I had always liked EarthBound, but I never realized exactly HOW much I liked it. I first heard of the game in the June 1995 issue of Nintendo Power, to which I was a subscriber at the time. I didn't think much of it, I thought it looked pretty cool, but I was only about 10 years old and Role Playing Games hadn't really caught my interest. My friend had wanted to rent it, but the Blockbuster didn't have it in at the time. Who knows what would have happend if I had played it then? Fast Forward to September 1995: Chrono Trigger. My friend bought it and I was soon immersed in the game's terrific beauty. I went out and bought it, for $79.95!!! And to this day, I have played more RPGs than any other genre on any system. Anyways, I was in love with RPGs, and I continued to play them.

Sometime around summer 1997, the same friend bought EarthBound for a discount price, I guess because the game had been out for a while. I went to his house and watched him playing it, and decided I wanted to give it a try. I immediately fell in love with the game. That friend moved away at the end of the summer, and I haven't seen him since.

Later that year, in December 1997, I finally decided I had to have the game, and began my quest to find it. I looked everywhere, K-Mart, Wal-Mart, Target, Service Merchandise. I even told my friends that if they saw it and bought it for me, I would pay them back plus a $20 bonus. I never found it in any store, so I began to look online. In January 1998, I found it at an online video game store for $40, and bought it.

When the game finally arrived, I played it all day, and all night. I went on AOL and looked around for EB stuff, I was in a state of EB Mania. I found an ad for an "EarthBound Club" on the AOL Message Boards. And thought, 'What the heck?' and joined. It turned out to be a great decision on my part. (I may have actually joined the club before I even recieved the game, if only to satisfy my EarthBound craving...) The club turned out to be Matingly22's Mr. Saturn Gang, later to be renamed The Mr. Saturn Nation, which, in my opinion, was one of the greatest EB clubs ever. (If you were not invoved in any Online EB Clubs or are thinking "What the heck is he talking about?", you should visit my site THE HISTORY to learn more about it.) The club had only about 30 members, but I had a great time and in the process became friends with the leader, Matingly22.

As time passed, I joined more EB Clubs, some of which I remember to be The EB Gang, The Sharks, The EarthBound World, The Desert Monkeys, The Flying Men, The Rowdy Mice, and the Onettians. I met lots of people whom I still remember today, including WorldF3, Nikolai64, MEHICKS1, MagusMuta, NATHENDO1, Cueball207, CrazedMogX, and kwalka. A couple of months later I decided to start my own EarthBound club, and named it after my favorite part of the game, Moonside. My club was never a real success, and was a real stinker at first, but as interest grew, so did my member rate, and the club peaked somewhere above 100 members.

I think 1998 was the golden year for EB Clubs. The year started off with a few clubs, and ended with many, but things werer beginning to fall apart byt the end of the year. Moonside was starting to flounder, and it became an on and off thing for me. I got lazy, and only wrote newsletters when I felt up to it. Until then, I had been able to send out weekly newsletters every Friday, on the dot. Yeah, I was proud of the club's efficiency, but I could only keep going for so long. I managed to keep the club above water wel into early 1999, but that's pretty much where it ended, Moonside was never the same. I tried to make a webpage for it, but I wasn't really good at doing that AT ALL. I still got the EB CLub newsletters but i deleted most of them, and I regret that now. I basically ost interest, so I don't really have a lot to tell you about March-September 1999.

In the Fall of 1999, I signed off AOL for good. Forever retiring the screen name RedArwing. Since I wasn't heavily involved in the clubs at that time, I didn't make an effort to stay in touch with any of the friends I had made during that time. And since I no longer had AOL, I didn't think it would be much use. That pretty much sums up what happened in 1999.

In 2000, I finally came to my senses, and registered RedArwing3 as my new screen name. I only did this after my brother decided to download AOL Instant Messenger. Anyways, I got around to e-mailing kwalka, a good friend of mine during Moonside's run as an EB club. And I also re-joined the EB Gang, the only club that was still around by this time. I hadn't really thought of relaunching the club, and I was really busy with school, but I was content enought to be a part of the EBG, so that's the way it was. Until summer 2000.

That summer, I played through EarthBound again, and fell in love with the game all over again. HaRdCoReMaTiNgLy and I were up talking about the whole EBC thing, and I remembered that I had a floppy disc with old newsletters on it, including the last Mr. Saturn Nation newsletter. Mat wanted me to send it of course, because he had lost his copy of it, so I did, along wit some other newsletters I had saved. Unfortunately, my computer at the time was not top notch, and it froze while the disc was in it. I don't know how or why, but half the newsletters on the floppy disc were erased, including the Mr. Saturn Nation ones. Well, I never forgave myself for it, because I didn't even get a chance to read them before they were gone. I still get mad at myself for that to this day. But in a way, it was a good thing...

Becasue of what happened that night, I was determined to make up for it by writing more newsletters, and that meant the I would have to bring back Moonside. I e-mailed kwalka to let him know, and told just abnout everyone I was still in touch with. I even managed to dig up the old members list on some random floppy disc. There were 80 members on the list. How many were stil around? Just above 30 members. Of course, It was much better than starting off with no members at all, because nobody would have joined then, and we probably only gained 5 members from July - October. But I did write weekly newsletters, and they were some of the best I've ever written. I wrote about ten newsletters before I put the club on hold to begin my EarthBound History project. Those ten are available at the archive section of THE HISTORY. The club isn't dead yet, and I plan to revive activity as soon as THE HISTORY is complete.

The whole thing was amazing, and I wouldn't have given up the experience for the world. The realization that it's all pretty much over is pretty depressing, but I'm glad I was involved when I was. I justw anted to write all this down so I never forget it. You start to forget things after a while, which is also why I decided to produce and design THE HISTORY. Be sure to check that out when it finally launches on January 20th.

Thanks to everyone involved, it was a great time...
-= RedArwing