I'm sure you're wondering how a video game relates to paper collage. Earthbound came packaged originally with an official Nintendo Player's Guide. One can assume that because they chose to give the strategy guide to the customers from the get-go it must have some significance and should be considered part of the experience of the game. Aside from the fact that some parts of the game are difficult and a guide would be useful the folks over at Nintendo decided that with such a unique game it was necessary to create an equally unique strategy guide. Most strategy guides feature simple maps and lists with information on how to get through the game. Companies like Brady Game Guides and ____ have perfected the processes of making a run of the mill strategy guide. Earthbound's strategy guide stands out because it is designed as a collage of different forms of print media, such as newspapers, magazines, and travel brochures. I have enlisted the help of my parents from afar to scan a few pages for me to use. These scans are for educational purposes:  Onett, as pictured above, is Ness's home town. The 'Onett Drugstore' information could have been listed in a simple table and would have conveyed the same information. Instead the editors decided to make it look like an advertisement from a circular. Also, there are no photographs in the game like the one pictured middle-left. This was just the Player's Guide team appropriating material from another location to give a desired effect that could be achieved with in-game material.  The beginning of the section on the town Summers looks like a travel guide. It includes a map of the area, advertisements for the hotels and stores, and "What to do around town". The guide uniquely collages in-game images and photographs into a medium within a medium.  The publishers also created unique clay models of the heroes and enemies. The technology of the day would have usually lead the publishers to use hand-drawn graphics because cheap 3D modeling software was hard to come by, but they chose distinguish themselves from other strategy guides. The clay models are used effectively side-by-side with the other images (screen shots and cartoons). More in-guide information can be found in the Mass Media section in which I explore the newspaper styles used in the guide.
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