Don't Burst My Speech Bubble Trivia Quiz

Answer: Bubble Monkey's wife

In "EarthBound," Ness can communicate telepathically with animals, and he can understand what they're saying if they make sounds. So the game's writers decided to use onomatopoeia to represent the animals' sounds, and parentheses to represent its "translation" into English as Ness understood it.

In this case, this is how the dialogue for the Bubble Monkey's Wife reads: "Kyakkro ki kyokke. (Ah, Ness, my husband has been returning home late these days. He says he's busy.) Kya. (I know he's out saving the earth, but a marriage is also important.") This is an example of one of the game's charms -- every animal's "conversation" with Ness is very natural-sounding, as though he and they are able to communicate like any two ordinary people having a chat.

Did you know? The Bubble Monkey's wife is not given a name in "EarthBound," but in the original Japanese version, she says her name is "Kanai." (Credit to Clyde Mandelin, "Legends of Localization," pg. 232, for that extra bit of trivia.)

Answer: Hospital doctor

Once in a rare while, Ness's status will change to "Homesick." Right from the beginning, the game makes it clear: You're a regular 13-year-old boy, about to go all over the world on a monumental adventure. Of all the weird maladies that can befall the party, talk about a really relatable thing to suffer from -- homesickness.

And the cure is likewise down-to-earth: Have Ness phone his mother or visit her at home.

Ordinarily, Ness and company can go to a hospital for problems like sunstroke or the common cold. However, because Ness gradually gains the psychic power to heal, many players rarely if ever bother to go to the hospital doctor. And in the even rarer event that Ness speaks to the doctor while homesick, the above dialog will occur.

Answer: Woman in Winters drugstore

Ah, the Bubble Monkey -- or the Balloon Monkey, as he's called in the Japanese version. When Ness and Paula are trapped, the latter sends a telepathic distress-call to Jeff, in the far-off land of Winters. After managing to escape from the Snow Wood Boarding House, Jeff has to figure out how he'll reach his new friends -- but he'll need help.

Right next to the boarding house is a drugstore (called "Best Friend," the sign says), and inside, one lady is selling a pack of gum -- and a monkey. One dollar for an endless supply of bubble gum AND a monkey? What a deal!

Now, Jeff *can* get himself into a situation whereby he has no money and no sellable items -- and, ostensibly, be unable to proceed -- but the game's designers prepared for this eventuality. If Jeff has no money at all, the woman in the drugstore will give him both the gum and the monkey for free.

Answer: Ness' dog

As I mentioned earlier, Ness can talk to animals, and certainly his own pet dog is no exception. (The "default" name for the dog is "King," but the player can opt to make up a different name.) Anyway, this particular line occurs very late in the game -- when Ness has to return to Onett to get the mysterious substance called "Zexonyte" from the meteorite. It's needed to power the time-travel machine he and his friends will soon use.

Of course, by this point in the game, Giygas -- the ultimate enemy of the story -- knows that the boy poses a very-real threat, so in an effort to prevent Ness from obtaining the item, quiet little Onett is besieged by hordes of fierce enemies. Every store and house in town is locked up tight, except Ness's; thankfully, he can go inside. This line is what the dog will say if spoken to during the invasion.

It's quite interesting, actually, because in addition to having a number of humorous lines, Ness's dog is quite aware of what's going on. In fact, after the adventure is over (that is, after defeating Giygas but before starting the ending sequence), the lovable pooch says, "(Other dogs haven't figured it out yet, but I know that you guys saved the world!)"

Answer: Ness' mother

In general, when Ness calls his mother, she will reply with any one of about five different bits of dialogue. For instance, on one call, she will tell Ness that his teacher dropped by ("don't worry, I covered for you"), reassure him that everyone back home is fine, encourage him to keep going, and then remark that she'll let him get going, because her soap opera is getting interesting.

Anyway, the game rotates through these amusing little bits, and they only change under certain circumstances, such as when Ness has just started out, or is homesick, or -- in the case of the above quote -- if he calls when he has an ailment. She will begin by saying, "Hey, Ness! You sound terrible! Do you have a cold or something?"

After the admonition to stay healthy, Ness's mom finishes with this line: "Well, I'd better go, I think my omelette might be on fire! Bye!"

This kind of humor -- loving, of course, and with just a slight touch of motherly sarcasm -- characterizes Mom throughout the game. I don't know what her various lines are in the Japanese version, but the American writers really worked hard to get the mother's personality "just so" -- one gets the impression that the writers (perhaps with the help of their spouses!) had some teens of their own at the time. Frankly, this mom is far more realistic than the ones on TV!

Answer: Monkey in the Monkey Caves

This was a little bit of a tricky one, considering that one of the choices is "Ness' dog." This is a case-in-point example of why I said that "an obvious-sounding answer isn't necessarily the right one." This line is actually spoken by one of the many (nameless) monkeys in the Monkey Caves deep beneath the Dusty Dunes Desert.

The monkey in question has a strange problem -- instead of chattering like a regular monkey, some mysterious condition is causing it to make the sounds of *other* animals. Thankfully, Ness is (evidently) so adept at talking to animals, he can understand the monkey in spite of its problem. Here's the verbatim text that immediately precedes the "dog sounds" line:

"Meow Meow fss fss fssss? (What strange chattering for a monkey.) Coo Coo
pepepe. (If I eat a Fresh Egg, I recover some health.) Croak croak breeeeeep?
(If you have one, can I have one?)"

So the monkey sounds like a cat, a bird, a frog and a dog. If you give it a Fresh Egg, it will cure the bizarre malady. If you refuse to help or don't have an egg, the monkey will say, "Bow wow ruff ruff bark!", followed by what that means: "(Fine, I'll just be a weird monkey.)"

Another interesting little tidbit, again from "Legends of Localization," pg. 226: In the Japanese version, the monkey also makes animal sounds, but they're of different animals -- "cats, pigeons, elephants, Japanese bush warblers, Japanese grosbeaks, cicadas, and mice."

Answer: Topolla Theater ticket clerk

In Twoson, you'll meet The Runaway Five, a popular jazz band at the Chaos Theater; in Fourside, you'll run into them again, at the Topolla Theater. In both cases, they get tricked by the theater manager into signing a really bad contract. Also in both cases, Ness helps them by paying off their debt, freeing them from the contract. Once they're free to leave Fourside, the band will leave, and a new singer, a lovely lady named Venus, becomes the new headliner.

The above quote is part of an exchange with the ticket-seller at the Topolla Theater. He asks if you'd like to buy a ticket to the show and adds, "Orchestra seats and balcony seats are sold out. Now, there's 'standing room only' left. It's $30 per person. Is that okay with you?" If you say yes, you'll receive a ticket; if you say no (or say yes without having the cash on hand), it will prompt the man at the ticket counter to utter the amusingly rude line.

Answer: Mayor Pirkle of Onett

B.H. Pirkle is the mayor of Onett. Needless to say, the majority of Ness's interaction with him comes during the early part of the game. The first time around, Mayor Pirkle wants to meet the boy to thank him for putting a stop to the shenanigans of the Sharks, the local gang. After being defeated, Frank, the leader of the ruffians, decides to reform. He also tells Ness of a special location in town, "Giant Step," the entrance to which can be accessed via an old shack for traveling entertainers.

So after being thanked by the mayor, Ness asks for the key to the shack. The mayor agrees, on the condition that if any dangers arise, "I'll be able to avoid any responsibility, right?" If the player has Ness say "no" to this, Pirkle replies, "I'm a very important man in these parts. Do you think I'm important?" If Ness again answers in the negative, the irritated mayor will deliver the above line.

In the epilogue, talking to the mayor reaffirms what the game has hinted at about him throughout -- namely, that he's a stereotypically self-important politician, the kind of person who takes credit for things someone else did. He says, in part: "Maybe you'd like to study my city management techniques so that you could become mayor someday? Waha! Since I returned peace to the town of Onett I was re-elected mayor."

Answer: Mr. Carpainter, cult leader

Featured prominently throughout the first third or so of the game is a mysterious golden statue referred to as "Evil Mani-Mani." It's gradually explained that it possesses the power to subtly influence people toward evil thoughts and actions, preying on the weaknesses in people's hearts.

When Ness leaves Onett and goes to Twoson, he is soon asked to rescue a local girl, Paula, who has been kidnapped per the orders of one Mr. Carpainter. He is the leader of the "Happy-Happyism" cult in Happy Happy Village, a pseudo-religious group he began after coming into possession of the Mani-Mani Statue.

Anyway, once Ness finally reaches Carpainter, the bizarre man initially pretends to want Ness to join him: "Thanks for coming! I've been waiting for you. I need your assistance to help make the world blue and change it into a happy and peaceful society."

Mr. Carpainter proceeds to ask, "Will you be my right-hand assistant?" If Ness refuses the supposed offer, the cult leader replies: "If you don't want to be my right hand, my left would be just fine... Just kidding! Your existence is a problem for me and my religion. Defy me, and I'll end your pitiful game!" (Saying yes instead will result in a much-shorter line: "You fool, I have drawn you into my trap.")

So Ness's reply is actually a moot point, because either way, Carpainter forces him into a battle.

Answer: Man in Moonside Museum

The "visit" to the illusory realm of Moonside -- which appears as a sort of distorted, perpetual-nighttime inversion of the city of Fourside -- is arguably the game's most memorable segment. Nothing makes sense in Moonside, where all of the characters' dialogue is so twisted around that any given conversation ranges from illogical to downright incomprehensible.

This line of dialogue is spoken by one of the visitors in Moonside's unnamed museum, which is a "replica" of the Fourside Museum of Natural History. Both locations' main exhibit is a huge dinosaur fossil.

Moonside is another of those instances where you can tell just how much effort the game's writers put into everyone's speech -- in this case, making it appropriately (and hilariously) surreal. This place has a language all its own -- oh, it's English, all right, but "sentences" are deliberately garbled, the syntax is screwy, people speak in non-sequiturs and nonsensical neologisms, and the entire affair is just chaotic.

Entering the Moonside museum is purely optional, but hey, you might as well take in the sights as long as you're on this "trip" -- especially when every big building in the city glows like a neon skyscraper.