Chibi-Robo: Plug Into Adventure!

The game comes with a long and torrid background, unfortunately. The team, comprised of people who worked on the sublime Chrono Trigger for Squaresoft, seemed rather disillusioned after the relative failure of its highly acclaimed 'communication RPG', GiFTPiA on the GameCube. However, thankfully they picked themselves up, dusted themselves down and got back to work on a new 'unnamed' project. Eventually this came to light as being another unusual product by the name of Chibi Robo. However, this time round it was being published by Bandai, which struck many as strange due to the original belief that Skip had been formed as part of Nintendo's Q Fund that encouraged the creation of small-time developers.

 

In any case, Bandai ditched Chibi Robo, leaving Skip in the lurch with a game that required a lot more attention before it could hit the market. Luckily, for us and Skip, the legend that is Shigeru Miyamoto had his eye on the project and took a vested interest in it, giving Skip the support required in order to complete the project and bring it to eager GameCube fans everywhere. Now, the game has apparently changed somewhat throughout this whole transitional period, but with the creator of Mario overseeing Chibi Robo's progress, any initial doubts have gone straight out of the window. Therefore, as you can probably imagine, this game was definitely one of the ones I really wanted to get my teeth into at the Post E3 Tour.

Apparently the original build was something of a 'Point and Click' title, but now Nintendo has pushed for full control of the cute little robot as you wander around the disgusting home that clearly has not been looked after by its owners in the slightest. So you will frequently come across pieces of rubbish on your travels. You wander slowly round, controlling the little robot with the analogue stick, either carrying his power cable to go faster or letting the cord dangle down instead, trailing along the floor (...). The former, however, uses up more of the little guy's energy, for he runs off electrical power, which slows dissipates as energy is spent on doing various tasks such as walking. You must keep an eye on the little ticker at the bottom right of the screen, as the number there will rapidly run down over time and if you do not get him over to a plug socket to stick his cord in and suck up the juice then it is bye-bye baby, game over!

 

In a very Pikmin-esque fashion, the rubbish and pieces of waste shrapnel located in your surroundings can be collected and shoved into your head to help tidy up the house to a certain degree. But, as James has already mentioned in the general event write-up, at first I was simply confused as hell, wandering round aimlessly really having no clue of what to do at all. Primarily my own personal task was to wander over to a big scary-looking girl lay flat on her stomach wiggling her legs in the air, wearing only a short dress. Cue Chibi's zoom-enabled eyes to stare up her skirt...! Obviously twisted, but for the sake of the cameras it had to be done. Backing away from her it looked like she had some sort of green monster head, but from seeing promos of the game I quickly realised that this was the daughter of the family wearing her favourite frog mask.

 

Leaving her alone I wander over to what I first thought was a plug socket, only to insert my plug and see a door open to the side of me