Nintendo is no stranger to sneaking scary elements into their games. From the pale-eyed Sa-X that stalks us inMetroid: Fusion, to the horrific dead hand enemies that lunge at us in Legend of Zelda:Ocarina of Time, Nintendo knew how to infuse our childhoods with nightmares, yet, not a single one of these reaches the cosmic terror of Giygas, the final boss of the 1994 SNES classicEarthbound.
Earthbound is a goofy JRPG that casts us as Ness, a young boy with psychic powers called PSI as he’s tasked with saving the world. Along the way, he is accompanied on his journey by fellow psychic Paula, Jeff the scientist prodigy and Prince Poo, who can also wield PSI. Their journey takes them through a satirized version of America, dubbed Eagleland, and they do battle with cars, UFOs and even giant ants! It was pure unhinged silliness, where teleportation only works where objects don’t block your path.
The game mostly goes for a strange comedic tone, more aimed to elicit laughs than anything, but its surreal stylings also mean that when it ramps up the scary, itreallyworks.
Related:Nintendo’s Copyright Crackdowns Have Turned It Into A Villain
Staying true to its unorthodox approach, Earthbound sprinkles unsettling elements throughout its runtime. Before Prince Poo joins our group, he undergoes a type of training called ‘mu training.’ This segment slashes Poo’s health to zero, and then all of his senses are cut off one by one.“I will take your eyes and your legs. I will break your arms off,” the ominous master says, his visage amidst a pitch-black background. It’s a scary moment, made even more so for its contrast to the rest of the light-hearted game.
But nothing prepares us for the unrelenting cosmic horror that is Giygas.
Everything we’ve seen up until this point was made to appeal to a younger audience. But that air of innocence is shattered once you encounter Giygas. Aiding him is Ness’s neighbor, Pokey, who contains the former in a gross mechanism called “The Devil’s Machine.” After defeating Pokey, you deactivate the machine, and commence the final battle. With the Devil Machine shutdown, Giygas’ full power is unleashed and our heroes, as well as our screen, is awash in a red, hellish distortion. Cosmic horror is, by definition, hard to capture due to its inherently intangible nature, and yet somehow this boss manages it in glorious 16-bit graphics.
Crazily enough, Giygas is actually hurtinghimselfthroughout the battle, groaning (presumably with pleasure)“It hurts…I’M HAPPY…”. Now we’re not kink-shaming here, and a bit of masochism may not be that leftfield today, but for a kid playing a game on their SNES in the 90s, it was totally bizarre and incomprehensible (unless we somehow managed to watch a copy of Hellraiser recorded on a VHS tape).
ALSO READ:Can Companies Please Stop With All The IP Hoarding?
For all the battles I’ve experienced so far, all input I’ve entered into the game has resulted in concrete results. If I click on the ‘bash’ or ‘PSI’ option, it offers me some choices, andthenan ensuing action. But my duel with Giygas yields nothing but desperation. While most fights in the game follow a formula of “hit it until it’s defeated,” there is no tangible end to this fight, which makes it feel suffocating; each and every option I throw at the crimson abomination ends in little-to-no difference in the battle.
“You cannot grasp the true form of Giygas' attack!“the text blares in mockery of my feeble efforts. The situation is out of control. This is not a fight with Bowser in Super Mario, where all you need to do is reach the axe at the end of a retracting drawbridge. The freakiest part is that your death might not even be the end of this fight, because Giygas can use his power to keep you alive in this scarlet hell for all eternity. As the fight progresses, all hope starts to disintegrate into the glitched aura, until there is the option for Paula, one of Ness’ companions, to pray. Choosing this option results in a cutscene where all the other characters we’ve encountered—friend and foe alike—pray for our safety from their respective areas. As the entirety of Eagleland unites to pray for us, Giygas is fatally wounded by his only weakness: human emotion.
It’s a hell of a battle, and a super-creepy one too. While Pyramid Head from Silent Hill, the Crimson Heads from Resident Evil andScissorman from Clocktowerare all terrifying in their own right, there is something unique about Giygas that none of the others possess. Giygas, staying true to his incomprehensible nature, cannot be defeated through conventional means. He was an existential horror, flirting with themes and ideas that werewaybeyond the comprehension of kids of the 90s, and for that it’s one of the weirdest, most unforgettable boss battles of all time.
