Ah Chibi-Robo. I think this calls for some mood music.
Chibi-Robo has always been unlucky. He started life as a Bandai-Namco character, but wound up a Nintendo character when Skip ltd. needed funding. His first game, Plug into Adventure, had a rocky development, going from a point-and-click adventure to a 3D platform. Due to the change in direction, it released on the Gamecube during its final year while the Wii stole all the spotlight. Still, the game was good, and got decent ratings. It hid a story about a crumbling relationship behind a cutesy veneer, which surprised a lot of people. It didn't sell as well as hoped, but the positive reviews encouraged development of a sequel. Chibi-Robo was here to stay.
Unfortunately, the next game in the series, Park Patrol, wasn't quite as good. Park Patrol had Chibi-Robo shoved into it halfway through development. It was originally a game about growing flowers, but Skip wanted to include their brand new mascot. To be fair, it wasn't a bad game, and they managed to fit Chibi-Robo in nicely, but it wasn't what fans of the series expected. Unfortunately, Nintendo of America bungled the release in the West. First, they decided to license the game exclusively to Wal-Mart. The game had an environmental message, and Wal-Mart was trying to promote their environmental consciousness, but this tie-in deal made no sense. Nothing says quality like being exclusive to Wal-Mart. The game was also delayed October 2nd, 2007. On October 1st, 2007, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass came out in America on the same system as Park Patrol. It shouldn't be surprising then that the game sold abysmally in the West.
Park Patrol's failure was a real shame, as the true successor to the original game was on the horizon. Chibi-Robo, Happy Rich Sweep, released in 2009, and was a return to the original style of Chibi-Robo. It was a direct sequel to the plot of the original, with the child from the first game becoming an adult with a family of her own. This was a return to form for the series, and this game may be the best one of the franchise. It sold decently in Japan, with sales slightly less than Park Patrol. Unfortunately, due to the poor sales of the previous game, Happy Rich Sweep never released outside of Japan. There is a fan-translation nowadays, and I would recommend downloading it if you want a fun time.
The same year, Plug into Adventure got ported to the Wii as part of the New-Play Controls Series. Unfortunately, it was released in Japan on the same day that Metroid Prime 2 arrived on the Wii. so it's not surprising that the port's sales were terrible. Even though Nintendo of America already had a translation from the Gamecube game, the Wii port never arrived in the west. Parts of the game hadn't aged well, and people had a hard time looking past the cleaning drudgery to the fantastic game that awaited them.
This should have been the end of the story. The port sold terribly, and the sequels were only selling mediocre. Plug into Adventure was becoming a cult-classic, but the series seemed dead.
Then Photo Finder happened. Released in 2013, it was a bizarre hybrid of a tech-demo and a Chibi-Robo game. You used the 3DS camera to take pictures of real-life objects, which you could then scan into the game. In addition, you could teleport to mini-areas of the museum to clean and play mini-games with an odd cast of characters. The reviews for this game were mixed to say the least. The picture-taking aspect didn't work very well with the 3DS camera. Often, it was easier to take a photo of a Google Image than the actual item itself. There wasn't much to explore in the game, as the exploration areas weren't connected to one another. In addition, the mini-games offered ranged from bad to simply bland. On one positive note, its graphics really pushed the system, but the hyper-realistic style they chose didn't fit the tone of the game.
Still, it was a budget title, only selling for 10 dollars, so I can't be too mad at it. Oddly, this was the game that marked Chibi-Robo's return to the west. It wasn't well-received in Japan, so translating the game was an odd move. This made people speculate that Nintendo had bigger plans for the little guy. Several speculated that he might be a surprise character in Smash 4.
Obviously, that didn't happen. However, a new Chibi-Robo game was announced for Japan, with an Amiibo to go along with. In a surprise Nintendo Direct, Nintendo of America confirmed the game would be coming West, along with the Amiibo. Strangely, it didn't look like a Chibi-Robo game though. It ditched the 3D platforming the series was known for, and was instead a 2D platformer. Fans were pretty upset with this design change, and it looked doomed to fail.
Chibi-Robo Zip Lash came out simultaneously in Japan and North America on October 9, 2015. It wasn't good. Zip Lash was heavily inspired by Kirby games. It featured easy platforming, like a Kirby game. It featured ridiculously easy difficulty, like a Kirby game. It had a fun bonus mini-game at the end of each stage, just like a Kirby game. That was its downfall though. Even though Kirby games are easy, they make up for it with the variety of powers Kirby can gain, along with a challenging hard mode at the end of the game. Chibi-Robo only had one moveset, and there was no hard mode anywhere to be found. The abundance of collectibles couldn't save it.
In addition, they managed to screw up the level selection of all things. You had to spin a wheel to take you to a new stage. You had to complete all 6 stages before moving on to the next world, and if you landed on the same stage, you had to replay the stage over again, even if you collected all the collectibles. This was ridiculous! You could game the system by making the wheel always point to the next stage by spending the in-game currency, but that shouldn't have been necessary. It was trying to re-invent the wheel, and the game suffered immensely for it.
There were other problems with the game as well, like the notoriously slow submarine levels, but the main fault of the game was clear. It just got boring after a while. The game lacked any challenge, and when it forced you to repeat the same boring challenges over again, many people quit the game out of disgust. It was mediocre when so many other platformers on the system were extraordinary. Why get a discount Kirby game when you could get the actual thing? Sales were pretty bad, and it sold less than Park Patrol in Japan.
The game was the final nail in the coffin for Chibi-Robo. The director of the series stated that the game was a latch ditch effort to get the little robot to sell well. The series ended on a disappointing note. The first game had become a cult-classic which none of sequels had met, with the possible exception of the Japanese-only entry. Chibi-Robo had died.
However, there is still one glimmer of hope. Zip-Lash seemed tailor-made to give Chibi-Robo a Smash Brothers moveset. Several moves in that game would map extremely easily, like the duck and roll he received. Using his plug as a whip could form a strong moveset in Smash. Zip-Lash came out right during Smash 5's development. Nintendo promoted the hell out of the game, even giving Chibi-Robo his own amiibo. It isn't that far of stretch to think that they would want to promote him in their biggest crossover. If Sakurai didn't know Zip-Lash would fail, he could have included Chibi-Robo to promote that game, and adding Chibi-Robo would bring new life to the franchise. We don't know what the situation is, and that gives Chibi-Robo fans one final hope.
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