you know, if you've read through the other reviews ive written for this site, you wouldn't be judged if you assumed my favorite genre of videogame were RPGs. but you'd be nonetheless mistaken, because i think the true title goes to Adventure games. i was introduced to the genre by the Humungous Entertainment point 'n clicks, and later on i further developed my love by playing the likes of Day of the Tentacle, The Neverhood, Myst, and Machinarium. in more recent times i've been getting around to some classics, as well as more obscure titles, such as Sam & Max Hit The Road, Grim Fandango, and Garage: Bad Dream Adventure. these are all specifically point and click adventure games, however, and there's more to the Adventure genre than just that.

this brings me to Moon: Remix RPG Adventure, a 1997 "Anti-RPG" that was EXTREMELY influencial and groundbreaking at the time. how influencial? well, the game's main premise is that you, an RPG obsessed kid, have been sucked into the world of the very game you've been playing in. you soon find out that the "hero" you played as the whole time is less of a hero, and moreso a bloodthirsty killer, only concerned with killing every "monster" in sight to gain "EXP" and "levels." sound familiar? if this premise made you think of Undertale, you'd be spot on, because Moon was one of Toby Fox's main inspirations when creating his first game. Love-De-Lic was the company behind Moon, and unfortunately they were very shortlived. they made three games, Moon, a photography/puzzle/monster collecting game called UFO: A Day In The Life, and an evolution game called LOL: Lack of Love before disbanding. however, their legacy lived on in many ways, because a lot of people from Love-De-Lic went on to form their own companies. these include Punchline, creators of Chulip and Rule of Rose, Vanpool, creators of Endonesia for PS2 as well as the DS Tingle games, and most important to the review at hand, Skip.

Skip as a company have made a lot of different things in their time, they made GiFTPiA for Gamecube (which still doesn't have a fan translation somehow?), Captain Rainbow for Wii, and the Artstyle games for GBA and DSi. however, their most well known series by far has to be the Chibi-Robo games. i feel like a lot of people know about Chibi-Robo, maybe they've seen him in Smash or the like, but that's about where it ends. and honestly, i can't blame them. pretty famously, Chibi-Robo has always had a hard time selling in the west for a multitude of reasons. the first game was released at the very end of the Gamecube's life, Park Patrol was a Wal-Mart exclusive, Clean Sweep was Japan exclusive, Photo Finder was digital only on 3DS, and Zip-Lash was total ass. in the case of the first game, this has lead to it being one of the rarest Gamecube games out there, right alongside the likes of Cubivore and Gotcha Force. however, i think the first game, Chibi-Robo!: Plug into Adventure, deserves more than to be known as the "expensive Gamecube game." (same goes for Cubivore, but i'll talk about that some other time.) i've always loved Plug Into Adventure, just recently i tasked myself with 100%ing it for the first time, and man it's left me with a lot of things to talk about.

to begin, i wanna give an overview of the main concept of the game. the Sandersons, a family of three and their dog, are having a birthday party for their daughter, Jenny. Mr. Sanderson buys a little helper robot for Jenny (though it's really more for himself) named Chibi-Robo. you play as the titular character, helping around the house by cleaning, as well as meeting a colorful array of characters, watching family drama unfold, and trying to bring an older robot named Giga-Robo back to life, in a plot full of sidestories, killer Spydorz, and even aliens. as a Chibi-Robo, your main priority is to clean and make the Sandersons happy, earning you Happy Points and Moolah. you can also find Moolah lying around the house, and Happy Points can be earned by helping the smaller characters you meet along the way. Happy Points will increase your rank, which at certain milestones will upgrade your battery capacity, and Moolah can be spent on items in the Online Store. you also get Scrap, which can be used to create Utilibots, little robots that allow you to access new parts of the house. on top of all of this, you'll need to keep an eye on your battery, recharging it when it gets low by plugging yourself into the wall, as well as keeping track of the time and getting as much done during the day as possible. okay, i know that was a LOT to take in, but it's a lot simpler than it sounds.

so as i said, the main overarching goal is to bring Giga-Robo back to life, but there's a TON of little stories and sidequests you can do with the smaller residents of the house: the toys. you see, Giga-Robo saved a ship full of aliens back in his day, and in return they granted him a wish. he wished for each toy in the house to be granted a soul, so you'll see them walking around when the Sandersons aren't watching, and each one has its own storyline for you to follow and complete. if i went over each one i think this review would end up longer than the Shin Megami Tensei review, so instead i'll go over some of my favorites. there's Sarge and the Free Rangers, this platoon of egg-shaped soldiers that hang out in the foyer. Sarge is this loud-mouthed, up-tight general who's always yellin' at everyone, and i think his talk sounds are really funny. but at the same time, he's really emotionally sensitive, and is totally broken when he loses one of his men. the crux of his plotline is that you're trying to recover Memphis, who was a rookie recruit that got stolen by "the beast." (who is actually just the family dog, Tao.) it seems all goofy and silly at first, but near the end there's a lot of touching scenes that show that Sarge really does care for his men, even if he's a little hard on them sometimes. another favorite of mine is Dinah, she's an old lady lego dinosaur that talks like a cowboy, pretty much every single character trait that you need to win me over. i really love the way that she talks, she describes the afterlife as the "great chili cook-off in the sky" which may very well be the best thing i've ever heard. her plotline is intertwined with another character's, Funky Phil, where she's trying to help him get ready for a concert. somehow, though, Phil ends up dying. (gets his weird alien soul taken out? i'm not sure...) i'd seen this scene before and it was pretty sad, but due to recent events i now know how it feels to be suddenly put into mourning, and this time it hit a lot harder. Dinah finds her resolve and puts on a memorial concert for Phil, and it's a really sweet moment. the final one i wanna talk about is Sunshine, Jenny's pretty-in-pink teddy bear. on the outside, he's cute, sweet and kind, but once you see him at night, he turns into a ravenous monster. he's constantly craving honey, as any bear does, to the point where you could probably say he's addicted. he wants to go cold turkey, but the only way to do that is to eat the nectar of a legendary flower that takes 10 years to bloom. he's been hanging onto the flower's seed, and trusts Chibi with it, hoping he can figure something out. this is easily one of my favorite puzzles in the game, clearly you can't just plant the seed and wait ten years in game, so you gotta think a little harder. well, in the main plot you end up using a time machine to go back in time to figure out the code to a silver case, as well as to retrieve some schematics to upgrade Chibi. however, while you're there, you can also plant the seed, and when you return to modern day, it's fully grown! this is the most classic-adventure-game puzzle in the game to me, it feels like something straight out of Day of the Tentacle.

you know, speaking of all those side stories, i should probably address the main storyline. spoilers ahoy as always, and if you've never played Chibi-Robo before, i think it's important to go in blind. got that? okay, good. those aliens from before actually owe Giga-Robo one more wish, and they want to keep their promise. to get Giga-Robo up and running again, you gotta charge his battery. now, the reason Giga-Robo is out of commission in the first place is that he made the electricity bill skyrocket, so you have to pay out of pocket instead of plugging him directly into the wall. on top of that, the big guy is missing a leg, so you'll have to go find that too. Plankbeard, a pirate toy who lives in the basement and was good friends with Giga-Robo, tells you that Mr. Sanderson put the leg in a silver case, last he recalled. on your journey to complete these two tasks, you'll see some more family drama unfold between Mr. and Mrs. Sanderson. Mom is angry at Dad for being so loose with money and for not searching for a new job, and comes to a breaking point when she finds out he's been hiding toy reciepts from her. she gives him an ultimatum; if he doesn't get his act together, she's gonna have to resort to... divorce. this was easily the part of the game that caught me the most off guard, i wasn't expecting baby game Chibi-Robo to deal with a topic as serious as that, and it really adds stakes to the plot. back to the Giga-Robo plot, you can actually meet the aliens by using the Chibi-Radar in the center of the weird symbol in the backyard. the aliens, Titan, Io, Ganymede and Little Bang, want to go see Giga-Robo again, but fall into a sickly depression once they find out he's kicked the bucket. now, this part is pretty funny in my opinion. now that the aliens are sick, you can enter their ship and use their technology to go back in time, and they're too weak to stop you. they constantly try to convince you that it's a terrible idea, but Telly just completely ignores them and is constantly marvelling at the cool alien tech. you go back in time, find the code to the silver case in the past, and then bring that knowledge to the future to open it there. you end up finding the leg inside, but it also releases a more powerful breed of Spydorz that capture the whole family. the final leg of the game is you teaming up with Mr. Sanderson, who reveals that he was the one who invented the Spydorz to be Chibi-Robo's friends, but the company he worked for turned them evil, and he quit because of that. that's why he has no job. i always really enjoy seeing how moonlikes address the concept of a "final boss," since they usually don't have any kind of combat system. for example, Chulip has you completing three trials that test your knowledge of everyone and everything you've seen throughout the game, which i think is an excellent and creative way to pose the player with one final challenge that isn't just a boss fight. Chibi-Robo, however, just goes the route of one big final enemy, since there is a combat system in place with the Chibi-Blaster. honestly, though, i don't mind this at all. i think it's a pretty cool moment, and doesn't feel super out of place since you've been fighting these guys the whole game. once you beat the Queen Spydor, she drops Giga-Robo's leg, and you're free to go put everything back together. Giga-Robo gets his last wish, which is to give all Giga-Robos and Chibi-Robos infinite battery power, and that's game. i think this is a pretty sound and satisfying ending, and does something i absolutely LOVE. you get to save after the credits!! something that drove me NUTS as a kid was when you'd finish an RPG, beat the final boss, save everyone, and then when you'd reload your save you'd be right back before the final boss. you don't get to explore the world you saved, everything just goes back to the way it was. Paper Mario 64 specifically drove me insane when it did this, since the game just hung on the "The End" screen until you turned off your Wii. (or N64. i played it on WiiVC when i was a kid.) Chibi-Robo, however, not only lets you keep playing with Giga-Robo alive and well, it also rewards you for doing so, by giving you infinite battery power to explore the house with! this lets you finish any side quests or storylines you didn't get to complete without the fear of running out of battery, and i absolutely love that. good on you, Chibi-Robo!

alright, so there's the meat of the review. i have a couple more small topics i wanna go over before wrapping things up. #1: the Power Slide. PIA contains what is easily one of my favorite unintended movement mechanics in any game, and that's the Power Slide. by holding directly forward on the stick, then quickly snapping it to the opposite direction, Chibi will do his slide animation infinitely, which is faster than normal walk speed and consumes less battery than just walking. unfortunately, it's pretty tricky to do this movement in real time, since you can't press any other directions when snapping, you have to go directly from forwards to backwards. however! by pressing R, you can open up your map, which pauses the game exactly the way it was when you pressed R. you see where i'm going with this? if you hold forward, open your map, switch directions on the stick, then close your map, you'll get a perfect Power Slide each and every time! this is such a useful trick, super satisfying to get good at, saves you a bunch of battery and time, and feels plain awesome to do. here's a video of me doing it a couple years ago! #2: the New Play Control version. Nintendo did a series of rereleases back in the Wii era where they added wii motion controls and features to certain Gamecube games called the New Play Control series. this most famously gave Pikmin 1 and 2 excellent pointer controls, as well as letting you aim with the pointer in Metroid Primes 1-3. however, there was also a New Play Control version of PIA, and it's... weird! it was also the NPC game to be Japan exclusive, which like... WHY. we could have had Chibi-Robo rerelease on a much more successful console and not have to pay 600 dollars for a copy... ugh, whatever. i've played a little bit of NPC PIA, and it's neat. the most the Wii controls do for it though are giving the Blaster pointer controls, and letting you use motion controls for things like the toothbrush. it's kind of whatever honestly, but there is a fan translation for it, so if that sounds interesting to you, be my guest.

and that is Chibi-Robo! Plug into Adventure! an excellent adventure platformer with lots of great characters, ideas, dialog, gameplay, and so much more. if any of this sounds interesting to you, PLEASE go give it a shot, i can't recommend it enough. just... don't be afraid to emulate it, okay? getting a physical copy costs like, 400 dollars or something absurd like that, because life is hell and scalpers are Satan.