Chibi Maruko-Chan: Mezase! Minami no Island!!

Overview

Chibi Maruko-Chan: Mezase! Minami no Island!! ("Chibi Maruko-Chan: Take Aim! South Island!!") is an anime licensed game based on Chibi Maruko-Chan, a slice-of-life manga about a grade-schooler, her friends and her family. The manga began in the 1980s, and was adapted into an anime TV series twice in the 1990s. Mezase! Minami no Island!! is the second Super Famicom to use the license, after the board game-like Chibi Maruko-Chan: Harikiri 365-Nichi no Maki in 1992, and the eleventh game based on Chibi Maruko-Chan overall.

The game is a loose collection of different mini-games and utilities intended for a younger audience. It features a single-player story mode, in which interstitial text-heavy story cutscenes set the stage for the mini-games, as well as modes that let up to four players try each mini-game directly.

Gameplay

The game features three "core" games, which can be played multiplayer with up to four players:

• A dodgeball game set on a Bomberman grid, where the player has to hit the opponent with their dodgeball by charging up throws and avoiding the opponent's ball in turn. It's also possible for the player to get hit with their own ball if it's in motion. Players can pick up any ball, including an opponent's, once it has come to a stop. Players can also smash open crates for power-ups, such as a speed-up, increasing throwing power or a spread shot.
• A painting game that plays like competitive Snake, or Light Cycles. The player can leave a painted line behind them and use it to box in their opponent. If a player touches a "wet" paint line, they lose one of their three lives. Paint will eventually run out, but the player can collect refills or wait a few seconds for their paint to replenish automatically.
• A sumo-like game on a floating platform in a pool where the objective is to push the opponent off into the water. Players can collect power-ups to increase the strength of their pushes, but they often spawn at the edges of the arena and can be risky to collect.

In these modes, the player can choose to play as Maruko, or her friends Tamae (Tama-Chan), Kazuhiko and Sueo. Each player can get hit three times before they're forced to leave the playing field. Other characters, like the class clown Shouta or Maruko's grandfather Tomozou, will occasionally disrupt the mini-games. That can involve throwing out power-ups, creating paint splotches (for the second game) or tilting the platform (for the third game).

The game also features four bonus activities: a quiz game that tests players on their trivia, a co-operative painting program that lets four players work on the same drawing, a fortune-telling tool that gives players a random fortune and a karaoke program that gives players the lyrics and the backing music.