The Same Town Every October

Every October, on the first evening cold enough to need a sweater indoors, I start EarthBound again. I have done this for twelve years. I don’t always finish. I always start.

The game opens at night. A meteorite crashes into the hill above a small town, a boy in pajamas goes out to see what happened, and the whole neighborhood seems to be awake. Within a few minutes you’re walking through the dark with the neighbor’s kid complaining at your side, and the music is doing that thing it does, half lullaby and half jangle, that I would recognize from a single bar.

The ritual

The rules have built up over the years without my really deciding them. I only play in the evenings. I don’t use a guide; I know the way. I let the game run at its own pace, which means letting every character finish talking, even the ones I could recite. And I call home.

Saving in EarthBound means phoning your dad. You never see him. He saves your progress, puts money into your account and, if you have been playing for a long time, suggests you take a break. Every year I find that more touching. When I was younger he was a game mechanic. Now he sounds like a parent who knows exactly what you’re like.

The notebook of Octobers

At the back of my map notebook there’s a page that has nothing to do with maps. It’s a list, one line per year, of where I played and how far I got.

Some lines are short. Rented room, tiny TV, gave up in the desert. Some are longer. Played on the big TV at my parents’ place over a long weekend, finished on Sunday night with everyone else asleep. One just says Didn’t. Bad year. and I’m glad I wrote that one down too.

Reading the list is strange. The game is identical every time: the same towns, the same jokes, the same peculiar enemies in the same places. The only thing that changes is the person holding the controller. Twelve times I’ve walked into the same town, and twelve times I’ve been someone slightly different walking in. It works like a mirror that only shows you the distance between years.

Why this game

I’ve wondered why it’s this game and not one of the others I love. Part of it is that EarthBound feels like a season. It begins at night, under a falling star, and it’s full of small-town evenings, odd neighbors and a gloomy town with a cemetery that I always seem to reach right around Halloween. It feels like the year turning.

Part of it is the music, which Keiichi Suzuki and Hirokazu Tanaka built out of what sounds like every record they ever loved, run through that warm little sound chip I wrote about in June. And part of it, honestly, is that the game is kind. It’s funny without being cruel and sad without being hopeless, and those are good qualities to visit once a year.

The opposite of New Game Plus

Chrono Trigger helped make “New Game+” a familiar idea: finish the game, then start again with your levels and gear carried over, so the second time through is easier and you can see what you missed. My October ritual is the opposite. Nothing carries over except memory. Every year I start at level one, with a cracked bat and the same modest supply of courage.

That’s the point. I don’t want the second playthrough to be easier. I want it to be the same, so that I can see what’s different.

This year

This year is the first time I’m playing it on the kitchen CRT, and the first time with this journal. Last night I walked out of the house in pajamas, found the meteorite and called my dad. He saved my game and told me to be careful. I’m going to try to reach the end before the clocks change, though the list at the back of the notebook suggests I shouldn’t bet on it.

If you have a game like this — one you go back to not to beat it, but to check on it, or to check on yourself — I hope it’s waiting for you somewhere warm. Mine is in the drawer under the television. The phone line is open.