Runaway Five - Development

Development

Development on EarthBound took place as a joint effort between Ape, Inc. and HAL Laboratory, Inc. and was designed by Shigesato Itoi, APE programmer Kouji Malta and HAL programmer Satoru Iwata, both of whom were the main programmers for EarthBound. The total development time for the project was five years, much longer than was initially expected. Of this, Itoi has stated that many times he felt the project was "doomed." Because two companies were working on EarthBound, responsibilities were spread out between the two studios. Ape had more people working on the title and oversaw the data aspects of the game while HAL worked on the programming. Because the two studios were based at separate locations, employees would regularly have to travel between the studios to work.

Initial gameplay features that Itoi had in mind involved an unconventional level structure and hit points system (HP). Itoi decided to exclude an overworld, because he wanted no distinction to remain between towns and the outside world. This resulted in each town being carefully designed to be unique.

The first design concepts for the HP boxes were to make them like pachinko balls and have them fall off the screen whenever a character was damaged. However, this was later changed to the "rolling counter" HP boxes because the pachinko balls did not work so well when characters had large amounts of HP.

Some of the difficulties posed by the development of EarthBound were the data restrictions imposed by the SNES cartridge size. It was initially designed to fit on an 8 megabit cartridge. However, it was later pushed to 12 megabits and then finally pushed onto a 24 megabit cartridge. This can partially be attributed to the large amount of music composed for the title (as an example, there are ten different music tracks for regular and boss battles). Other aspects of the project that remained difficult were programming concepts. The oblique projection techniques proved difficult to program and were time consuming as well. The bicycle and delivery man systems posed problems as well due to their own complex programming schemes.

Some aspects of the character designs remain very personal for Shigesato Itoi. In an interview on his website, Itoi describes how his inspiration for the final battle with Giygas resulted from a traumatic childhood event. When Itoi was a young boy, he accidentally viewed the wrong movie at a theater, a Shintoho film entitled The Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty. According to Itoi, the film featured a graphic rape scene near a river that traumatized Itoi so much that his parents began to worry about his wellbeing. In actuality, the scene shows how the titular beauty was murdered. Years later, Itoi integrated the experience into Giygas' dialogue for the final battle.

Nintendo eventually announced a release date of August 27, 1994 for Japan, and invested a large amount of money into promoting the new game. One of the marketing campaigns involved Japanese celebrity Takuya Kimura of SMAP, who was heavily featured in Weekly Famitsu promotional ads. For its North American release, efforts included bundling a full length strategy guide with the game, complete in a bigger box, and affixing a price much higher than other titles at the time. Scratch and sniff stickers also came bundled with the game. EarthBound was released in Japan on August 27, 1994, and was well received. The North American version was released months later on June 5, 1995, and was met with lukewarm responses.