PK Scramble! is an open-world Video Game Randomizer of EarthBound that can be found here
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In the randomizer itself, the main objective is for the player to complete a set number of the game's "Your Sanctuary" locations with completing Magicant and defeating Giygas added as potential requirements. Ness will always be the starting character and he can start either at his home in Onett or a random location. Characters, key items, and potentially PSI abilities and enemies can be shuffled.
The randomizer provides examples of:
- Adaptation Expansion:
- When Paula prays for help during the final battle against Giygas, a random group from a pool much larger than the ones in the original game will pray for them: the Tendas, the Flying Men, some of the aliens, Venus, the Zombie Relief Corps, Ness and his friends, and many more.
- The Police Badge is an added key item needed to fight the Onett Police Force and remove the roadblocks to Twoson (and potentially Ness's house if he doesn't start there) rather than completing Giant's Step to trigger the event flag.
- Several "Your Sanctuary" bosses are given new overworld sprites — some of them made from scratch — to make them recognizable if they appear in a location other than their original.
- Ness does not need to clear Magicant on his own. Any other party members who are with him upon completing it also get a +10 boost to all stats and a massive amount of experience.
- Since bosses can be shuffled, a couple of scripted events are changed:
- The Clumsy Robot is not shut down by the Runaway Five, but by tripping and accidentally powering itself off.
- If Poo is in the party when fighting Master Barf, he will go berserk and finish him off — citing not liking gross-out humor — instead of making a Dynamic Entry and unleashing PK Starstorm.
- The Sea Captain has different commentary for whoever else may be in the party with Ness during the voyage to Scaraba, including the Flying Man!
- Anachronism Stew: A small example with the Onett librarian, who will tell Ness to look at the map on his phone, despite everything else in the game still being based on The '90s.
- Anti-Frustration Features: Several Quality-of-Life enhancements have been added.
- An even faster text speed than the vanilla game's Fast has been added, dubbed "Yikes!" to speed through text as quickly as possible.
- The player can hold Y to always have the party run at "Skip Sandwich" speeds and potentially not slow down in water or the Lost Underworld.
- There is no Sound Stone item to eat up one of Ness's inventory slots, leaving him just needing to carry his ATM Card.
- After picking up an item, the player can press the R button to bring up a quick swap menu to either hand the item to someone else (and potentially equip it) or drop it right away.
- The Repel Sandwich replaces the Skip Sandwich and will prevent random enemies from spawning for a set amount of time.
- When using the Eraser Eraser to enter Stonehenge, the game also has the Eraser Eraser erase itself to free up its inventory slot since it never needs to be used again.
- The party can obtain two Exit Mice at once rather than being limited to one at a time.
- An optional feature allows the party to Teleport from anywhere (this can, however, cause a couple of glitches if not careful).
- Mach Pizza's delivery and entering Belch's base behind Grapefruit Falls are much, much faster.
- The Easy Death flag will fully heal the party and maintain its money count upon being defeated and is practically required when playing
Snake Tag Mode. - The Town Map item is removed, and the player always has the ability to open the map with the X button. This is given a Hand Wave if the player talks to the Onett librarian, who will refuse to lend out a map and tell Ness to just use the map on his phone.
- The Abridged Dungeons flag cuts the size of the Mole Cave (a.k.a. the Diamond Mine) and Stonehenge Base down to about half.
- Big Stupid Doo Doo Head: If Giygas's assistant increases the number of times Paula has to Pray, she will ask, "...Please grant us patience! To deal with [the assistant] being a total jerkbag..."
- Cardboard Prison: The pit where Ness and Paula are held prisoner in Threed in the original game is locked from the inside, allowing the party to simply undo the deadbolt and walk out after recruiting the character there rather than needing to use Jeff's Bad Key Machine (which has been replaced by the Police Badge).
- Crutch Character: It's possible for Ness to be able to teleport to Threed or Dalaam, the two easiest character recruitment spots, right away but not have them be logically considered until much later, thus allowing him to recruit someone twenty levels higher than his own and allowing them to help carry the team until he can catch up.
- Death Glare: Paula will give one to the Sea Captain if she and Ness are the only party members and he jokes about them being "on their honeymoon" during the voyage to Scaraba- either because of Never Heard That One Before for her or the fact that saving the world takes priority over dating for them.
- Developer's Foresight: Due to the open structure, you can get the Meteorite Piece before reaching Saturn Valley, and give it to Dr. Andonuts without doing the cutscene where the Phase Distorter fails. If this happens, his usual line of how the fixed up Phase Distorter won't singe you like last time will change to saying it won't singe you like when Mr. Saturn tried it.
- How Is That Even Possible?: Paula's reaction if Giygas's assistant increases the number of times she has to Pray is, "Oh come on! How are you even able to do that?"
- One-Hit Kill: The end result of getting caught by the Snake in Snake Tag mode.
- Peninsula of Power Leveling: It's possible for areas to open up long before the game expects the player to logically progress to them and fight enemies that give much higher experience as a result. This is most common with fighting the Everdred spot long before Paula is available, the Diamond Mine being late while Fourside is early, Dungeon Man being late while the Pyramid is early, and potentially fighting the Boogey Tent immediately after recruiting Jeff even if it's not factored into the same level of logic.
- Sequence Breaking: The "Loose Key Items" flag adds several Key Items into random gift boxes throughout the world, allowing the player to potentially break the logic chain by getting a particular key item much earlier than intended.
- Shoot the Medic First: Zig-zagged in that it's more like, "Shoot the only one who can win the battle first," as one of the tricks that Giygas's assistant will pull is automatically Diamondizing Paula.
- Shout-Out: If the Sea Captain comments on Jeff's presence during the Scaraba voyage, he'll ask if Jeff has designs on turning his ship into an airship because of the way he's looking at the engine.
- Sorting Algorithm of Evil:
- If "Progressive" enemizer is set, the player will encounter Onett enemies in the "first" area and move up in difficulty based on the seed's expected logic.
- If enemies are fully randomized, their stats will be adjusted according to the seed's logic, but there isn't a way for the player to know ahead of time which level of progress they correspond with.
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: If a character is found in Deep Darkness, they're standing behind the boss in the deepest water for a long period of time without being negatively affected at all.
- Troll: The randomizer has an option to add a set number of "Curses" that randomly affect enemies in various ways to add an "entertaining challenge." Curses can include buffed stats, enemies that normally don't have shields or explode doing so, bosses having clones of themselves join the battle, enemies transforming from one type into another (a 'la Carbon Dog and Diamond Dog), and Giygas's assistant adding extra obstacles during the final battle.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Paula's reaction if Giygas's assistant increases the number of times she has to Pray is, "Oh come on! How are you even able to do that?"
- Zombie Apocalypse: Played with. One of the game's meme categories for completion is making sure each of the chosen four use a Toothbrush in battle at some point during the seed. Anyone who doesn't gets turned into a Zombie during the spoiler log reveal at the end.
