The best guide for EarthBound On Switch is by Nintendo

Final, Earthbound is on. Nintendo added the 1995 RPG to its online offerings earlier this week alongside its NES predecessor, Start Earthbound. New players as well as longtime fans, including the series’ director, Shigesato Itoi, can now enjoy a colorful acid sci-fi journey on a stunning OLED screen wherever they want. But there is only one right way to play this masterpiece, and that is with official EarthBound Player‘S Tutorial next to you. Fortunately, it free and easy to download.

Strategy Guide is a lost art. Good things help you get over a tough boss or figure out a secret you overlooked. The best games give you a whole new way to experience the game they’re all about. Nintendo’s Strategy Guide for EarthBound do both, add a rich context layer to one of these Exciting and heart-warmingly crafted SNES games of all time.

There are made-up newspaper clippings, fictional advertisements, restaurant menus, and photos from real-life locations that have inspired the people in the game. The margins are filled with 3D sculpted enemy designs that show hit points and secret items they can drop after battle. And of course there are the infamous scratch and sniff cards at the end of the tutorial. They look great but smell horrible. The digital version has them but you’ll have to imagine the unique smells for yourself.

These things helped create the guide’s personality, but what makes it such a great addition to the game is the fact that it goes to great lengths to not just explain things to you. EarthBound‘S sprawling dungeon labyrinth are effectively plotted and laid out, but information on how to overcome obstacles or progress the story is provided as clues rather than explicit instructions. The guide pushes you forward, teasing all the interesting places in a new city or land, but without spoiling the intrigue and mystery first. The tutorial tells a story, but it’s an incomplete story until you also play through the relevant parts of the game.

Original print of EarthBound Player‘S Tutorial, the game that comes with the game in the US, is hard to find and costs hundreds of dollars. When I was nine years old, I cut out all my artwork for collage and only scraps were left. I don’t have a Ness time machine to go back in time, but Nintendo has taken the next best thing and published high-resolution scans of the entire tutorial. on its website.

My only concern is that this guide is also not viewable on the Switch. Nintendo points players to it in the console’s newsfeed with a handy QR code, but you’ll still need another device to view it. I want to see Convert Classic Online’s Library Getting better in-game access to memorabilia like this, but better than nothing in the meantime. Especially since that’s the only way you’ll find out the password to enter the secret hideout of Master Belch.