[Feature] NintendoEverything Book Club (for Video Games!) – Earthbound Week 1 Details

Hey look, the Book Club is back, and we’re playing recently released SNES classic EarthBound! You can purchase the game on the Wii U eShop for $10 or on the internet as a Super Nintendo cartridge for several hundred dollars.

Don’t know what the Book Club is? Well golly, let me explain! Once upon a time, the hosts of NintendoEverything’s weekly podcast decided that they wanted to play and discuss the same game with one another instead of all playing different games. Thus, the idea for the “Book Club” was born.

Every few weeks we all decide on a game to play and then play it over the course of a month or so, discussing the intricate details of the level design, gameplay, story, and anything else that may cross our path while we play. It’s meant to be a super detailed and intricate discussion akin to a real-life book club, and we would love if you played along! Check out the FAQ below for more details.

I’ve never played Earthbound before, but from a bit of research I’ve done I think we’re going to try and make it to the location in the game called “Winters”. I’ve been told that’s roughly 5 hours into the game, which is a lot of time, so don’t feel bad if you don’t make it there. We may not make it either.

Also, please do not send us emails discussing portions of the game beyond where the book club is. We want to avoid spoilers and we don’t want to feel unable to answer your questions/respond to your comments, so if you’ve gotten ahead of everyone (which is fine!) do your best to only talk about the parts that we’ve all agreed upon. :]

Hit the break for info on how to participate in a discussion, plus other ‘Frequently Asked Questions’!

FAQ

How can I participate in the weekly discussion?

The meat of the discussion will take place on NintendoEverything’s weekly podcast, Here’s a Podcast!. If you want to participate (which hopefully you will!), send an email with any questions, comments, or other thoughts you had while playing the game to [email protected]. We’ll do our best to get to every email, but there’s no telling how many folks will write in– could be a lot, could be almost none– so we apologize in advance if we don’t get to yours!

Since podcasts have time restraints, there’s a good chance we might not be able to say everything we want to say, or read every email we want to read. That’s why each week I’ll set up a forum thread on the NintendoEverything forums that Jack, Laura, and I will check regularly. Eventually Valay will participate as well, so expect to see him pop in and out in future!

You can find the threads in “The Lounge” for now, titled with the “NEBC” tag.

What if I can’t email?

Well, okay, here’s the deal: Any method by which you can think to contact the podcast team (Twitter, Facebook, email, or even the comment thread of this post) is fine. Email just works best because it’s a great way to stay in touch with one another.

What if I want to talk on the podcast or something?

If you want to speak with your lovely voice on the podcast, there’s only one way to do so right now: Send us an audio file of you talking (MP3, WAV, OGG, etc etc are all fine), we’ll screen it, and if we have time we’ll play it on the podcast. Perhaps in the future we’ll live-stream podcasts so we can have people call in on the spot, but for now we don’t want to get too complicated.

What if I can’t get ahold of the game this week? Can I play catch-up?

Of course! If you’re prevented from getting any given game on any given week, feel free to get the game “late” and just catch up to where the book club is. That way you can participate in the discussion at your leisure, ask the questions when you’re able, and have more fun without feeling like you’re missing out!

What if I already played the game that was picked for this week?

We do ask that you replay games alongside everyone else, because weekly discussions will be about intricate details of games, bosses, levels, etc, rather than just a general “Yea, I remember that boss– he was cool.” We’re going for BOOK CLUB STYLE with this, meaning we talk intelligently and in depth about games, just as they deserve to be talked about.

That being said, if you RECENTLY (within 3 months) played all the way through the game we chose and you really don’t feel like playing it again, you can still participate. And even if it wasn’t recent I guess you could lie and just say it was. Or something.

I like playing other games during the week. With the NEBC take up all of my gaming time for the week?

Ideally, no. We all love playing games, and even the podcast team doesn’t want to give up playing through games for leisure so we can participate in a book club– still, some weeks we may underestimate how long it takes to get through a particular section and leave ourselves (and all of you!) stuck with trudging through longer sections. We can’t say it’ll never happen– we’ll just do our best to make sure it’s as rare as possible.

How long do I have to play any given portion of the game? When’s the deadline?

If you’re planning on submitting your thoughts to NintendoEverything’s podcast via email, do your best to get your emails sent in before the Friday/Saturday following any “Week X” post. Sometimes submitting later than Friday will work fine, and sometimes it won’t. We always record on either Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, depending on scheduling amongst podcast crewmembers.

If you are not planning on sending anything in to the podcast (you just want to play along, listen to others discuss, or use the forum as an outlet for discussion), you can really take as much time as you need! If you “fall behind” it might become difficult for you to keep up with forum-based discussions or to listen to the podcast discussions with a sense of coherence though, so plan accordingly.

I have other questions! Help!

Please use the comment form below to submit other questions! All of us on staff will be watching intently to make sure no stone goes unturned.