Earthbound

#1 New York Times bestselling author Aprilynne Pike has created a heart-stopping romance built on a love triangle like you’ve never seen before and filled with epic stakes and a centuries-long conspiracy. Give it to fans of Beautiful Creatures and Nightshade. Tavia Michaels is the sole survivor of the plane crash that killed her parents. When she starts to see strange visions of a boy she’s never spoken with in real life, she begins to suspect that there’s much about her past that she isn’t being told. Tavia immediately searches for answers, desperate to determine why she feels so drawn to a boy she hardly knows. But when Tavia discovers that the aunt and uncle who took her in after her parents' death may have actually been responsible for the plane crash that killed them--and that she may have been the true intended victim--she flees for the safety of Camden, Maine, where the boy she sees in her visions instructs her to go. Now, Tavia is on the run with no one to trust. No one, that is, except for her best friend and longtime crush, Benson. Tavia feels torn between the boy who mysteriously comes to her at night and the boy who has been by her side every step of the way. But what Tavia doesn't know is that the world is literally falling apart and that to save it she will have to unite with the boy in her visions. Only problem? To do so would mean rejecting Benson's love. And that's the one thing Tavia Michaels swore she'd never do.

Much like we did with the MOTHER 3 Handbook, we're producing an obsessively-designed guide which is a companion to the game, rather than a collection of to-do lists and maps. Our goal is to flesh out the world of EarthBound by collecting and shedding light on the tiny details, tricks, and ideas that fans have spent the last 20 years developing.Remember how the game loved to break the fourth wall? We thought the idea of EarthBound being released in Eagleland was fun, so we ran with it: the conceit of the Handbook is that it is a relic from the EarthBound universe, where it was produced by a company as a sightseeing guide for tourists (similar to "Lord of the Rings" tours of New Zealand). Thus the subtitle: "Travel Eagleland the EarthBound Way!"The book features the design work of Audrey Waner, writing by Dan Moore, and illustration/photography from a huge team of talented EarthBound fans (plus a few 90's era stock photography discs we bought on eBay). AUDREY SEZ: "The EarthBound Handbook is a spiritual successor to both the MOTHER 3 Handbook and the EarthBound Player's Guide. We're taking inspiration from a huge variety of sources - mid-90s advertising, elementary schoolbooks, travel brochures - and meshing them together to create a really rich reading experience. The finished handbook will be a natural companion to the game itself."

A joyful tornado of history, criticism, and memoir about a Super Nintendo RPG that took 20 years to find its audience.

Tavia Michaels has discovered that she’s an Earthbound—a fallen goddess with the power to remake the Earth—and that a rival faction of Earthbounds, the Reduciata, has created a virus that is literally wiping swaths of the planet out of existence. Tavia is captured and imprisoned before she can act on this information, along with her eternal lover, Logan. Huddled in a claustrophobic cell, they lose track of the days, their attempts to escape proving as ephemeral as Tavia’s newly gestating powers. But then Tavia and Logan are mysteriously rescued. . . . They’re brought to the underground headquarters of the Curatoria, another group of Earthbounds that Tavia doesn’t fully trust. There, she’s told that she can save the Earth before it disappears. She agrees. Tavia quickly realizes that she isn’t like other Earthbound, and as her abilities continue to awaken, they begin to threaten her centuries-long relationship with Logan. When Benson—Tavia’s former best friend and romantic interest—appears at Curatoria headquarters, Tavia will again have to make a choice about who to be with even as she tries to stop the virus that is destroying the world and uncover the truth about the two Earthbound organizations that have her tangled up in their webs.

I know that every mother believes that her children are special, and they most definitely are. I am no different. I am quite partial when it concerns my children. But my daughter was unbelievably mature in her spiritual walk with the Lord Jesus from an early age. She portrayed many characteristics that made her who she was . . . academically intelligent, athletic, musical, and artistic. She also possessed the characteristics of Jesus and all the fruits of the Spirit. Then on May 3, 2001, something happened to completely give her the desire of her heart and change her life forever. This is her testimony through her mother’s eyes and understanding.

Hopefully this book will give you a better understanding about death or at least a thought about the possibility of life after death, to just think that maybe our loved ones are still around us, always close by. And to help you not to give up on faith or hope because someone that we care about has taken the road we all will eventually travel.

The cross-cultural interactions of Japanese videogames and the West, from DIY localization by fans to corporate strategies of “Japaneseness.” In the early days of arcades and Nintendo, many players didn't recognize Japanese games as coming from Japan; they were simply new and interesting games to play. But since then, fans, media, and the games industry have thought further about the “Japaneseness” of particular games. Game developers try to decide whether a game's Japaneseness is a selling point or stumbling block; critics try to determine what elements in a game express its Japaneseness—cultural motifs or technical markers. Games were “localized,” subjected to sociocultural and technical tinkering. In this book, Mia Consalvo looks at what happens when Japanese games travel outside Japan, and how they are played, thought about, and transformed by individuals, companies, and groups in the West. Consalvo begins with players, first exploring North American players' interest in Japanese games (and Japanese culture in general) and then investigating players' DIY localization of games, in the form of ROM hacking and fan translating. She analyzes several Japanese games released in North America and looks in detail at the Japanese game company Square Enix. She examines indie and corporate localization work, and the rise of the professional culture broker. Finally, she compares different approaches to Japaneseness in games sold in the West and considers how Japanese games have influenced Western games developers. Her account reveals surprising cross-cultural interactions between Japanese games and Western game developers and players, between Japaneseness and the market.