Chibi Maruko Chan Internet Archive

[Irmgard Rossie]

Hieveryone, it's Melos here. A few months ago I played the 2002, Japan-only GBA game, Sakura Momoko no Ukiuki Carnival, a collaboration between indieszero, Nintendo, and Noriko Miura. I made a brief review of the game over at Backloggd: here. If you'd like to see or hear the game, there's a review at Michibiku and a playthrough on Youtube. There's also some nice music.

In the game, you explore an "Internet" - characters have home pages, store have websites, and more. Clicking around or using the search engine with specific terms allows you to find info about items or characters that can advance you towards the goal of the game - inviting everyone to the town's annual carnival. It's a clever, streamlined and charming take on the early 2000's Japanese internet and personal blog culture, while also representing '70s Japanese Showa-era culture in a cartoony fashion.

The game's illustrations (not in-game sprites) are by Sakura Momoko, a famous Japanese manga artists, essayist and illustrator. I would say her popularity in Japan is similar to Banana Yoshimoto or Shigesato Itoi. While her work - such as Chibi Maruko-chan - is well-known in some asian countries like Taiwan, she's not that well-known in the English world. Only one of her essay books has been translated, "Momoko's Illustrated Book of Living Things". (You can check out my brief review if you're curious). I would say her greatest superpower is her ability to combine humor with memory and situations from childhood. I'm a fan of her 1990s work Coji-Coji - originally a 4-volume Japanese-only manga, but also a 100-episode anime. Parts of some episodes were dubbed in English if you're curious for a taste of its off-beat, fairy tale-esque elementary school setting humor: here . (For the record there's a brief transphobic section but I've found it's not indicative of the work as a whole)

Miura: About 3 years ago, I made plans for what would lay the groundwork for the game. Thanks to a friend's intro, I was fortunate enough to propose it to Nintendo. I was so attached to my proposal, that I thought "If this gets rejected, I'll go out to the inaka and tighten screws in a factory."

Osawa: From what I heard, at the start, the proposal that Miura-san showed us was pretty bare-bones - it barely had content that could be used for a game. What I heard was that since it couldn't be turned into a design document, and there weren't enough elements to make a judgment on, (Shigeru) Miyamoto replied "Could you try revising it again?"

* Note: these italicized asterisks are notes from me (Melos), they weren't in the interview. In the game, you receive e-mails from other characters, often to mention some change in the game state - like a character having finished making something, or a new area opening. The message board is used to signpost the player towards a way to start a new main objective, in the form of requests from characters. While it sounds like it has the potential to be a real drag, there's actually fairly little to do at any given time so far so it never feels unmanageable.

**The word she uses is "ホームページ", literally "Home Page". I think the nuance is a little hard to capture in a single English word, so I translate dit literally - the websites in the game are usually (but not always) sort of like Geocities home pages? There's usually a top-level page that links to the character's thoughts, friends, interests. Anyways, her realization must be referring to the way that the large network of in-game websites eventually interact with the various quest systems in the game.

Miura: Only up to the point of "Hm, it'd be fun to get an e-mail while playing a game" - most of the proposal focused on the carnival parts. From the start, on something like a bulletin board, everyone would post their problems and you'd go help them out. Because it was originally planned for the Game Boy Color, the game's mechanics were pretty simple. Later came the main concept - "A game where anyone can reach the ending." Even with games that are "easy", when it comes to someone like a 6-year-old girl, she might not be able to finish it! With that in mind, I set out to make a game where it'd be easy to get to the end. And if there was enough side content mixed in, I felt even a less casual gamer would be able to enjoy it, too.

Miura: Ahh, no - I'm not really the type who plays tons of games. Instead, maybe I'd have a game I really like, and play it 3 or 4 times. Like, in the Zelda series, I'd be really into finding all the Heart Pieces. But recently there haven't been many games I've wanted to play, which is why I decided I wanted to make some interesting game myself.*

Miura: When I was going to bring the proposal to Nintendo, I was thinking about all the people who'd play the game, and - that's when I made up my mind. I came up with the characters' background details. I'd make the character's personalities and traits, hand that over, and then, face-to-face, we'd nail down the final visual design.

He was working so hard that I never figured out when he'd go home. One time, when he wasn't at work, I thought "Oh no! Something's happened!", but then he just showed up, saying "I forgot to set my alarm clock and overslept." Never got worse than that! (laughs)

Osawa: During the proposal stage, we'd only decided that you'd gather info on the internet, using it to progress through the game. It wasn't until we started making the game that the idea of following links - to search for hints - took form. It was easy to come up with the idea of triggering events through the message board and e-mail systems, but we were lost for a bit on how someone would use the Home Page system. But ultimately, Home Pages are something you'd have to search through with a goal in mind, right? So, finally, the search functionality was added.

Osawa: Yeah, I think so. When she brought her revised proposal in, she'd already written which events characters would appear in and what they'd say. But, she was so passionate, that when we'd request revisions, she'd rarely budge! (laughs)

Miura: Yeah! Within the programming aspects there were some small revisions, but I was surprised that when it came to big changes, there was no need for any huge cuts. We were able to make the game pretty close to how I had imagined it from the start. Also, I was happy about how much visual freedom being on the GBA gave us - at first, the decorations in the city weren't as flashy as they are now!* The GBA also made the search engine possible.

* In the final game, clearing the main quest in each of the eight small "city blocks" (or villages) causes it to be decorated in a fairly celebratory, festival or holiday-esque fashion. The music also changes to become more energetic.

Osawa: Inviting everyone to the carnival will take a couple of playthroughs, but if you just want to see the ending, I think it'd take around 2 or 3 days. At first we thought kids would have trouble grasping the internet systems, but after some internal testing, we found that kids were able to figure out and get through the game faster than the adults. It didn't turn out to be the overcomplicated game we were worried about at the outset.

Miura: No, not particularly, but personally, I do like recycling. Things being reborn from unwanted goods - I think that's neat. The Monpi* are created from trash, which, for one, is kind of like recycling, and also kind of like that old custom of Hari-Kuyō **. Bringing items to the shrines was also like that.

* Monpi - Non-human NPCs in the game that are either humanoids, animals, or talking food/objects. I think there's some lore about them being reborn from unused goods. They are often more complicated to invite to the carnival (involving webpage games, branching chat games, etc), many only being able to be invited in the 2nd playthrough. ** See Wikipedia. . It's an old tradition where you place broken/old needles into soft things to honor them. Regarding the items at shrines, you always need to bring a special item (a CD, a red hat, etc) to the shrine deity at each of the town's shrines.

Osawa: After all, kids don't usually have a lot of money, right? For this game, we tried to give everything a touch of that 1970s atmosphere. Like, there weren't clothing stores yet - just tailors. Or the dagashi* stores. Even for shoe stores, they more often repaired shoes than sold them. While playing, I think adults will have a sense of nostalgia, while kids will get to experience something fresh.

-- By the way, Miura-san - in Chibi Maruko-chan, Maruko's older sister often makes an appearance. In the manga, she's different from Maruko - she's the studious type, always studiously doing her homework.

Miura - I have a lot of ideas I want to make, so if they let me, I'd want to do another one. There's a bunch of old ideas scattered all over my house! I've always wanted to work with Nintendo, and I was really pleased with how this project turned out.

If I had to speculate, it is still a bit of a hard sell of a concept. For one, it reads like a girl's game (perhaps further due to the association with Sakura Momoko?), even though it is more of a general kids' game with all-ages appeal. Thus I suspect it might not have reached all of its audience. And on top of that, it probably looks complicated from the back, with a lot of reading? Even though it's fairly simple to play. Well, it certainly wouldn't be the first time in history that a game's gotten a bad shake. Thankfully, we can still enjoy it to this day!

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