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I am perhaps creating an enemy out of someone I hold in very high regard by bringing up something they created as a teenager, within a very limited time frame for a niche competition. God knows if someone dredged up the anime nu-metal lineup I drew and then embroidered onto the front of a pillow (?) for a class when I was about 14, I'd apply for witness protection immediately and you'd never hear from me again. But I want to talk about Undertale creator Toby Fox's Earthbound Halloween Hack.
To my mind there's a key difference between his early work and my textile abomination. While the Halloween Hack might be dismissed as edgy or cringe (it is frequently both, and has been referred to as such by its creator), it's a great case study of a talent early in development, a glimpse at ideas which, with some nurturing, became one of the most well-known indie games of our generation. I hope, so long as I'm looking back on it with a knowing fondness rather than an unreserved reverence, maybe he might just forgive me a foray into the past.
Earthbound origins
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For the uninitiated, the Halloween Hack was created in 2008 for a romhacking competition on the Starmen forum – a place that celebrates all things Earthbound. Romhacking is a notoriously hit-or-miss activity, especially using the fan-made software common on these forums, but Fox single handedly created a twisted vision of a sequel gone wrong that handled well and still holds up today (albeit once you desensitize yourself to its ridiculous difficulty level). Far from the Peanuts-esque sensibilities of the source material, the Halloween Hack turned the game into a gruesome exploration of neuroses, fears, and internal conflict.
Teenaged Toby Fox was already incubating some of the key ideas that would find their feet in his later games, many of which owe their origin to Earthbound. He didn't invent the concept of emotional whiplash moments, or creative and tongue-in-cheek enemy types, or checking enemies before you attack them. But in the Halloween Hack, he experiments with cranking these ideas up even further. We also see a few glimpses of themes that are fairly consistent in Toby Fox's later work, little motifs and ideas that have since grown to encompass countless jokes, plotlines, characters, and even ARG-style content.
For all its of-its-time limitations, clumsily worded dialogue, and endless grinding, I really enjoyed playing it. It starts, by design, rather lazily. Everything is pretty similar – the original sprites are given a little remixing, the town is just a recolor of Twoson (the second town in Earthbound), and even the music is a jazzed up version of the Love theme from Mother 3 (the sequel to Earthbound). The only major change is the main character, who has changed inexplicably from Ness, a wholesome cap-sporting young lad, to Varik, the lead from the 1991 action RPG game Brandish, of which Fox is a fan.
In the Halloween Hack, Varik is a mercenary or bounty hunter archetype – an unlikely hero – who wakes up drunk in Ness' house. He's asked to leave, explores a little, and is soon asked to investigate a murder. A monster has violently killed the parents of a young girl, and Varik is enlisted to enter the sewers and kill it. Simple. This intentionally lackluster start disarms the player. It feels like a clumsy fanfic, an attempt to smush two games together without much care or attention. But then you enter the sewers.
There's a point of no return here. Suddenly, the hack becomes its own game. Every sprite is a vastly different version of its Earthbound counterpart, colors are dramatically flipped, new music floods in, and everything diverges to form a completely unique and horrifying experience. Battling through this land and its grotesque monsters, Varik soon comes across the lab of Dr. Andonuts. While a perfectly benign character in Earthbound, in the hack, Andonuts has been driven mad by the assumption that his actions during the plot of Earthbound killed his son Jeff and his friends. In reality, no one has died, they've merely been transported to another parallel universe. It's messy. But this Dr Andonuts is very much in his villain era.
By this point we've already been introduced to some Toby-isms. Apologetic enemies who don't want to hurt you, other enemies missing turns just to laugh or crack jokes. There are mutterings of Undertale's Determination in the way that Varik is pushed onwards by a feeling he doesn't understand. "Some forbidden force drives your legs yet forward," brings to mind the split between player and character in Deltarune. The character doesn't have any say, but YOU do. A theme that Fox will come back to again and again, but one that found its feet in the Halloween Hack, as you'll soon see.
Once you reach Dr. Andonuts' lab and listen to his evil ramblings, he seals himself in a capsule and hides. As Varik, you walk up to him and the game gives you the option to stab him to death. So of course, you stab him to death. The end.
Unless you press B.
If you do, the narrator starts to get irate, confused, even. Why didn't you stab him? What are you hoping to achieve? Moments later, you're transported to a new world: Dr. Andonuts' Magicant. The second half of the game begins.
In Earthbound, Magicant is a dreamland, a reflection of Ness' subconscious. It's a place for exploration of ideas that are best described through embodiments of concepts. In the Halloween Hack, it serves the same purpose – only this time, it's Dr Andonuts' subconscious we get to explore. Wracked with guilt and fear over his lack of effort with his child, the "death" of both his wife and child, and – interestingly – his latent homosexuality and the impact it had on his marriage, Dr Andonuts' Magicant is a classic example of Fox's predilection for juxtaposing the serious and the silly.
This creativity is what draws so many people to Undertale and Deltarune – through sections of corny jokes and zany chaos, you're still encouraged to examine deeper themes. These characters may be fun, but underneath they're fully fleshed-out, they react how you might imagine to being hurt or betrayed, no matter how many memes they might have inadvertently created in the meantime.
Toward the end of Deltarune Chapter 1, things still feel fairly low-stakes, until Kris rips out their heart, exposing you (the player) as a separate entity. The separation of payer and character isn't a unique concept but it's one beautifully explored in Deltarune, especially the later chapters. When Varik bumps into Ness in the Halloween Hack, the two confuse each other, with Ness saying "hey me!" and "aren't you me?", while his own mother makes a similar mistake. Could it be that Varik IS Ness and his mercenary facade is down to us as the player entering a game and killing and killing until we're finished, even with very little reward?
There's an implication across the two games of the player being the thin thread holding two wildly disparate characters together, killing enemies because that's just what you do when you play a game. Undertale asks us to look at this too – why be cruel when you can be kind? Because that's how games work.
This constant subversion is apparent in the Halloween Hack, and for fans of Earthbound who want something a little meatier, a little more "adult" from the series, their first thought may not be to look to a teenager. But I'd argue, despite its flaws, that there's a significant chunk of Undertale and Deltarune fans who would be charmed by the rustic nature of it even today.
Not to mention, the first ever appearance of Megalovania – a song so popular even the late Pope Francis had heard it performed – was not in Undertale at all, but in the Halloween Hack. Once you start playing this game you have no choice but to dive headfirst down the rabbit hole like I did. And it really goes deep. If you keep your eyes peeled, you'll even spot a proto-Flowey.
I'll leave it up to you to decide whether to descend, but if you fit into that group of Undertale/Deltarune fans who also love Earthbound, know how to emulate, and are able to handle a good dose of teenage edginess – I'd still, controversially, recommend the Halloween Hack today. Just don't tell Toby Fox it was me who sent you.
Deltarune review: "This Undertale successor is an unapologetically weird RPG epic, where each chapter is a new canvas that doesn't have to conform to any rigid rules, style, or logic"
