after one of their songs. And thus, the happy marriage between Chuck and Ana Ng was born.

According to TVTropes, the reason you can actually name Hinawa is so that you'd name her after your own mother. That way, when she is inevitably killed off, it's supposed to be more impactful. (Note: as of the time I wrote this, that line had disappeared. I'm going off memory here. Ahh, wikis...) Weirdly enough, I must've missed the memo, not that it would've changed that scene. I was surprisingly unphased, if I recall correctly. In fact, if I hadn't finished the game (and thus lose the right to call myself an "Earthbound fan"), I'd probably be saying that the game was more likely to cause tears of frustration due to parts of the game being nearly impossible if I was too underleveled. Thankfully, I did stick it out.

The final fight with The Masked Man was what pushed me over the edge, and it honestly probably had more to do with the stars aligning than anything else. Here I am, radio on, hunkering down against this guy, unable to attack. Then, out of nowhere, the station I tuned into decides to play "Birdhouse in Your Soul". This station never played TMBG before, as far back as I can remember. By some bizarre series of coincidences, the game suddenly started to go all Dark Side of the Rainbow on me. To this day, I do not understand it. Claus dying at the feet of his brother, meanwhile the line "I'm your only friend, I'm not your only friend" starts having a meaning that I know now it shouldn't have.

I'm actually unsure, in retrospect, if it was just the scene alone that got tears going, or if it was the weird synchronicity that seemed to come out of nowhere. But for whatever reason, I can no longer think about that scene without They Might Be Giants playing in my head. I'm sure most of you are going "Cool story, bro", but I don't mind. That was just my experience with the game.