ME-tan's World

ME-tan's World, known in Japan as ME-tan no Bōken (たんの, Emuītan no Bōken, lit. ME-Tan's Adventure), is a 2003 platforming video game developed and published by Futaba Games in Japan, and published by Microsoft overseas. The game is an unusual example of Microsoft publishing a game on a rival's console. The game was created by Yoshitake Yumezumi and scored by Konichi Takeshi. It was first released for the Super Famicom on August 12, 2003 in Japan, and was later ported to the Game Boy Advance 18 days later, being renamed to ME-tan no Bōken+ (たんの+, Emuītan no Bōken Purasu, lit. ME-Tan's Adventure+), and was later localized on September 12, 2003 in America and September 30, 2003 in Europe.

The game was released unusually late on the Super Famicom's lifespan, being released over a month before the console got discontinued in Japan. The Super NES was already discontinued overseas, so it cannot be released on that platform overseas, until it was released on the Wii Virtual Console overseas on August 6, 2008 in order to celebrate the OS-Tan's 5th anniversary, with several changes being carried over from the Game Boy Advance release, and was renamed to ME-tan's World: The Prequel.

A remake for the Switch was announced on February 2021 and originally scheduled for release on March 2021, but was delayed by 2 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to avoid competing with its Nintendo Switch Online re-release. At the start of May, the remake popped up on stores, as well as the Nintendo eShop. It was originally titled ME-tan's World Rehydrated, but was later changed to ME-tan's World Redux following a lawsuit from THQ Nordic over its naming similarities to SponeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated. In Japan, the remake was called ME-tan no Bōken DX (たんのデラックス, Emuītan no Bōken Derakkusu, lit. ME-Tan's Adventure Deluxe).

Gameplay
The game takes control of ME-tan, a 7-year-old girl that is a moe anthropomorphism of the 2000 operating system Windows Millenium Edition. She can defend herself with a leek and defeat enemies with her leek.

Development
The game has been in development hell for 5 years, before finally releasing in 2003.

1998: Kirby's Dream Land 4 concept
After Kirby's Dream Land 3 was released in Japan, Yoshitake Yumezumi has plans for a sequel, that would be released on the Family Computer, due to the system selling more units than future Nintendo home consoles. The team at HAL Laboratory loved it, so he decided to develop more of the game. However, there was a major problem in which the system was so limited, they decided to reset development on the Super Famicom.

1999-2000: Super Stickventures 2
After the success of Super Stickventures, Yoshitake Yumezumi decided to develop a sequel for the Satellaview, named Super Stickventures 2, which was released on May 2000 (a month before the add-on was discontinued). The game was split onto parts (due to the add-on's filesize limitation of 8 megabits ). After the add-on was discontinued, people never got the chance to play the game at this point until a ROM of the game was uploaded onto the internet years later.

2000-2003: Silent development
After the Satellaview's death, Yoshitake Yumezumi decided to silently develop the game with no news articles being made at this point. After Futaba Channel bought Gaming Game Japan, development became more troubled.

2003: Finalization and ports
On August 6, 2003, an image of ME-tan was uploaded onto Futaba Channel. The creator of the image later went onto Futaba Games's headquarters to implement her onto the games they are working on. The developers agreed, and replaced the main characters of these games with ME-tan. She was voiced by Monichi Yamakuta (at the time) and defends herself with leeks, with media depicting her as "often intelligent". They decided to push the Super Famicom to its limits to compete against games for the Nintendo 64 and the GameCube. The ROM was also 48 megabits, thus needing an SA-1 chip to work, as well as to reduce slowdown. The Game Boy Advance version was also developed, albeit simultaneously, being 64 megabits.

Legacy
ME-tan's World got several sequels and merchandise. The game's OST had been included on the music CD ME-tan no Music Vibe (たんのミュージックバイブ, Emuītan no Myūjikku Baibu). An anime named ME-Tan & Friends was also made, featuring some humor.

Reception
The game received mostly positive reviews. Nintendo Life gave the Super Famicom version a score of 8/10, praising its graphics and gameplay, but critizicing for its mediocre soundtrack. GameFAQs users gave the Game Boy Advance version a score of 4 stars (great).

Trivia

 * This is one of the hardest Super Famicom games to emulate, due to its strong copy-protection measure preventing it from running on most major emulators at the time (such as ZSNES). Cheats and patches have been made to combat this, but at the time, only a few emulators could bypass it, such as Chilmax's SuperNess emulator. Later versions of ZSNES would bypass this measure, but due to the game using the (then-barely-documented) SA-1 chip, as well as the SNES's hi-res mode, it was still met with emulation inaccuracies, such as some semi-transparent objects not being transparent at all, as well as crashes. Eventually, some later emulators (such as BSNES and SNES9x) would fix these issues due to their high accuracy (especially for BSNES).
 * The Game Boy Advance version has an even stronger copy protection where the entire game data is encrypted and stored in the battery-backup RAM portion of the cartridge, where if it detectes that either the cartridge is plugged in the modded GBA, or if you attempt to pirate it (or if the battery has suicided), the microcontroller will wipe the data out clean, leaving only empty space, making it the hardest Game Boy Advance game ever to emulate, mGBA and VBA-M would eventually bypass the DRM in late 2010s.
 * The soundtrack for this game was most likely influenced by A Dog's Room, due to both games having a "mediocre" soundtrack, according to a lot of reviews for these games.
 * In Japan, this game rivals the Doraemon Super Famicom games, as well as Kirby's Dream Land 3 and Hebereke (the Japanese version of Ufouria: The Saga).
 * The game also has a digital manual, in case someone loses a copy of the game's instruction booklet.
 * The game was originally released for Super Famicom as a way to rival games made for the GBA and N64.