My friend got a copy of Earthbound...

[Anayo]

Yeah, I'm kind of a purist too when it comes to original consoles vs. emulation.

[puke_face]

Yea but its a good way to test and see if you like a game before you buy it, granted it doesn't have the original feeling like the consoles do. You can at least get familiar with the way the game plays and see if its worth the effort of finding it.

[Dakinggamer87]

Sweet.. I wish I was that lucky myself to get it for free. Earthbound is a fun classic title. I also prefer original consoles over emulation but great way to test waters on older titles before looking for them...

[Dylan]

I personally enjoyed Earthbound a lot. Even though it plays a lot like a Dragon Warrior game, in a more general sense it's overflowing with originality. The game is just as fun to watch as it is to play, with quirky and interesting things happening all the time. If you're into RPGs, you'll definitely like this game. The real downside is, of course, the high cost of the game (it rarely goes for less than $50).

Feel free to ignore this sentence if you're a purist, but I think that emulation is a nice way to go with this one.

[Overload]

The only way I'd emulate it is on a DS/GBA flash cart. It just wouldn't be that fun on the computer.

[newt42]

Yea but its a good way to test and see if you like a game before you buy it, granted it doesn't have the original feeling like the consoles do. You can at least get familiar with the way the game plays and see if its worth the effort of finding it.

I only emulate games from the SNES generation and lower. I collect certain games that came out later than that. I collect Game Boy games too, even though they were just as old as the SNES.

[Dylan]

The only way I'd emulate it is on a DS/GBA flash cart. It just wouldn't be that fun on the computer.

I have an SNES usb adapter, and trust me it helps the emulation experience a lot.

[glynnahab]

I'm actually playing through this for the first time on ZSNES on my Xbox. I'm about halfway through, I'd guess. There's no way I could justify spending $75+ for the actual cart - especially when considering the other things I could buy with that money.

The fact that I'm emulating it has worked to my benefit thus far (ha! I just typo'ed the word 'fart' in place of 'far'). The option to speed up the gameplay has been a blessing for situations where I have to retrace my steps or speed up the level-grinding. I'm also taking extra precautions when saving the game - using 2 savestates and copying my save file to multiple files on the game after every session.

That said, I'm enjoying the hell out of this game. Wish I had caught it back in the day.

[Erik_Twice]

I've never played Earthbound but from what everyone says it's supposed to be fantastic. I just can't seem to find a copy for a decent price.

It's a pretty normal RPG so you are not missing anything special. It has a cool , quirky, atmosphere but gameplay-wise it's just a normal RPG. I enjoyed it but it was nothing I had not seen before.