EarthBound Beginnings

This page details bugs of EarthBound Beginnings.

Ninten's Dog#

If you manage to get Ninten's dog far enough from your house, the dog will turn into a female NPC due to graphic bank swapping.

Bread Crumbs#

To do:

See if this glitch was also fixed in the Japanese Virtual Console and Nintendo Classics releases.
Look into the specifics of how the glitch was "fixed" in Beginnings and why it still works in the Reindeer area.

Normally, using the Bread item instead of eating it turns it into the Bread Crumbs item and sets the party's current coordinates as a warp point; subsequently using the Bread Crumbs teleports you there. However, through a relatively lengthy series of events, the player can reset these coordinates to the default position of (0,0). To do so, you must do the following:

Avoid creating Bread Crumbs at all before rescuing Pippi, who's only in your party temporarily.
Place a loaf of bread in Pippi's inventory (e.g. by having Ninten give one to her) and then have her create Bread Crumbs.
Escort Pippi home and then talk to her again in order to obtain her inventory, Bread Crumbs included.

Since the Bread Crumbs are now in Ninten's inventory, the game attempts to call warp coordinates pertaining to him. However, since he hasn't made any Bread Crumbs at all, the game doesn't have anything to go off of and falls back onto the default coordinate. Consequently, if you use the Bread Crumbs that Pippi gave you, you'll be warped to (0,0), an indefinite, monochrome, out-of-bounds area which pulls its graphics from the last place that Ninten was in before performing the glitch. Using the Bread Crumbs again in certain regions of this area will then transport Ninten to an equivalent location in one of the game's valid maps, thereby allowing you to walk pretty much anywhere.

One of its main uses is in speedruns of the Famicom version, where the glitch can be used to warp to the cutscene where Maria and Magicant vanish. Following this, you'll end up right outside the unsealed version of Giegue's lair without having to obtain the Eight Melodies first.

This method of performing the glitch is fixed in both Beginnings and Mother 1+2. However, it can still be triggered by creating and then immediately using Bread Crumbs in a particular area southeast of the Reindeer train station. Because this spot isn't aligned with the game's grid, it requires a walk through walls cheat to be pulled off in Beginnings. However, in 1+2, it can be pulled off in normal gameplay due to the game's movement system no longer being grid-based.

(Source: Starmen.net forum thread)

Flea Bag#

Near the end of the game, constantly using the Flea Bag item on R7038XX will drop his offense to the point where he cannot kill EVE, and after 255 turns the battle automatically ends (as per the game code). While the event for EVE dying and giving you the melody happens, she also remains in your party, letting you retain an obscenely overpowered team member.

Beginnings and Mother 1+2 fixed this so that the Flea Bag cannot be used on the indestructible robots.