It's a great place to visit, and you may want to live there!

It's 20 years old, with a prequel and sequel never officially released in the West, yet EarthBound continues to possess a significant presence in the gaming world. You can largely thank the game's dedicated fanbase for that; some so dedicated that they're planning to produce a cultural explosion of unique material celebrating EarthBound and the people who'll always love it.

The boxed set of offerings in the You Are Now EarthBound Kickstarter is impressive in scope. First is The EarthBound Handbook, a companion guide to the game that's promising to get into the nitty-gritty of the game's tricks and ideas. The handbook looks to take a page from the original player's guide that came with the game, adopting a tourism-y feel with plenty of '"90s 'TUDE," as they say. Added to the printed material side of the set is an 80-page EarthBound Zine containing fan-made art and stories.

On the audio/visual end of the spectrum, the You Are Now EarthBound set will also include the documentary EarthBound, USA. Centering around the community that sprung up around the game in '90s North America, the film will include interviews with fans, gaming figures, and EarthBound creator Shigesato Itoi himself.

Rounding out the boxed set is The Psychokinetic Album, a collection of Mother series arrangements produced by the game remixing team BAD DUDES.

The project is commanded by Fangamer, a gaming merchandise company founded by members of the Starmen.Net fansite. If their main Kickstarter video is any indication, they are a collective of quite insane yet strangely capable minds.

You Are Now EarthBound looks well on its way to meeting its goal out of the gate. It had reached nearly $50,000 at the time of this post, less than 1 day into its campaign. There have even been 2 backers of its hefty $8,192 tier, which includes a trip to Japan with the Fangamer crew.

Will you be supporting this mega EarthBound fan project? Let us know what you think.

[source kickstarter.com]