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"I am the evil part of your mind. You can't beat me. Because you are the one who forced me into being..."
— Ness' Nightmare

Ness' Nightmare is a boss in EarthBound. It is encountered during Ness' venture in the Sea of Eden within Magicant, and is the manifestation of the evil in Ness' mind. As such, when Ness' Nightmare is defeated, Ness destroys all of the evil, fears, and doubts that were within him, allowing him to absorb the true power of the eight "Your Sanctuary" locations.

Battle[]

Attacks[]

Strategy[]

  • Ness's Nightmare starts the battle with a Shield β, being necessary to make it disappear before using PSI attacks.
  • Using a Bag of Dragonite to deal high damage to Ness's Nightmare in the start of the fight is a way to start the battle with an advantage, giving it less turns to use powerful moves and sparing healing items.

Trivia[]

  • Since the playable characters' names are decided by the player, the name of this enemy reflects the player's name choices - it is only Ness' Nightmare when the main character is called as such, with Ness being the default name.
  • The field sprite for Ness' Nightmare is identical to that of Evil Mani-Mani, though the relationship between the two, if any, is uncertain. It is possible that Ness' mind chose the Mani-Mani Statue as a known symbol of evil.
    • It is also possible that the trait of the Mani-Mani Statue bringing out the evil in people may have influenced Ness' inner turmoils to conjoin into the form of the Mani-Mani Statue.
    • Both the Evil Mani-Mani and Ness' Nightmare respond to the Pencil Eraser and the Eraser Eraser the same way, though the Eraser Eraser is not normally available when encountering the Evil Mani-Mani. The Pencil Eraser responds with "Do you really think this looks like a Pencil?" and the Eraser Eraser responds with "It looks like some sort of primitive human statue, if you look at it from the right angle... But it definitely doesn't look like an eraser... does it?"
  • The background of the battle against Ness' Nightmare is similar to that of the final battle against the Masked Man in Mother 3.
  • Ness' Nightmare is the last of the five bosses who has the music "Otherworldly Foe" for its battle theme, the other four being Starman Junior, Mr. Carpainter, Evil Mani-Mani, and Clumsy Robot.
  • In Mother 2, Ness' Nightmare is actually called something along the lines of "Ness' Devil" or "Ness' Demon". However, Nintendo's American division changed this to "Nightmare" in order to avoid religious references in the game.
  • The sprite for Ness' Nightmare remains golden, even during battle. The Evil Mani-Mani has a golden field sprite, but a purple battle sprite. Whether this was intentional or a mistake by the developers is unknown.
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