Editor's note. Spoilers for a 20-year-old game inbound...
I’ve spent 20 years “awww-ing” over the delightful character of Chibi-Robo despite having never played any of his games. This cute little robot is just joy incarnate – tiny and helpful with gormless black eyes. Whether it be his trophy in Smash Bros. Brawl or magazine ads for the DS or 3DS games, I always fawned over gaming’s littlest guy.
But now, I’ve finally played Chibi-Robo, and it seems like this little metal dude was all a ruse. Well, kind of: the character is cute, but the game? No one warned me I’d need a therapy session afterwards.
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Chibi-Robo is an odd duck; quirky in the way you’d expect for a mid-2000s GameCube game starring a tiny robot who cleans up after a dysfunctional family. It oozes charm from every pore, from the garbled character voices to the garishly decorated, 1970s-style house. It’s laugh-out-loud funny, too, and the gameplay loop, while a little repetitive and sometimes vague, has a nice rhythm to it. It’s nice just to clean up, collect trash, and make people happy, right?
I want to make the Sandersons happy. They’re the dysfunctional family at the centre of the story, but calling them so feels like I’m doing them a disservice. They’re a family in crisis, torn apart by spiralling debt and family feuds, with a young daughter crying for attention in the middle of it all. And the little robot is part of the catalyst that kicks things off.
Chibi-Robo is a gift for Jenny, the Sanderson’s daughter, on her eighth birthday. The problem is, Chibi-Robo isn’t cheap, and the father, George, seems to have a knack for spending money on expensive toys and robotics. It’s what got the Sandersons into debt, which you gradually pick up by interacting with both the father and mother, Helen, as well as examining bills and books with red pen scribbled all over them.
Yet here I am, as Chibi-Robo, scrubbing muddy pawprints off the floor with a toothbrush, scooping up sweet wrappers and storing them in my head, and consuming electricity by recharging my batteries. Oh, what’s that? The Sandersons are behind on their electricity bills, too? I should probably slow down a little.
Making friends with the many sentient toys scattered around the house does provide some light relief – they’re all utterly bizarre with fun personalities and voices to match – but they too are products of a struggling family. Giga-Robo, Chibi-Robo’s predecessor, was abandoned because he cost too much. The Free Rangers are mourning the loss of a comrade, who was “captured” by the family dog. Then there’s Captain Plankbeard who couldn’t bring himself to steal a “dubloon” because he was worried about the Sanderson’s finances.
What makes it hit harder is that most of the toys are ones George bought, and even though they have their own issues and concerns for the family, the fact that they cost money fuels Helen’s frustrations. So much so, when I brought Helen a receipt for another toy, she locked herself in the bedroom and threatened divorce.
I may be getting Happy Points for doing these chores, but in reality, am I really making the Sandersons happy? I’m going between the husband and wife, swapping notes or pleading forgiveness, proving points and point scoring, all while Jenny, the daughter, is left sobbing at night or glued to the TV screen in her room.
How do you process divorce, or the potential of divorce, at eight years old? I was ten when my parents split up and I don’t think I really understood the full scope, including the emotional toll, until a decade later. Thankfully, it never comes to that in Chibi-Robo, but during my entire playthrough, all I could think about was how to make Jenny happy.
Every morning I’d seek her out and give her any Frog Rings I’d found around the house – she loves frogs, and wears a frog hat, speaking mostly in “ribbits” because she’s been cursed by the Frog Wizard, so she tells me. In reality, she’s wearing the hood for attention. Her parents are too busy fighting, so the only time they ever really speak to her is to tell her to take the hood off or complain.
Jenny was the first person to clue me into what was actually going on, not the parents; George would talk about his love of toys, while Helen would just complain about George. Jenny was the first to tell me why George was sleeping on the couch. My heart broke when I found her crying on the staircase one night, all because her parents fought. And the only way to fully understand her is by wearing a Frog Suit.
It’s easy to blame the parents, but that wasn’t my reaction, particularly as the toys seem endeared to the Sandersons and spoke fondly of the past. Helen and George both appreciated everything I did for them, praising me for cleaning, turning the TV on, or gifting flowers. No gesture was too big or small for thanks.
And you can see the two struggling; Helen still clearly loves her husband, but she’s at the end of her tether, while George knows he’s done wrong and attempts to win Helen back. Chibi-Robo steadily becomes a cycle of people-pleasing, an attempt to fix a rift in a fractured family while helping piece the lives of the toys together.
The real kicker comes from realising that it’s no one person’s fault – everyone is at fault in the Sanderson household in some way or another. Helen was too harsh on George, expecting him to grow up and live up to her ideal image of a husband and father. George was too proud, too fearful of revealing why he no longer had a job. And Jenny maybe could scribble on the floor a bit less (small potatoes, of course, I’ll always clean up after Jenny).
What this all culminates in is Chibo-Robo travelling back in time inside an alien spaceship and discovering the secret password to George’s suitcase. Turns out, those spydorz that have been chasing you? George made them, but they were corrupted by the corporation he worked for, causing him to leave the company and seal the most dangerous of these away.
What this means is all those fears, all that anxiety from debt and despair, leads to a giant spydor entangling the house and the Sandersons in thick cobwebs. It’s a completely unpredictable moment, and honestly? A magnetic, metallic spider the size of a small human is pretty terrifying.
Even after defeating the mechanical spider, however, things aren’t done. News reports that the Chibi-Robo craze is putting a strain on the electricity grid start airing; the Sandersons watch, but they don’t have a solution. The very thing that helped bring them together might save their happiness, and may cost them more money, but it might be a greater threat.
It’s a good thing miracles exist in the form of alien wishes, then, as Giga-Robo – which I’ve spent the whole game trying to fix – is brought back to life, and granted infinite power by the aliens. No more will Giga or Chibi consume energy from the grid, and no more will the Sandersons have to pay.
The “accomplishment” gains media attention and, presumably, resolves the Sandersons’ debt and money issues. Jenny seems happy once again, and the family goes back to a relative normalcy. Everything resolves itself by the luck of magic, like a childhood dream that you pray hard and hard for every night.
By the end of my playthrough, I felt reflective. Having watched my family tear itself apart as a kid, and having seen and lived through the consequences of not paying off bills or struggling for money, I wish I could’ve had a miracle like Chibi-Robo, like Jenny. Something to help ease the burden, something to talk to, and something very cute to sit and watch.
But then it hit me. Yes, there’s no easy “miracle” to pay off debts, and money – particularly in the current climate – is tight. But the best thing you can do for someone who’s struggling? Be there for them. Every little thing you can do is enough, just like Chibi-Robo. There’s nothing miraculous about helping out, after all.