is a video-only ROM hack of EarthBound (1994) by Lumpy Touch and BigSharkZ, published on July 31st, 2022. Though technically an Analog Horror video based on the game, most of the video takes place using direct gameplay footage.The story goes that before the infamous marketing campaign for EarthBound in North America, Nintendo of America attempted a different approach to cultivating an audience for the game. To that end, they commissioned a Darker and Edgier prequel minisode to try and woo over the different tastes of the American populace. The cartridge containing a feature-complete build of this story was lost and forgotten... until now.
Within the cartridge itself, the game's plot follows Buzz Buzz right before the events of the main story, traveling back in time from the future to find Ness. Unfortunately, BuzzBound posits that he unintentionally set the arrival date a few weeks too late before he managed to jump to the correct date as in canon, forcing him to bear witness to the true horror of Giygas's invasion.
A pseudo-sequel by BigSharkZ, Shadows of Giygas, was released on August 4th, 2024, which instead tackles the question of "what if Buzz lost?".
Two years after the recovery of the original BuzzBound cartridge, another collector comes forth with footage pulled from a new build of the game, only to disappear shortly thereafter following complaints of physical afflictions rumored to have come from the game itself. Though the game doesn't appear to be haunted per se, this new build is soon discovered to have had a much higher degree of effort and detail put into it than the previous one, being closer in line with the stylistic choices of the original EarthBound and changing the plot significantly.
Due to its short-form nature, all spoilers for the original video have been unmarked. It is strongly advised to watch the video in its entirety before proceeding.
Tropes:
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General
- American Kirby Is Hardcore: In-universe, the game was designed to help sell the serious parts of EarthBound's story to American audiences. It wasn't meant to be, probably because it worked a bit too well.
- After the End: Takes place after Giygas has already ravaged the Earth.
- Apocalypse How: Class 6. Most of life on Earth was extinguished by Giygas and his forces, replaced with aliens and horrific mutants. Only Poo and a lone Mr. Saturn are confirmed to have survived.
- Body Horror: The few "survivors" of Giygas's invasion have been mutated into unspeakable monstrosities, some of which have been gifted with Ness's PSI. Regular humans can't even comprehend half the things they do to try and swat Buzz.
- Break the Cutie: Ness, being turned into Giygas's puppet, projecting psychic images of his home and family over what actually remains of it in a subconsious and vain attempt to pretend that everything is still the way it always was, and what's left of his psyche constantly crying out for Paula underneath Giygas's influence.
- Conditioned to Accept Horror: Having actually lived in the Bad Future created by Giygas, Buzz has no reaction to the mutants or their incomprehensible attacks, and is more frustrated than disturbed by their attempts to strike him down.
- Darker and Edgier: While certainly not out of the realm of possibility for the Mother series's storyline, the game was designed in-universe to have a grittier and more horrific feel to appeal to American audiences, and does this by actually bringing some of the more disturbing implications of the series's storytelling directly into the limelight — something that, in the real world, spooked even series creator Shigesato Itoi.
- Demonic Possession: Giygas takes control of Ness in order to seize his psionic potential for himself. Buzz notes that thanks to their symbiosis, the very idea of Ness permeates the entire planet's psychosphere.
- Eldritch Location: Ness' House appears normal on the outside, but as soon as Buzz enters it turns into a twisting, nonsensical maze of corridors and caves littered with bits of furniture. Implied to be the result of Ness, struggling under Giygas' control, reforming the house into something he remembers in a desperate attempt to pretend that nothing has changed.
- Gaiden Game: In-universe, BuzzBound was meant to be one of these, as the build found in the original can be completed in under 15 minutes.
- Nothing Is Scarier: Both builds contain content that's not explored by their respective players, leaving many rooms, environmental descriptions, and enemies up to the viewer's sick imaginations. This is most noticeable in the playthrough for the first build, where the player essentially blows through the game without investigating most of the area. The second build's playthrough shows more of the invaded Onett but simultaneously teases a selection menu for "invaded" variations of the game's other locations, which are fittingly not shown.
Original
- Foregone Conclusion: As the game is a prequel, Buzz will make the jump to the correct date and teach Ness PSI before Giygas can get to him first, only for Buzz himself to be swatted by Porky's mother anyways.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: When Buzz enters Ness' house for the first time, it appears to be totally normal, with Ness' mother even welcoming Buzz inside and inviting him to dinner as though nothing is happening. It's only after Buzz angers her by using the phone and defeats her in battle that it's shown to all be an illusion - the result of Ness subconsciously denying the horror around him - with Ness' real mom having been transformed into a maddened monstrosity.
- Madness Mantra: Ness' mom, in her 'true' mutated form, is constantly calling out for her son to come get his dinner, and when Buzz finally runs into her she is reduced to screaming "EAT IT EAT IT EAT IT EAT IT EAT IT!"
- Mercy Kill: Buzz orders the Apple of Enlightenment to crush Ness's body, which instantly kills him but also frees him from Giygas's control.
- Mythology Gag:
- Buzz Buzz's appearance in cinematics and his communications with the Apple are based on an old player's manual that was only published in Japan.
- When Giygas-through-Ness tries to jump Buzz, Ness turns into an Angelic Abomination styled after the unused backgrounds intended to represent Lucas's visions of the Masked Man in the original cut of Mother 3's ending.
- Shout-Out: The form that Tracy and King take after merging into a human/dog chimera is reminiscent of Nina Tucker and Alexander.
Shadows of Giygas
- Adaptation Expansion: Triple the length of BuzzBound and explores several encounters and lore implications left unseen in the original. It's possible this may be exactly why things are worse off here, as it naturally gives Giygas more time to do his things while Buzz is exploring and fighting.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: Pokey isn't Giygas's right-hand man here. In fact, he's one of his many victims in this timeline, turning into multiple "Neglected Shadows" that roam endlessly. What's implied to be his final thoughts are of him apologizing to Ness.
- Adaptational Skill:
- Due to Giygas's influence, PSI Rockin is available to his servants, who have of course rechristened it after their own favorite things and ways of fighting.
- Starman Prime carries and knows how to use the Sword of Kings, an item that once belonged to his brethren in the present.
- Affectionate Parody:
- The entire sequence with the effects of the Instant Revitalizing Device is a pastiche of bad video game Creepypastas that rely on death (without extra context) and blood-red effects for cheap scares.
- Likewise, the sequence with the Giygaspawn's "Misery Attack" crashing the game to a blood-red anti-piracy screen with Giygas in the background and a siren playing is a homage to the "scary Anti-Piracy screen" genre of videos that were popular in 2020-2021.
- Adaptational Villainy: The Happy Happyists. In the EarthBound they were a silly cult, and while they kidnapped a little girl to sacrifice her/make her their high priestess, their religion and obsession with the color blue was Played for Laughs and they were defeated by Ness fairly early in the story. Here they successfully spread their influence beyond their village, actually succeed in killing Paula, and play a crucial role in Giygas's invasion. It's justified in that prolonged exposure to the Mani-Mani Statue is likely the source of their influence.
- Alternate Universe: Starman Prime slips early on that the story's events take place in another dimension within the greater Mother universe (akin to the possibility that Porky had to jump between dimensions to get to the Nowhere Islands in Mother 3), meaning that if someone with the means to cross those boundaries from the original franchise continuity became aware of the BuzzBound universe, they could theoretically travel there like Starman Prime did.
- Arc Words: "I miss you," repeated ad nauseum by the last vestiges of surviving humanity within Paula, Ness, and Giygas. It also serves as an Ironic Echo to the lyrics of "Smiles and Tears," which originally played in the ending of the original EarthBound after Ness had defeated Giygas.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Giygas fully merges with Ness, his goons destroy the Apple of Enlightenment, and Buzz Buzz is dissected to Giygas's extreme delight. The rest of Earth is turned to stone and flesh the same way Onett was.
- Bait-and-Switch: Late in the video, the game's UI suddenly turns blood-red, the projection of Ness Buzz had been carrying around becomes skinned, Buzz's name turns to "DEAD" with his stats zeroed out, and all items become "Undefined" (except for the Sound Stone, which becomes "Null" and briefly KOs Buzz when used.) It's straight out of a generic video game Creepypasta... until it turns out to be the result of a nearby machine dulling Buzz's senses, which he promptly smashes.
- Better to Die than Be Killed: The first sign things are circling the drain faster than the original BuzzBound is when Picky tricks Buzz Buzz into entering Ness' house alone before shooting himself to prevent Giygas from turning him into another mutant.
- Break the Cutie:
- Picky, the nicest person in the Minch family, is bloodied and battered when Buzz Buzz finds him cowering in Liar's shack, begging for his life after mistaking Buzz Buzz for another mutant. Then when he helps Buzz Buzz to Ness's house, he shoots himself.
- Paula holds on to her humanity purely out of spite for Giygas and explicitly states she is able to pass down PSI Fire as a spark of vengeance, probably for taking Ness, indicating her psyche had already been shattered once before being melted down for resources.
- Call-Forward: With the entire EarthBound cast dead sans Poo and the Saturn Village, humanity's last hope turns to the Dark Dragon.
- Cerebus Retcon: In-Universe. The Happy Happyists were a weird and silly cult that worshiped the color blue and were defeated by Ness fairly early in EarthBound. Here? They're a full-blown Apocalypse Cult that serves to spread the influence of Giygas and actually succeeds in doing so.
- Darker and Edgier: The whole series is this as mentioned under General, but this installment manages to be this trope even compared to the original. While Buzz Buzz at least manages to escape and travel back to the timeframe of EarthBound proper in the original, here he straight-up dies to Ness/Giygas, leaving him to take over the rest of the Earth and possibly the universe. Even before that, Picky is found as one of the few survivors of Giygas's invasion, who attacks the mutants with his dad's handgun and later kills himself with it, the mutants are more grotesque than in the original, Happy Happyism is implied to have taken over, and we see pieces of the demo that border on full-on Creepypasta.
- Demoted to Extra: Ness' mom and the Tracy/King chimera. In the original, they made up a majority of the enemy encounters, here they only make a brief cameo in one of the many rooms of Ness' 'house' before being evaded, and the initial encounter with the illusion of his mom's human self is skipped over entirely (justified as Picky points it out to Buzz Buzz before entering the house, which didn't happen in the original).
- Evil Is Not a Toy: Pokey, who signed on with Giygas and took advantage of his power for his own personal vendetta against Ness in the main timeline, arguably of his own volition, is reduced to multiple Living Shadows whose last thoughts are of regret, apologizing to Ness.
- Fate Worse than Death:
- Ness was really given a shitty hand here. He was at least Mercy Killed in the original, but here he's almost completely possessed by Giygas, destroys the world on his behalf, and tears Buzz Buzz limb from limb. What makes it worse is that it's implied that there's a small piece of Ness that's still in there and Forced to Watch the horrible deeds he's committing, all while the only coherent thought he can form is "I miss you", presumably a desperate cry to Paula for help.
- In the end, Buzz Buzz fails in his mission to defeat Giygas, who goes above and beyond in tormenting him following his defeat. Giygas traps Buzz Buzz in a psychic bubble and repeatedly slams him into the ground, tears off his wings, uses his psychic abilities to crush his legs and tear off his arms, drives him to madness, rips out his heart and eats it, before finally consuming his soul so that he is a part of Giygas. In the end, Buzz Buzz becomes a part of the very being he swore to destroy.
- Fission Mailed:
- The game "crashes" when encountering a Giygaspawn, but the screen is overlaid with Giygas's face and plays a siren (like most Nintendo error screens, real SNES crash screens don't have any audio once they actually display.) Continuing "deletes" a file with Ness's name (in reference to his fate in both this build and the original) and briefly replaces the Magic Butterfly with an apparition of Paula. Buzz also finds an item called "I miss you," which is obviously her calling out for Ness.
- While under the influence of the corrupted Instant Revitalizing Device, trying to use the Sound Stone knocks Buzz out and displays the Game Over screen without actually killing him.
- Jump Scare: Right before the credits, the projection of Ness's head begins to rot, before a fusion of Giygas's original face and Ness's body suddenly flashes on the screen with a scream and utters the video's final mention of "I miss you."
- Madness Mantra: Checking the "I miss you" item results in the text box being repeating "I miss you" over and over before glitching out. Likewise during the fight with Dark Ness, "I miss you" is repeated in the battle music over and over.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The collector who found the in-universe game apparently got sick afterwards and eventually disappeared. While this could suggest the game's cartridge was somehow haunted or cursed, this could also reasonably be read as a stress-induced illness caused by worrying about Nintendo potentially taking legal action against the collector for leaking their unpublished content and worsened by the game's disturbing imagery.
- Misaimed Merchandising: In-universe, of the "overly toyetic" variety. Nintendo had intended to produce figurines of the game's events, including one of Ness and the meteorite that most closely corresponds to the awakening of Dark Ness and the bleak, visceral events that follow. Even worse, this product line reached the prototype stage and was found with the Shadows of Giygas cartridge. Naturally, this creeps out just about everyone who knows of their existence; it's stated the person who originally had them really, really wanted to get rid of them but likely could not because of their value.
- The Most Dangerous Video Game: Played with. The collector who found the cartridge fell ill after playing the game and later vanished, with rumors being spread that the game itself caused their plight. However, their symptoms match that of stress-related illnesses and paranoia, which would be understandable if, say, you were holding on to a Dark Secret from a company known to not take very kindly to leakers. If the game had any hand in said symptoms, it was probably because staring at its disturbing imagery would only make those feelings worse.
- "Ray of Hope" Ending: Buzz is dead, Ness is now Giygas's meat puppet, and Earth is completely razed, but The Stinger reveals Poo managed to escape off-world with the help of the remaining Mr. Saturns and meditate to fortify himself against The Corruption. A decade later, he awakens and learns he must find eight new Sanctuaries across the solar system — and this time, their power will awaken the Dark Dragon to save the world once before.
- Sequel Hook:
- At the very beginning, it's revealed invaded versions of every single chapter in the original EarthBound are meant to exist, suggesting the possibility of future installments using them.
- In The Stinger, Poo prepares to depart for his own version of Ness's quest for the Eight Sanctuaries. This time, however, they are across the solar system rather than Earth.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Even when dying and enslaved to Giygas respectively, Paula and Ness still yearn eternally for each other. It seems to be the last human thought running through Ness's head even as he is forced to kill Buzz for good.
- Stealth Sequel:
- Starman Prime reveals he is the original Starman Junior from EarthBound and that BuzzBound exists in franchise continuity as another dimension split off by the Point of Divergence, which the rest of the cast could theoretically access if they had his form of Time Travel.
- The Stinger reveals this version of events, given the Dark Dragon becomes humanity's last hope, is one possible interpretation of the apocalypse that created the setting of Mother 3. As Happy Happyism is indicated to be part of the reason Giygas is so powerful in this timeline, there is a regrettable human element to his destruction as Leder mentions in that game.
- Tragic Keepsake: Buzz's knowledge of PSI Fire is Paula's last gift to humanity before Giygas takes her for good.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Of all of the major characters, we don't know what happened to Jeff in this timeline. While we learn of the tragic fates of Ness and Paula, that Pokey is heavily implied to be dead and turned into Neglected Shadows, and that Poo went into hiding for 20 years to fortify his mind and body in hopes of opposing Giygas, Jeff's whereabouts are never touched upon.
