You can use the shyness book on anyone who replies with "..." And "quiet!" In the library. There's like 3 npc's. They have text that I'd bet the vast, vast majority players hasn't seen. When I reported it on starmen over a decade ago, someone in the hacking community was like "oh so THAT'S what that flag does."
@@commanderclaus. Just uploaded a video on my channel. Standard Earthbound NPC dialog stuff :) One other thing I didn't capture in the video is that the librarian also has a reply if you use the book on her before the end of the game (something like "that book is great" or whatever).
Okay, so, when i was a kid, I clearly had too much time on my hands and (I think) I'd seen (or at least knew about) pretty much all of these ... but I don't think I knew about this one. That's neat. Thanks.
In Earthbound, if you try to throw away the "Pak of bubble gum" key item, you get the dialog "Don't spit your gum out. Even if it has lost it's flavor..." which is flavor text in the most literal sense of the word. In MOTHER 1, to ensure the cutscene battle against Teddy goes the way it is suppose to, the game prevents you from triggering the sequence if Ninten is petrified. If you go on stage while petrified, you trigger the dialog "(The crowd becomes restless and upset.) What in the world is that stone with a hat on!" Since there are no enemies that can petrify you anywhere near Valentine, this dialog is pretty rare. Its too bad too, since its one of my favorite random one off lines in the game.
By watching this insignificant video, I had a very fruitful experience that cannot be understood by someone who did not watched this insignificant video
The post-game part feels like a throwback to Dragon Quest 1 where you can explore the whole map with no random encounters and everyone congratulating you. I wish more games did that sort of victory lap.
Sonic Adventure 1 reopens all the levels again after you beat a character's Adventure mode. I think some NPCs probably have new text? In Black Ops 4 when you complete the "boss" on Tag Der Toten, you get to explore a firey, lava covered version of the map with no zombies before you collect the game ending item And while they don't exist, I really wish that the 3rd floor and basement of Luigi's Mansion could be lit up. I also used to wish as a kid that you could visit a completed version of the Bowser's Castle boss level in Paper Mario Sticker Star - Just like how you can visit other completed boss levels/arenas
Princess Remedy in a world of hurt has one of the funnier ones. Since NPC's only trigger a fight once, then are cured, you get their dialogue right after. Instead the post-game lap lets you pick which random NPC to marry. Anyone from the final boss to an undead mummy queen, a fish, a sentient rock, about a hundred randos and you can even walk right back to the start area and smooch the person who sent you on the quest to begin with.
13:46 Don't talk to Porky in the Monotoli building AT ALL until you give the trout yoghurt machine to the maid. Once you're in the Monotoli building to rescue Paula, visit Porky and his dialogue will be like this
The description for the cup of coffee has lived in my head for years and to this day I can’t think about coffee without thinking “I guess it tastes good to adults.”
When the game first came out I grinded levels at the start and was inundated with Cookies. I will never forget how melodramatic the phrasing was of dropping Cookies to free up inventory space: "You abandoned the Cookie..."
if you manage to corrupt your save file, there's a very rare message on the file select, complete with improper formatting. "We're very sorry... but the record of adventure number (number) has been lo st..."
@@blahblah6787 That explains why the English version doesnt have that same oh shoot no oh my god Im so sorry vibe that it has in Japanese Because why would the game be sorry about deleting your quote en quote illegal save
I found an extremely obscure piece of dialogue myself while messing around with the debug menu one day. If you warp back to Moonside after already having completed it, you can beat the Mani Mani statue again and it'll warp you to the basement of Jackie's Cafe just like it does normally, but this time the rat's dialogue will read "I'm lucky I'm a rat. We have such easy lives...". This dialogue is normally inaccessible to the player since you can't re-enter the basement after leaving it, so I was shocked that they even bothered including a dialogue change like this.
Judging by how comprehensive the edge cases are, I'd bet they didn't even test them, they just added dialogue for every conceivable flag and didn't care if it was possible or not to get it in a lot of places, it's covered now either way.
My fav youtube folks do this. Irregular schedule with rare uploads, but banger videos every time. Quality over quantity, and such. Plus they get to live their lives outside youtube.
Great video man! I actually said recently one of the best things about earthbound is you can easily unearth dialogue never before seen on multiple playthroughs
25:22 This dialogue isn't actually unique to this scenario. Mother 1 has a really odd Easter Egg where, if you're facing a party member somehow and use the talk action, you will get a dialogue box containing "What?!?". It's been a long time since I've played Mother, but I believe the easiest way to trigger this is on a rope/ladder. It's a funny thing for the devs to add, though I kind of wish the feature was expanded upon a little bit. Speaking of Mother 1 though, there's a lot of weird niche interactions similar to the ones you talked about in this video, especially surrounding Teddy and his recruitment. Because you aren't actually forced to recruit Teddy at any point, you can skip his interaction and complete the section of Mt. Itoi where he would normally be injured and replaced with Lloyd. Going back and triggering his recruitment after doing this allows you to bring him to the end of the game, at the cost of losing Lloyd permanently. You can also complete the game with a party of just Ninten by teleporting out of the bedroom where Ana temporarily leaves your party for the dance scene. Mother 1 is weirdly non-linear and I'd absolutely recommend checking these things out if you haven't already.
Oh, that's interesting. I knew from editing the game that that dialogue only occurs when speaking to party members, but I didn't know there were other ways to "legally" obtain it.
26:32 hey thanks for the shout-out & credit in the description! This is probably my favorite topic ever...the attention to the tiniest of details in both EarthBound & MOTHER 3 especially is key to why this series has continued to captivate me ever since I first played through it a decade ago. I'm glad to see you shining a spotlight on this tucked away dialogue a lot of players would likely never see otherwise!
Yesterday I was looking at the channel like a famished Victorian peasant, searching for scraps of food, today I open youtube to see a cybershell drop, 11 minutes ago, and I feel like a king. This is what I was made for. This is my destiny
You gotta savor it and space it out until his next upload. Since it'll probably take another 9 months, then that means you can watch 1 minute of this video every 10 days
What an awesome video! I was really happy to see this because I'm actually working on a "Full Dialogue Run" for EarthBound. I've routed up to Dusty Dunes Desert and have uploaded segmented videos of the run so far on my channel. A few things I've discovered in addition to what's in your video: -- The For Sale Sign summons several different NPCs who all have unique dialogue if you refuse to sell them something, and/or try to sell an un-sellable item. -- There's also unique dialogue if you try to use the Exit Mouse right after the For Sale Sign: "If you release the mouse now, it might be stepped on by the approaching customer. So... it's not a good idea to release the mouse now." (mentioned in the video!) -- If you talk to Carpainter before getting the Franklin Badge and he strikes you with lightning, you respawn next to the blue cow, who says: "(You got mooooved here because you gave Mr. Carpainter some lip.)" -- The Runaway Five in Twoson all have unique dialogue if you use the Wad of Bills on them. They also have different things to say if you go backstage after they perform, and Gorgeous (red jacket) will give you the option see an encore. (Wad of Bills interaction mentioned in the video!) -- Ness' dad periodically calls you with a "take a break" message and has alternate dialogue if Ness is dead. He also has a unique third alternative if you're playing Jeff or Poo's sections. -- If your inventory is full when the Mach Pizza man tries to deliver the Zombie Paper, he repeatedly tries to convince you to drop an item. If you refuse, he'll only try to make the delivery again after you go into the Threed Mach Pizza store and step back outside. -- The old lady outside the Department Store in Twoson has custom dialogue that breaks the fourth wall if Jeff has joined and Ness is dead: "My grandson is playing a game called EarthBound. He’s now talking to a plain, old lady in Twoson. I heard that the game has some messages that are just there for fun." -- You mention it in the video, but there are a truly _massive_ number of post-Giygas dialogue changes. More than 100 NPCs change what they say, by my count. A fun one is the lady in the Onett bakery, whose dialogue depends on whether you talked to her all the way back at the start of the game. She says "Isn't it nice to talk to so many people?" and if you spoke to her at least twice before defeating Giygas, she adds: "I gave you some advice when I spoke to you the first time, right?" I could go on about this all day, those are just a few of the examples I thought of. It really feels like these lines amount to a "second script" that most players will only see a bit of, and few if any have ever seen all of. Earthbound a heck of a game for many reasons and I continue to be impressed by it even after 30 years. Thanks again for the really great video! Edit: OK, one more. There is some additional plot detail about the Mani Mani statue that is incredibly easy to miss. Once you've visited Twoson, you can go back to Lier X. Agerate at the bottom of his tunnel and he'll mention selling the statue to someone (Carpainter): "There was a man who insisted that he buy the golden statue, so I sold it to him. It's not that I needed the money... It's just that his unbridled mania affected me. As you know, I'm a sucker for sentiment. Bye, for now." (There's also a "detective from Twoson" in Threed who's investigating the theft of the statue from Happy-Happy headquarters, but I haven't yet figured out when/if he appears.) PS -- I didn't realize you could wedge yourself behind the punk guy to see the alternate door text in Threed, so I'll have to revise my route accordingly! PPS -- I'll check into Pokey's trout-flavored yogurt comment when I get to that part of the route and will be sure to reply here if I figure out how to access it.
Really good list of stuff, MonkeyNess posted on twitter that the way to see that Pokey dialog is to talk to him after Moonside when the maid tells you about the Trout Yogurt, but it must be your first time talking to him. Another really obscure one I learned in the comments here is you can use the shyness book on the NPCs in the onett library who say "..." for some extra dialog.
Full Dialogue Runs can be exhausting. I did one for Grandia 2 when it came out on Dreamcast. Played 52 hours straight with only brief bathroom and snack breaks, and only made it to the 2nd town. Every NPC in that game has multiple dialogue boxes that you have to talk them repeatedly to see them all, AND they get updated with practically every event flag. Since the game is so linear with little chance of ever getting lost, about 95% of NPC dialogue is flavor text.
14:55 I can absolutely tell you why it's in the game -- it's a left-over debugging script. The person who programmed that beam of light effect probably wanted a way to control the values that drove it in real time so they could test how it works -- after all it had to use horizontal interrupts to draw which wasn't as straightforward as drawing regular sprites. I can almost promise you this is the same reason for that "hidden" knuckles animation in S&K. In the Sonic situation, I'd guess that the code was used as a quick way to "audition" the animation for the rest of the team before they ultimately decided to cut it, but then they forgot to remove the debug code.
bingo, there are a number of debugging functions bound to P2 (or certain macros, like B/SELECT+R) but the vast majority are controlled by the debug flag. I assume this one wasn't treated properly as it's in an action script, not regular code.
It's... a bit more complicated than that. As far as I know, there's no intentional debug code added here. There is a debug routine that depends on the Select button, but it normally doesn't affect anything (it switches between two functions that sort sprites by their vertical position, to see which is faster). While verifying all of this info, I found a note someone left about an uninitialized local variable in the function that sets up this effect, used as the Y position for some part of the effect. When you don't hold the Select button, that uninitialized variable reads data that was set by... that sorting function. Normally, by coincidence, the sorting function leaves the value as -1, which makes the windowing effect extend past the top of the screen. But when you hold Select and switch the sorting function, it doesn't write to that variable anymore... And by the time Buzz Buzz appears and starts moving around, other code starts writing values to that location for _its_ local variables, and it starts using those instead. So... yeah it looks like this is more a case of a bug/nasal demons than an intentional feature.
I can't believe you talked about item descriptions and didn't mention the ridiculously overly-detailed descriptions for the Pasta Di Summers and Royal Iced Tea. They even give us lore about extremely obscure characters, "Anna Summers" and "Mr. Y. Todaar" who might be the least-recognisable EarthBound characters I can think of.
Don't forget Beef Jerky: "Recipe for making jerky. Obtain some type of meat, slice it into pieces about a half of an inch thick. Hang the pieces on a laundry line or something like it and leave out in the sun for maybe 6 months... Well, that's what my recipe says."
Discusses going through the raw text dump would require a mental illness. Constantly references the raw text dump in the video. Quality content as always Cybershell.
A cool piece of dialogue I discovered is if you use the diamond on the guy you present your show ticket to in the topolla theater, he’ll say “No kidding…” (This led to using the diamond on every NPC you could talk to in that point in the game) nothing was different.
Love the part where Ness gets all the 7 emeralds and turns into super Ness And that part where Poo will shoo you off only if you stand in a very specific spot Greatest game ever
I actually visited the hint man A LOT because I played earthbound on a phone at my school with very limited internet access. Didn't wanna connect to school wifi so I relied on the game itself guiding me through.
I am also one of the five children who had Earthbound early enough to recognize him in Smash. I think my parents shed a few tears when they bought the box set for Earthbound. (Seriously. The game would have sold better if it were just the cartridge.)
The Hint Man was invaluable to me because my first full play-through was a rental. No packaged player's guide, and little to no internet access in 1995. I went back to him more than a few times and, like OP, also still pay him the occasional visit when playing it today (he has some good dialogue!) even though I could play the entire game blindfolded at this point.
The Mr. Saturn house in Happy Happy Village can actually be accessed if you visit Happy Happy Village after it's not all blue anymore. Far earlier than the postgame.
Your video made me realize why I fell in love with EarthBound when I first rented it from the video store 25+ years ago. It's all this attention to detail, especially in the dialogue. Never before, had I played a game where NPCs would say anything more than one or two lines. In other games, non-plot NPCs would only ever say a bit of information to help you move forward. In Earthbound, so many NPC have so many unique dialogues. This adds flavor and personality to this game, and made me feel like I was adventuring in the real world. Truly a masterpiece.
*Why does no one talk about the Special RARE Snake enemy encounter, that levels you up a massive amount in the beginning in the game?* *Am I the only one that found it? Is it a Japanese Super Famicom exclusive enemy encounter?* *I never find any videos about it!* 😑
25:30 If you move your character just right so that you're facing the one of the other party members, they will say that. This is just a weird way of doing that.
I'm in Japan right now. I shouldn't be watching this when there's so much to see and do. But I am ecstatic about a new upload, especially since it's about earthbound
cybershell is like that cool uncle that only shows up every now and then but always brings cool trinkets and is always a pleasure to have around whenever he does
This game, FF6, Super Metroid, Sonic 3, and Donkey Kong Country in the same year is wild (yeah EarthBound came out in North America in 1995 but shut up)
14:48 It was common practice for developers back in the day to tie debug functionality to the Second Controller Port, can't be certain that's what's happening here but it would be my guess.
The Legends of Localization book on Earthbound is really a masterpiece, cybershell is not misleading you here. Really, any book mato makes on localization is worth a glance. Also, always nice to see someone else who was hyped for Smash 64 because Ness was in it. I was happy to see Link and Pikachu, but you better believe I grinded until I could beat Normal mode without continuing. Great video as always.
@@FederalBulgeInvestigator I recently rediscovered Steven After Not Surviving and died laughing so this is a very opportune time for you to make that connection, thank you
Literally, started playing a couple days ago and made everything Sonic related. Ness: Sonic Paula: Amy Jeff: Tails (Makes sense doesn't it?) Poo: Knuckles (Or "Knucks") Favorite thing: Speed (I'm not very creative.) Favorite food: Chili Dogs (Or "C.Dogs") and the dog is named Cheese
@@LuckyMarathons That was the exact set of party names I picked on my first playthrough of EB back in the 90's. I was a big Sonic fan at the time and it wasn't uncommon for me to name things as something Sonic related but I was surprised how well the Sonic names fit the main party of EB in particular.
The dialog in Lunar Silver Star Story Complete and Eternal Blue Complete have the same trait as Earthbound. I remember being flabbergasted just how many times random characters had new things to say depending on the point in the story. Some of them have entire side plots.
I was thinking the same thing! I remember traveling to out of the way spots just to see if specific peoples dialogues would change after an event. I loved those games, spectacular music and lore.
MOTHER is a series near and dear to my heart - by all accounts, a watershed moment for New Weird gaining a foothold in game design. I think the lavish detail's one thing that's kept me coming back - I've been obsessed since Smash 64 introduced me, and I'm *still* learning new things. I also ended up getting into Twin Peaks through it, and that spiraled into its own lifelong obsession.
An out of context moments from cybershell video got in my recommendations so I decided to watch some of your videos again and coincidentally you had just uploaded a new video, pretty cool
I see someone already explained how Pokey's dialogue is used, but... yeah it's reaaaally obscure. It only triggers if the *first time* you talk to Pokey is _after_ you get the trout yogurt. And only in the SNES/Super Famicom version! It's obscure enough that it actually got removed in the GBA version of the game, making it so that you can't see it with any combination of flags. (That removal doesn't apply to VC versions of the game though.) The meteorite light thing is... kinda weird. The game devs tried optimizing the "sprite sorting" code, which determines which sprites appear on top of which other sprites. So holding the button is supposed to switch to an alternate routine that they hoped was faster but behaves mostly the same way. It didn't end up being appreciably faster in practice, but they never removed the code to switch between them. And the Buzz Buzz effect happens to have an uninitialized variable that gets written to by _one_ of the sorting functions. So when that function doesn't run, random values related to Buzz Buzz's movement replace the value that the one sorting function normally puts there, and the result is the rectangle position getting thrown way off. My personal favorite obscure dialogue is that there's special text for one specific item that you can try to throw away: the Pak of Bubble Gum. *Don't spit your gum out. (A press) Even if it has lost its flavor...* Like, why does that specific key item have different text when you try to throw it away?? A close second I just remembered after posting the comment is this one cop who yawns on the hill in Onett in the beginning of the game, after you've talked to Pokey and you're on your way back home. *Aaaaah--h... If I yawn like this... it looks like I'm goofing off. Aaaaah--h... ...yes, it does...* I didn't remember all of the hint man text so it was neat to see some of those
@@just_add_a_3 Not really, but it seems like something that would be easy for speedrunners to find in general, because Select is one of the many buttons you can press to advance text (it’s treated the same as pressing B in most contexts) and they want to press all the buttons they can to advance text quickly. And personally, I first heard about this from watching an EarthBound speedrunner.
@@phoenixbound5768 Sorry. Just to be clear, I meant to ask if you knew who discovered the specifics about the inner workings of the bug - the technical details about it using the same memory addresses as the sprite sorting algorithm. Or, at the very least, where did you get that information from?
@@just_add_a_3 Oh! Uh, that was me, after reading a disassembly that mentioned the uninitialized variable (Herringway was the one to notice that part, I think, since he maintains the disassembly). After reading the comment about it, I checked out a few of the relevant functions/memory addresses in an emulator with debugging features to confirm the theory. Maybe I should write a more detailed post about it somewhere so that it’s not only explained in a random TH-cam comment and on a Discord server…
Another great Earthbound milestone! If you have other party members other than Jeff use his broken and then fixed items both in and out of battle you get unique text. Thank you very much!!!
The Exit Mouse not being agreeable reminds me of when you try to use Zoom or something in a Dragon Quest game but you're not supposed to leave the area like that, so you're just told a mysterious force prevented Zoom from working
I too am one of the 5 Americans that played earthbound as a child, my sister gave away our cart when we were teenagers though. It was going to be my retirement, oh well
hey cybershell, i just want to say that this video inspired me to actually play EarthBound for once and uhhh ye this is definitely a masterpiece. i first started playing a couple weeks ago and am nearly about to beat the game (im at stonehenge at this point).
![Commodore 64 Longplay [301] Santa's Xmas Caper (EU)](/img/n.gif)
Stepping on my turf, huh?
No way its the funny earthbound TH-camr
Now you have to make a sonic video
You Should make a sonic video
Sonic vs Bubble Monkey boxing match when?
Sonic video now eh?
You can use the shyness book on anyone who replies with "..." And "quiet!" In the library. There's like 3 npc's. They have text that I'd bet the vast, vast majority players hasn't seen. When I reported it on starmen over a decade ago, someone in the hacking community was like "oh so THAT'S what that flag does."
what do they say?
@@commanderclaus. Just uploaded a video on my channel. Standard Earthbound NPC dialog stuff :) One other thing I didn't capture in the video is that the librarian also has a reply if you use the book on her before the end of the game (something like "that book is great" or whatever).
Okay, so, when i was a kid, I clearly had too much time on my hands and (I think) I'd seen (or at least knew about) pretty much all of these ... but I don't think I knew about this one. That's neat. Thanks.
In Earthbound, if you try to throw away the "Pak of bubble gum" key item, you get the dialog "Don't spit your gum out. Even if it has lost it's flavor..." which is flavor text in the most literal sense of the word.
In MOTHER 1, to ensure the cutscene battle against Teddy goes the way it is suppose to, the game prevents you from triggering the sequence if Ninten is petrified. If you go on stage while petrified, you trigger the dialog "(The crowd becomes restless and upset.) What in the world is that stone with a hat on!" Since there are no enemies that can petrify you anywhere near Valentine, this dialog is pretty rare. Its too bad too, since its one of my favorite random one off lines in the game.
"You open a book and lick the page. It tastes delicious. This must be what they meant by flavor text."
"Ness ate the large pizza together!"
this is just me honestly.
I feel called out
I feel.. called about..
*Also, 200th like!*
Doing a Porky Minch cosplay?
By watching this insignificant video, I had a very fruitful experience that cannot be understood by someone who did not watched this insignificant video
This guy gets it
@@RatralsisWhy, is he a bottom? 😂
@@Kamawan0 ...What?
@@jazzerjaw you heard him
@@gabrielreda Nah that's weird bruh 💀💀💀
The post-game part feels like a throwback to Dragon Quest 1 where you can explore the whole map with no random encounters and everyone congratulating you. I wish more games did that sort of victory lap.
Super Mario 64 triple jump also comes to mind
Sonic Adventure 1 reopens all the levels again after you beat a character's Adventure mode. I think some NPCs probably have new text?
In Black Ops 4 when you complete the "boss" on Tag Der Toten, you get to explore a firey, lava covered version of the map with no zombies before you collect the game ending item
And while they don't exist, I really wish that the 3rd floor and basement of Luigi's Mansion could be lit up. I also used to wish as a kid that you could visit a completed version of the Bowser's Castle boss level in Paper Mario Sticker Star - Just like how you can visit other completed boss levels/arenas
Princess Remedy in a world of hurt has one of the funnier ones. Since NPC's only trigger a fight once, then are cured, you get their dialogue right after. Instead the post-game lap lets you pick which random NPC to marry. Anyone from the final boss to an undead mummy queen, a fish, a sentient rock, about a hundred randos and you can even walk right back to the start area and smooch the person who sent you on the quest to begin with.
13:46 Don't talk to Porky in the Monotoli building AT ALL until you give the trout yoghurt machine to the maid. Once you're in the Monotoli building to rescue Paula, visit Porky and his dialogue will be like this
lol. this was just the thing pokey was saying when I was playing earthbound recently. I didn't even realize it was a rare line.
!
I actually just got that dialogue on accident while doing a "one sitting" playthrough (beating the game all in one go)
The description for the cup of coffee has lived in my head for years and to this day I can’t think about coffee without thinking “I guess it tastes good to adults.”
When the game first came out I grinded levels at the start and was inundated with Cookies. I will never forget how melodramatic the phrasing was of dropping Cookies to free up inventory space: "You abandoned the Cookie..."
@@Capnsensible80 RIP For Sale sign.
With added copious amount of suger and cream/poweder, yes.
Hell of it is, It doesn't necessarily even taste good, I'm just a masochist. (And a delivery worker.)
@@MxArgent I guess if you primarily get the cheap stuff, though one gets used to the bitterness.
if you manage to corrupt your save file, there's a very rare message on the file select, complete with improper formatting.
"We're very sorry...
but the record of adventure number (number) has been lo
st..."
@@qtips1719 It's in the text dump
I love how at the end it sounds like the game is falling apart as it's trying to relay the message.
as someone who ran earthbound through a corruptor, this 100% shows and confused the heck out of me the first time i saw it
it also happens when your save games are removed because you've booted up a pirate copy
@@blahblah6787 That explains why the English version doesnt have that same oh shoot no oh my god Im so sorry vibe that it has in Japanese
Because why would the game be sorry about deleting your quote en quote illegal save
I found an extremely obscure piece of dialogue myself while messing around with the debug menu one day. If you warp back to Moonside after already having completed it, you can beat the Mani Mani statue again and it'll warp you to the basement of Jackie's Cafe just like it does normally, but this time the rat's dialogue will read "I'm lucky I'm a rat. We have such easy lives...". This dialogue is normally inaccessible to the player since you can't re-enter the basement after leaving it, so I was shocked that they even bothered including a dialogue change like this.
Judging by how comprehensive the edge cases are, I'd bet they didn't even test them, they just added dialogue for every conceivable flag and didn't care if it was possible or not to get it in a lot of places, it's covered now either way.
@@bluegum6438It's to prevent corruption. If a game shows a text that isn't filled it, it could be a soft lock or corrupt some memory data
- disappears for almost a year
- uploads 30 min random video that YOU KNOW you will watch
- probably disappear again
This is why we love cybershell
@@GlaceTheAce2222
Cybershell is a mysterious being.
This be reminding me of PatMac every time he uploads a video of collectibles from a lot of different series.
The description says a sonic video is coming soon which I can't tell if that's actually true or just a joke
My fav youtube folks do this. Irregular schedule with rare uploads, but banger videos every time. Quality over quantity, and such. Plus they get to live their lives outside youtube.
he also made a new video on his shared channel with bernie, netlore
Great video man! I actually said recently one of the best things about earthbound is you can easily unearth dialogue never before seen on multiple playthroughs
Oh, hey, it's this guy
unearth the dialogue, eh?
Out of nowhere, appears another of my favorite hidden content explorers.
Cybershell is slowly turning into a mother……
TH-camr after that monkeyness colab.
It's because the Earth is blue, round and cool like Sonic. It's been foreshadowed for years.
@@MegadeathAdamswho else is cool blue and round? Thats right, sans, sonic = sans!
@@spitymatt5277no it’s goku
>Cybershell is slowly turning into a mother
i wish
@@spitymatt5277Sans = Unkillable.
25:22 This dialogue isn't actually unique to this scenario. Mother 1 has a really odd Easter Egg where, if you're facing a party member somehow and use the talk action, you will get a dialogue box containing "What?!?". It's been a long time since I've played Mother, but I believe the easiest way to trigger this is on a rope/ladder. It's a funny thing for the devs to add, though I kind of wish the feature was expanded upon a little bit.
Speaking of Mother 1 though, there's a lot of weird niche interactions similar to the ones you talked about in this video, especially surrounding Teddy and his recruitment. Because you aren't actually forced to recruit Teddy at any point, you can skip his interaction and complete the section of Mt. Itoi where he would normally be injured and replaced with Lloyd. Going back and triggering his recruitment after doing this allows you to bring him to the end of the game, at the cost of losing Lloyd permanently. You can also complete the game with a party of just Ninten by teleporting out of the bedroom where Ana temporarily leaves your party for the dance scene. Mother 1 is weirdly non-linear and I'd absolutely recommend checking these things out if you haven't already.
Oh, that's interesting. I knew from editing the game that that dialogue only occurs when speaking to party members, but I didn't know there were other ways to "legally" obtain it.
That Teddy fact just blew my mind, I had no idea.
Mother 1 is so underrated. And cool. It’s a bit unfortunate that due to Mother 1 Encore becoming more linear, this likely won’t be possible there.
oh my god he made his favorite thing "Sonic"
Why is no one replying to this? Well, I’ll take it upon myself then.
Yeah he did indeed do that. Astute observation.
"PK Sonic" sounds like it could just be a real attack tbh
26:32 hey thanks for the shout-out & credit in the description! This is probably my favorite topic ever...the attention to the tiniest of details in both EarthBound & MOTHER 3 especially is key to why this series has continued to captivate me ever since I first played through it a decade ago. I'm glad to see you shining a spotlight on this tucked away dialogue a lot of players would likely never see otherwise!
hell yeah.
Yesterday I was looking at the channel like a famished Victorian peasant, searching for scraps of food, today I open youtube to see a cybershell drop, 11 minutes ago, and I feel like a king. This is what I was made for. This is my destiny
You gotta savor it and space it out until his next upload. Since it'll probably take another 9 months, then that means you can watch 1 minute of this video every 10 days
@@cudgle1633 The mental image of someone actually doing that is funnier than it should be
It took a significant portion of my life to realize the bicycle shop Punk-Sure, was a reference to This Charming Man by the Smiths.
You've now given me actually new information on ine if my favorite games, and I love you for it
What an awesome video! I was really happy to see this because I'm actually working on a "Full Dialogue Run" for EarthBound. I've routed up to Dusty Dunes Desert and have uploaded segmented videos of the run so far on my channel. A few things I've discovered in addition to what's in your video:
-- The For Sale Sign summons several different NPCs who all have unique dialogue if you refuse to sell them something, and/or try to sell an un-sellable item.
-- There's also unique dialogue if you try to use the Exit Mouse right after the For Sale Sign: "If you release the mouse now, it might be stepped on by the approaching customer. So... it's not a good idea to release the mouse now." (mentioned in the video!)
-- If you talk to Carpainter before getting the Franklin Badge and he strikes you with lightning, you respawn next to the blue cow, who says: "(You got mooooved here because you gave Mr. Carpainter some lip.)"
-- The Runaway Five in Twoson all have unique dialogue if you use the Wad of Bills on them. They also have different things to say if you go backstage after they perform, and Gorgeous (red jacket) will give you the option see an encore. (Wad of Bills interaction mentioned in the video!)
-- Ness' dad periodically calls you with a "take a break" message and has alternate dialogue if Ness is dead. He also has a unique third alternative if you're playing Jeff or Poo's sections.
-- If your inventory is full when the Mach Pizza man tries to deliver the Zombie Paper, he repeatedly tries to convince you to drop an item. If you refuse, he'll only try to make the delivery again after you go into the Threed Mach Pizza store and step back outside.
-- The old lady outside the Department Store in Twoson has custom dialogue that breaks the fourth wall if Jeff has joined and Ness is dead: "My grandson is playing a game called EarthBound. He’s now talking to a plain, old lady in Twoson. I heard that the game has some messages that are just there for fun."
-- You mention it in the video, but there are a truly _massive_ number of post-Giygas dialogue changes. More than 100 NPCs change what they say, by my count. A fun one is the lady in the Onett bakery, whose dialogue depends on whether you talked to her all the way back at the start of the game. She says "Isn't it nice to talk to so many people?" and if you spoke to her at least twice before defeating Giygas, she adds: "I gave you some advice when I spoke to you the first time, right?"
I could go on about this all day, those are just a few of the examples I thought of. It really feels like these lines amount to a "second script" that most players will only see a bit of, and few if any have ever seen all of. Earthbound a heck of a game for many reasons and I continue to be impressed by it even after 30 years. Thanks again for the really great video!
Edit: OK, one more. There is some additional plot detail about the Mani Mani statue that is incredibly easy to miss. Once you've visited Twoson, you can go back to Lier X. Agerate at the bottom of his tunnel and he'll mention selling the statue to someone (Carpainter): "There was a man who insisted that he buy the golden statue, so I sold it to him. It's not that I needed the money... It's just that his unbridled mania affected me. As you know, I'm a sucker for sentiment. Bye, for now." (There's also a "detective from Twoson" in Threed who's investigating the theft of the statue from Happy-Happy headquarters, but I haven't yet figured out when/if he appears.)
PS -- I didn't realize you could wedge yourself behind the punk guy to see the alternate door text in Threed, so I'll have to revise my route accordingly!
PPS -- I'll check into Pokey's trout-flavored yogurt comment when I get to that part of the route and will be sure to reply here if I figure out how to access it.
Love the dedication here! So Cool.
The Exit Mouse and Wad of Bills bits are mentioned in the video.
@@Pirateywareoh, I rewatched and you're totally right! I'll make a note in the OP~
Really good list of stuff, MonkeyNess posted on twitter that the way to see that Pokey dialog is to talk to him after Moonside when the maid tells you about the Trout Yogurt, but it must be your first time talking to him. Another really obscure one I learned in the comments here is you can use the shyness book on the NPCs in the onett library who say "..." for some extra dialog.
Full Dialogue Runs can be exhausting. I did one for Grandia 2 when it came out on Dreamcast. Played 52 hours straight with only brief bathroom and snack breaks, and only made it to the 2nd town. Every NPC in that game has multiple dialogue boxes that you have to talk them repeatedly to see them all, AND they get updated with practically every event flag. Since the game is so linear with little chance of ever getting lost, about 95% of NPC dialogue is flavor text.
14:55 I can absolutely tell you why it's in the game -- it's a left-over debugging script. The person who programmed that beam of light effect probably wanted a way to control the values that drove it in real time so they could test how it works -- after all it had to use horizontal interrupts to draw which wasn't as straightforward as drawing regular sprites. I can almost promise you this is the same reason for that "hidden" knuckles animation in S&K. In the Sonic situation, I'd guess that the code was used as a quick way to "audition" the animation for the rest of the team before they ultimately decided to cut it, but then they forgot to remove the debug code.
bingo, there are a number of debugging functions bound to P2 (or certain macros, like B/SELECT+R) but the vast majority are controlled by the debug flag. I assume this one wasn't treated properly as it's in an action script, not regular code.
It's... a bit more complicated than that. As far as I know, there's no intentional debug code added here. There is a debug routine that depends on the Select button, but it normally doesn't affect anything (it switches between two functions that sort sprites by their vertical position, to see which is faster).
While verifying all of this info, I found a note someone left about an uninitialized local variable in the function that sets up this effect, used as the Y position for some part of the effect. When you don't hold the Select button, that uninitialized variable reads data that was set by... that sorting function. Normally, by coincidence, the sorting function leaves the value as -1, which makes the windowing effect extend past the top of the screen. But when you hold Select and switch the sorting function, it doesn't write to that variable anymore... And by the time Buzz Buzz appears and starts moving around, other code starts writing values to that location for _its_ local variables, and it starts using those instead.
So... yeah it looks like this is more a case of a bug/nasal demons than an intentional feature.
Like the MegaMan 3 debug buttons?
I don't know what's more depressing; the fact that I knew 90% of this stuff already, or the fact that there was still that 10% I didn't know.
why is this depressing
@@cloverkip you clearly aren't a MOTHER freak like the rest of us kid. You wouldn't understand oh sweet summer child.
@@cloverkip i think that was self-deprecation. the suggestion is she's obsessive.
I can't believe you talked about item descriptions and didn't mention the ridiculously overly-detailed descriptions for the Pasta Di Summers and Royal Iced Tea. They even give us lore about extremely obscure characters, "Anna Summers" and "Mr. Y. Todaar" who might be the least-recognisable EarthBound characters I can think of.
Don't forget Beef Jerky: "Recipe for making jerky. Obtain some type of meat, slice it into pieces about a half of an inch thick. Hang the pieces on a laundry line or something like it and leave out in the sun for maybe 6 months... Well, that's what my recipe says."
I remember that description loll
Discusses going through the raw text dump would require a mental illness.
Constantly references the raw text dump in the video.
Quality content as always Cybershell.
Same energy as "I just finished a full rewatch of sonic underground" after saying he has better things to do than watch a childrens cartoon
@@HalfDuckrewatching Sonic Underground over watching Sonic Boom once is insane
A cool piece of dialogue I discovered is if you use the diamond on the guy you present your show ticket to in the topolla theater, he’ll say “No kidding…”
(This led to using the diamond on every NPC you could talk to in that point in the game) nothing was different.
Love the part where Ness gets all the 7 emeralds and turns into super Ness
And that part where Poo will shoo you off only if you stand in a very specific spot
Greatest game ever
this is the kinda video i want for all games. obscure stuff no one usually sees. cool!
I actually visited the hint man A LOT because I played earthbound on a phone at my school with very limited internet access. Didn't wanna connect to school wifi so I relied on the game itself guiding me through.
I am also one of the five children who had Earthbound early enough to recognize him in Smash. I think my parents shed a few tears when they bought the box set for Earthbound.
(Seriously. The game would have sold better if it were just the cartridge.)
and if the magazines didnt advertise it so badly
I guess the marketers were really concerned that people wouldn't really _get_ an RPG and would get stuck.
HOLY SHIT A CYBERSHELL VIDEO ON EARTHBOUND I'M SO HAPPY RN
I ralphed, cyber'd, and gooned all at once
So hyped
He has a full playthrough on his stream archive channel.
The Hint Man was invaluable to me because my first full play-through was a rental. No packaged player's guide, and little to no internet access in 1995. I went back to him more than a few times and, like OP, also still pay him the occasional visit when playing it today (he has some good dialogue!) even though I could play the entire game blindfolded at this point.
you having earthbound as a kid and recognizing ness in smash bros 64 makes so much sense
The Mr. Saturn house in Happy Happy Village can actually be accessed if you visit Happy Happy Village after it's not all blue anymore. Far earlier than the postgame.
Well I'll be damned, you're right. It's still locked after defeating Carpainter, but if you come back after Threed it will be unlocked.
Your video made me realize why I fell in love with EarthBound when I first rented it from the video store 25+ years ago.
It's all this attention to detail, especially in the dialogue. Never before, had I played a game where NPCs would say anything more than one or two lines. In other games, non-plot NPCs would only ever say a bit of information to help you move forward. In Earthbound, so many NPC have so many unique dialogues. This adds flavor and personality to this game, and made me feel like I was adventuring in the real world.
Truly a masterpiece.
*Why does no one talk about the Special RARE Snake enemy encounter, that levels you up a massive amount in the beginning in the game?*
*Am I the only one that found it? Is it a Japanese Super Famicom exclusive enemy encounter?*
*I never find any videos about it!* 😑
that's not a thing. that's never been a thing. if it was, it would've been documented already
@@sweetypuss They're probably confusing it with Mother 1 with the red snake enemies, though those show up a lot later in the game so it's whatever
out of anything i expected today i didnt expect these two things:
1. cybershell coming back
2. cybershell making an earthbound video
A NPC asking where the sequel of Earthbound is?
That's some meta foreshadowing!
this video releasing right after i finished a mother 1 replay is like THE sign i gotta replay earthbound
absolutely loved the vid'
Strangest sonic vid yet. I’d say earthbound is the most obscure sonic game. I would commit crimes for cybershell.
This has epic RAWR XD energy
Pasta de Summers.
It is the item with the longest description in the game. Its like an essay.
glad I got this video recommended, the mention of Monkeyness was also very cool!
With this video you made me love Earthbound even more. Bravo, sir.
25:30 If you move your character just right so that you're facing the one of the other party members, they will say that. This is just a weird way of doing that.
My favorite channel. Holy shit its christmas when this guy uploads
congrats on 300k cybershell been here since the Sonic the Hedgehog LP days
I've never been a huge Earthbound/Mother fan but there is no denying how thought-through and hyperdetailed it is in its construction
I'm in Japan right now. I shouldn't be watching this when there's so much to see and do. But I am ecstatic about a new upload, especially since it's about earthbound
A video on Earthbound? This topic is mega awesome.
one of the few TH-camrs i still get excited to see an upload from!
I love the idea of ninten just absolutely flipping out when he sees a party member and the npc clip
Welcome back! Haven't watched the video yet but knowing the absolute bangers you've put out in the past I'm sure this is a triumphant return.
9:38 Oh my God. I’ve been playing this game for years and only just realized it has “french fry” in the name. I just thought it was a pan from France.
...Oooooh.
Bless you for uploading sar
cybershell is like that cool uncle that only shows up every now and then but always brings cool trinkets and is always a pleasure to have around whenever he does
Awesome timing because I was rewatching your content
I saw a notification for this and audibly yelled "OH MY GOD!"
Papyrus-flavored comment
Let's fuckin' go Been waiting for the next in the extended Cybershell series.
Happy 30th Anniversary to EarthBound!
NO. It's not 30 years old. **sighhhhhh**
(I mean yes it is, but I don't want it to be, because that means I am OLD, or whatever).
About a month off, but you’ve got the spirit!
This game, FF6, Super Metroid, Sonic 3, and Donkey Kong Country in the same year is wild (yeah EarthBound came out in North America in 1995 but shut up)
@@liammcnicholas918 wait which part of sonic 3?
@@generallyunimportant Yes
Hell yeah a Cybershell vid on Earthbound, love your stuff dude!
this video is mega awesome
Cybershell I missed you so much, glad you’re back and I will be patiently awaiting the next upload in 2 years
It's been nine months. Someone could've gotten pregnant since ur last video and by now they would've given birth. Let that sink in dude
Cybershell had to take time off for his pregnancy, be sensitive.
No wonder he's covering Mother
@@dragoknighte48his own little chao
Literally my sister and I don't know who 😰
@@mylesjohnston7259 your sister and me
hell fucking yes, i always love learning new stuff about my favorite series :]
The Stoic Club line made me spit out my water
So obscure it passed by the censors!
Thankyou for this interesting and informative video that you made specifically for me and beamed directly into my brain.
14:48 It was common practice for developers back in the day to tie debug functionality to the Second Controller Port, can't be certain that's what's happening here but it would be my guess.
I'm loving all these earthbound videos people are making right now
you got me with not knowing all the mario rpg secrets, but you wont catch me with earthbound
got me on the first hit
No one uses the Hint Man, huh?
This is the kind of videos I subscribe for, thanks Cybershell! :D
I just now learned that you don’t need to fight Everdread. Huh.
Conversely, I just learned that you can fight Everdred.
I didn't know it was optional until I see a earthbound all boosted vid
amazing video
Our yearly video is finally here W
LOVED THE VIDEO! INTERESTING AND INFORMATIVE
"You can't *play* a play"
As a theatre actor, I resemble that remark!
The Legends of Localization book on Earthbound is really a masterpiece, cybershell is not misleading you here. Really, any book mato makes on localization is worth a glance. Also, always nice to see someone else who was hyped for Smash 64 because Ness was in it. I was happy to see Link and Pikachu, but you better believe I grinded until I could beat Normal mode without continuing.
Great video as always.
"I think a lot of the item descriptions go unread by most players"
People who are trained to try and understand Souls lore:
Rare and obscure dialogue heard in real life when Earthbound was new: "Me and all of my friends love Earthbound."
A child could have been developing and birthed between this and the last upload lol
I like to believe that every time cybershell releases a new video, he gets so tired that he falls down the stairs and goes into and 8 month coma.
Ness is basically Human Sonic
*NESS stands for New Era Sonic SOS, just like SANS stands for Steven After Not Surviving.*
Hot chick heaven
@@FederalBulgeInvestigator I recently rediscovered Steven After Not Surviving and died laughing so this is a very opportune time for you to make that connection, thank you
Literally, started playing a couple days ago and made everything Sonic related.
Ness: Sonic
Paula: Amy
Jeff: Tails (Makes sense doesn't it?)
Poo: Knuckles (Or "Knucks")
Favorite thing: Speed (I'm not very creative.)
Favorite food: Chili Dogs (Or "C.Dogs")
and the dog is named Cheese
@@LuckyMarathons That was the exact set of party names I picked on my first playthrough of EB back in the 90's. I was a big Sonic fan at the time and it wasn't uncommon for me to name things as something Sonic related but I was surprised how well the Sonic names fit the main party of EB in particular.
Great video. I loved this.
The dialog in Lunar Silver Star Story Complete and Eternal Blue Complete have the same trait as Earthbound. I remember being flabbergasted just how many times random characters had new things to say depending on the point in the story. Some of them have entire side plots.
I was thinking the same thing! I remember traveling to out of the way spots just to see if specific peoples dialogues would change after an event. I loved those games, spectacular music and lore.
MOTHER is a series near and dear to my heart - by all accounts, a watershed moment for New Weird gaining a foothold in game design. I think the lavish detail's one thing that's kept me coming back - I've been obsessed since Smash 64 introduced me, and I'm *still* learning new things.
I also ended up getting into Twin Peaks through it, and that spiraled into its own lifelong obsession.
EarthBound really do be rare and obscure in every possible way. Great vid!
Please please stay back bro, I need you right now more than ever!! Love you man, you make my day brighter when you upload
Don't just move on from 17:48 like didn't all see that your favorite thing was Sonic. How embarrassing!
Appreciate all the work that went into this.
Welcome back, Mr. Shell!
An out of context moments from cybershell video got in my recommendations so I decided to watch some of your videos again and coincidentally you had just uploaded a new video, pretty cool
I see someone already explained how Pokey's dialogue is used, but... yeah it's reaaaally obscure. It only triggers if the *first time* you talk to Pokey is _after_ you get the trout yogurt. And only in the SNES/Super Famicom version! It's obscure enough that it actually got removed in the GBA version of the game, making it so that you can't see it with any combination of flags. (That removal doesn't apply to VC versions of the game though.)
The meteorite light thing is... kinda weird. The game devs tried optimizing the "sprite sorting" code, which determines which sprites appear on top of which other sprites. So holding the button is supposed to switch to an alternate routine that they hoped was faster but behaves mostly the same way. It didn't end up being appreciably faster in practice, but they never removed the code to switch between them. And the Buzz Buzz effect happens to have an uninitialized variable that gets written to by _one_ of the sorting functions. So when that function doesn't run, random values related to Buzz Buzz's movement replace the value that the one sorting function normally puts there, and the result is the rectangle position getting thrown way off.
My personal favorite obscure dialogue is that there's special text for one specific item that you can try to throw away: the Pak of Bubble Gum. *Don't spit your gum out. (A press) Even if it has lost its flavor...* Like, why does that specific key item have different text when you try to throw it away??
A close second I just remembered after posting the comment is this one cop who yawns on the hill in Onett in the beginning of the game, after you've talked to Pokey and you're on your way back home. *Aaaaah--h... If I yawn like this... it looks like I'm goofing off. Aaaaah--h... ...yes, it does...*
I didn't remember all of the hint man text so it was neat to see some of those
Do you know who discovered the meteorite thing?
@@just_add_a_3 Not really, but it seems like something that would be easy for speedrunners to find in general, because Select is one of the many buttons you can press to advance text (it’s treated the same as pressing B in most contexts) and they want to press all the buttons they can to advance text quickly. And personally, I first heard about this from watching an EarthBound speedrunner.
@@phoenixbound5768 Sorry. Just to be clear, I meant to ask if you knew who discovered the specifics about the inner workings of the bug - the technical details about it using the same memory addresses as the sprite sorting algorithm. Or, at the very least, where did you get that information from?
@@just_add_a_3 Oh! Uh, that was me, after reading a disassembly that mentioned the uninitialized variable (Herringway was the one to notice that part, I think, since he maintains the disassembly). After reading the comment about it, I checked out a few of the relevant functions/memory addresses in an emulator with debugging features to confirm the theory.
Maybe I should write a more detailed post about it somewhere so that it’s not only explained in a random TH-cam comment and on a Discord server…
Another great Earthbound milestone! If you have other party members other than Jeff use his broken and then fixed items both in and out of battle you get unique text. Thank you very much!!!
The Exit Mouse not being agreeable reminds me of when you try to use Zoom or something in a Dragon Quest game but you're not supposed to leave the area like that, so you're just told a mysterious force prevented Zoom from working
Using Zoom in Heroes causes you to hit the ceiling very hard.
Bro I just finished Earthbound, this video couldn't have come at a better time
I too am one of the 5 Americans that played earthbound as a child, my sister gave away our cart when we were teenagers though. It was going to be my retirement, oh well
>"Try placing a call to the Strip... ooops! sorry, I mean the Stotic Club
Sensible chuckle
There's actually special dialogue if Ness' dad calls you while playing as Jeff!
Damn, a Cybershell video on a series I've never played. Time to go download the entire Mother series so I can watch it
Cybershell and Earthbound a second time was not on my bingo card for this year
hey cybershell, i just want to say that this video inspired me to actually play EarthBound for once and uhhh ye this is definitely a masterpiece. i first started playing a couple weeks ago and am nearly about to beat the game (im at stonehenge at this point).
beat the game a couple days ago (december 3). i love this game now and will be replaying earthbound probably on a yearly basis now. Such a great game!
I recently played an Earthbound Rom Hack called Hallow's End. It was awesome. I would definitely recommend it.
The Mysterious Mine is pretty good, too.
13:50 NO. WAY. In animal crossing new leaf "Trout flavoured Yogourt" is one of the reset moles main lines.
I CANNOT believe that is in game