Giygas

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is the villain in the Famicom RPG game Mother, and the Super Nintendo RPG EarthBound (Mother 2 in Japan). Known as both the "Embodiment of Evil" and the "Universal Cosmic Destroyer," Giygas is an evil alien that intends to sentence all to the horror of infinite darkness. With an army of Starmen, UFOs, and other deadly war machines, Giygas also used his immense power to influence the evil parts of the Earth's beings to assist him.

The name "Giygas" has received a variety of Romanizations from the original Japanese, where it was roughly pronounced "Geeg." Mother 2's subtitle in Japan was "Gyiyg Strikes Back!," which was removed prior to its American release. In an official unreleased English translated copy of Mother (often called EarthBound Zero), and EarthBound, the names are spelled Giegue and Giygas, respectively. Despite their spellings, it is highly likely that they are both the same being. Nintendo of America even renamed "Gyiyg" to "Geek" in certain issues of Nintendo Power magazine before changing it again to "Giygas".

Mother

In Mother, Giygas (Giegue) is raised by the abducted George and Maria, who are Ninten's great-grandparents. George, however, studied PSI without permission, and escapes back to Earth. Giygas is expected by his people to make sure that PSI never spreads, but he doesn't want to betray those who raised him, especially Maria. In the end, he forced himself to detach from Maria, and began to get ready for invasion. Maria enters Magicant, and becomes known as "Queen Mary".

Many years later, strange things start to happen. It seems as though nature itself has turned back on humans. Ninten, encouraged by his family (and father whom Ninten inherited PSI), investigates the disturbances with a new group of friends consisting of Lloyd and Ana. Pippi, Teddy, and EVE also help. They find things like a town full of children with missing parents. The adults are found in glasses, observed by a certain alien that is pulling the strings. Eventually, Ninten learns all the pieces of a type of music. Upon returning to Magicant, Queen Mary requests to hear them Sing. She breaks down after remembering the tune, revealing herself and destroying Magicant by allowing her consciousness to go to another world.

They enter the final cave, confronting Giygas. He explains his motives to Ninten while attacking him with an unidentified PSI power. Just as things seem hopeless Ninten hears Maria's voice, telling him to Sing. He does so, weakening Giygas with the memories he tried so hard to suppress. Ninten, Ana, and Loid unite and Sing together, stronger than ever. Giygas eventually gives up on them, declaring revenge upon Ninten someday, and flies away in his UFO.

It's a happy ending. The children reunite with their parents, Ana finds her mother, Lloyd becomes popular at school, Teddy makes a full recovery and transforms his gang into a constructive music band (with him as the singer), Ninten and friends keep in touch, and Ninten goes home to get a good night's sleep. However, foreboding news arrives; his father calls, telling him that something has come up...

Earthbound / Mother 2

In EarthBound, Giygas is hardly ever seen, and only referred to. His evil power possesses the minds of many other characters who do his bidding. According to Buzz Buzz, ten years in the future Giygas had already conquered Earth and may very well have destroyed the universe just after his departure to warn the past of the coming onslaught. At least one Starman from the future made it to the past to try and stop Buzz Buzz, but it was destroyed in combat.

The final conflict between the 'Chosen Four' (Ness, Paula, Jeff, and Poo) and Giygas occurs innumerable years in the past. The only way the group can get to Giygas' time period to defeat it is to use a device called the Phase Distorter that will take them back in time. This is the Point of no return for the game, as the Phase Distorter cannot return to the future.

When the group finally reaches the now-unrecognizeable Giygas, Pokey (the "rival" character that constantly looks for ways to slow Ness down in his quest) reveals himself. During the first phase of the final confrontation, any and all attacks against Giygas are turned back on the attacker, and Giygas is even able to use Ness' unique PSI attack. Only attacks on Pokey are effective. Once Pokey has had enough, he reveals Giygas' true form by turning off the Devil's Machine, and explains it was a device used to contain Giygas' incredible evil power. With it turned off, all of Giygas' horrible power was released outward, and his form became unstable. In this form it is shown that his power is so unbelievably immense that it destroyed his mind, and that he is at this point incapable of rational thought (he is literally, in Pokey's own words, an "all-mighty idiot"). Evidence for this is shown in Giygas' tendency to babble cryptic, utter nonsense during the final two stages of the fight. Pokey appears again and explains that Giygas became so powerful in evil that he turned into the literal definition of it; "he is THE evil power". In the first battle against Giygas (with Pokey), his appearance looks like an eye with an image of Ness' head in the middle(It can be presumed that this is the Devil Machine). After this, his appearance changes to a red swirl, similar to the image above, although it undulates up and down and side to side, making it almost impossible to see him perfectly. When the final battle begins, he turns to the image above perfectly, undulating a bit. After using the "Pray" command one time, he appears as smaller versions of his previous form (but this is just cosmetic; there's still only one enemy), and begins flashing yellow and pink while rotating quickly. After Praying a lot, Giygas becomes more pink-ish, rotates quicker, and begins to turn to pink and yellow dots. When he is finally defeated, Giygas appears to become television static (like the opening's glimpse of the bad future) and vanishes.

In the final stage of the final battle, Giygas becomes invulnerable against common attacks. In this form, Giygas can only be destroyed by using Paula's previously Pray command several times, which influences the various people of the EarthBound world to pray for Ness and his friends' safety, finally ending with the player ("You, the one holding the controller") praying for Giygas' defeat. (The player deals over 45,000 HP damage to Giygas)

Quotes

• "Ness Ness Ness Ness Ness Ness Ness Ness Ness Ness Ness Ness Ness..."
• "It... hurts... Ness..."
• "I'm... h...a...p...p...y..."
• You cannot grasp the form of Giygas' attack.

Trivia

• Shigesato Itoi has revealed in interviews that Giygas' dialogue in Mother 2/EarthBound was inspired by a traumatic childhood experience where he mistakenly walked into a movie theatre and caught a glimpse of a rape scene in the movie "Kenpei to Barabara Shibijin" (The interview can be found here: http://www.1101.com/MOTHER/07.html).