You've read the manga and novels, you've watched the series and movies, you've listened to the radio doramas. Now play the game! ^_^
(Note: what follows is basically a loose translation of the instruction manual but with substantial editing and comments and detail added in.)

 

Kimagure Orange Road (junior board) game
Koi no Message wo Tsutaete!
(Give the Message of Love!)

For 2 to 4 players
Ages 8 to adult
By Epoch Co. Ltd, 1986-7

To mothers and fathers - to enjoy this game with your children, please read this instruction manual and teach them how to play.

 

SET CONTENTS

1 game board (6 interlocking pieces)
42 Esper Cards
6 Coffee Time Cards
12 Message Cards
1 Esper Box
4 Esper Chips
1 roulette
4 player pieces
8 bases
(Note: the Cabin cigarette box in the pic above is not included with the game ^_^;; It's just there for the purposes of comparison. The game box itself is about 22cm x 16cm in size, but since the game board comes in six parts, the area of board itself is roughly six times the area of the game box. Note also that I don't smoke. I have vowed that no cigarette will ever pass my lips in my lifetime. The pic is not mine. None of the pics on this page are mine.)

 

GOAL OF THE GAME

Playing the role of Ayukawa Madoka, Kasuga Kyosuke, Hiyama Hikaru or Hino Yuusaku, the players seek to borrow the esper powers of Kurumi and Manami to send their love message to the person they love. First person to do this is the winner.

 

PREPARATION OF THE GAME

  1. Assemble the game board.
  2. Detach the cards (which as usual, come stuck together in a new game).
  3. The Esper Cards and Coffee Time Cards are placed face down next to the game board. I guess you should shuffle them...
  4. Players "janken" to select their characters. (If there are two players, they should use Kasuga Kyosuke and Ayukawa Madoka). They take their player pieces, fit them on a base and place them on the corner square of the game board corresponding to their character.
  5. There are 12 Message Cards, three for each character. Each Message Card has a message from a character to one of the other characters of the opposite sex. For example, there's a Message Card from Kyosuke to Madoka and a Message Card from Kyosuke to Hikaru. (The third Message Card for each character is blank. More on that at the bottom of this page.) Without showing the other players, each player should choose a Message Card, fold it in two (so that the intended recipient of the message can't be seen), fit it on a base and place it on the inner start/goal square of the game board corresponding to their character. The goal of each player is to convey that Message Card to the start/goal square of the person to whom the message is addressed. For example, if you're playing Yuusaku and choose to send a message to Hikaru, you need to move your Message Card from the Yuusaku start/goal to the Hikaru start/goal to win the game. Note that the messages printed on the Message Cards are tame, although the game refers to "koi no message". For example, the messages refer to going on a date, or playing tennis, studying for exams, waiting at the school gates to say something important etc.
  6. Assemble the Esper Box. (Insert the surface with the four slots into the fifth slot.) The box comes as one piece and just needs to be folded out to make a box with four slots on the top. Each player takes the Esper Chip corresponding to their character and inserts it in the Esper Box. The box is placed next to the board. The Esper Chips are T-shaped, so that when the chips are inserted in the box, only the cross bar of the "T" will be visible - thus it's not possible to tell which Esper Chip in the box relates to which character.

 

HOW TO PLAY

  1. Players "janken" again to decide the order in which they take their turns.
  2. On his or her turn, the player spins the roulette, moves their player piece in a clockwise direction the same number of squares as indicated on the roulette and follows the directions on the square that they stop on. Note that each player has two pieces to move on the board - a player piece and a Message Card piece - it is important to distinguish between the two. The player piece only moves around the squares on the edge of the game board. The Message Card piece moves around the inner squares on the game board. Moving the Message Card piece will be explained later.
  3. If a player piece would stop on a corner square, it advances to the next square.

 

Explanation of the squares

<Esper square>

  1. If a player stops on this square, the person to their right should prepare the Esper Box. That is, the person to the right should, without the player seeing, re-arrange the Esper Chips in the Esper Box so the player doesn't know which Esper Chip relates to which character.
  2. The player must then select an Esper Chip from the box (using their esper powers to try to guess which Esper Chip is their own character).
  3. The selected Esper Chip will have a character on it. Whichever player is playing that character will receive one Esper Card.

(The Esper squares have Manami and Kurumi depicted on them. Since these squares are how players generally pick up Esper Cards, I guess that's why the manual refers to borrowing the esper powers of Manami and Kurumi to win the game.)

 

<Chance square>

If a player stops on this square, he or she can move their Message Card piece one space and, if necessary, place an Esper Card on the board to allow their Message Card to move this one space. See below on how to move the Message Card piece and how to use Esper Cards.

 

<Change square>

If a player stops at this square and has Esper Cards, they must exchange one Esper Card with a player of their choice. When the other player has two or more cards, that other player does not have to show their cards but can let the first player guess which card to take. If the player stopping on this square has no Esper Cards, there is no effect.

 

<Character square>

If a player stops at the square of the character which he or she plays (not being a corner square), the player can take one Esper Card from one other player.

 

<Jingoro square>

If a player stops on this square, he or she can move their player piece to the square of another player and follow the directions of that square.

 

<U-turn square>

About to be spotted by bad friends (ie Komatsu and Hatta)! A player stopping on this square must in future move their player piece in the opposite direction around the board (for example, counter-clockwise if they were travelling clockwise).

 

<Hangover/Sake square>

Miss one turn with a hangover.

 

Moving the Message Card piece

As stated above, the aim of the game is to move your Message Card piece to its goal. The inner squares of the game board are blank. Message Card pieces can only move over Esper Cards - they can't move over blank squares. Thus, to win the game, the players need to collect Esper Cards, then place them over the inner squares of the board to make a path for their Message Card piece to move to the goal of intended recipient of the message. The purpose of moving the player pieces is to collect the Esper Cards which will allow the Message Card piece to be moved.

When it's a player's turn, instead of spinning the roulette and moving the player piece, the player may instead choose to move his or her Message Card piece one space and may place an Esper Card on the game board if necessary to allow the Message Card to move this one space. It's easier to explain the movement of the Message Card pieces with an example.

In the case of a person playing Kasuga Kyosuke:

  1. Each Esper Card is divided into three or four triangular spaces, each with a character on them: Kyosuke, Madoka, Hikaru, Yuusaku and Jingoro. An Esper Card can only be placed on the board if the character which the Message Card piece will move to matches the character of the space which the piece currently occupies (the corollary is that a Message Card piece can only be moved onto a new Esper Card if the characters along the edge being crossed match up). In the case of Kysouke, the Message Card piece will start at the Kyosuke start/goal square. Since the character on that square is Kyosuke, the player must place an Esper Card next to the Kyosuke square, and the Esper Card must itself have a pic of Kyosuke on the edge which contacts the Kyosuke square. So during his or her turn, the Kyosuke player can place such an Esper Card and move their Message Card piece that one space onto the space of the Esper Card with the Kyosuke pic on it.
  2. On the following turn for the Kyosuke player, he or she can move the Message Card piece to the adjacent Ayukawa Madoka triangular space on the same Esper Card. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, each Esper Card has three or four triangular spaces, so the Message Card piece must move at least once on the same Esper Card before it ends up on another edge of the card and can move onto a new Esper Card.
  3. On the following turn for the Kyosuke player, he or she can place another Esper Card on an adjacent space on the board and the Message Card piece can be moved one space onto the new Esper Card. In this example, being on a Madoka space, the player must first place an Esper Card with a Madoka space on it on the board and the card must be placed such that the Madoka space is adjacent to the Madoka space which the Mesage Card piece is currently occupying.
  4. On the following turn of the Kyosuke player, the Message Card piece is moved to the Hikaru space on the same Esper Card. In future turns, the Kyosuke player places additional Esper Cards and moves the Message Card piece one space at a time.

Hope that all makes sense. It's a bit hard to explain without a diagram and a pic of the Esper Cards... ^_^;; Note that you can't move a Message Card piece diagonally across an Esper Card - that is, you can't move it to a space on the card opposite to the present location of the piece. The Message Card piece move to a space which shares a common edge with the space it is leaving.

 

Each player has spaces which they can't enter!

Kasuka Kyosuke's Message Card piece cannot enter spaces on an Esper Card with a pic of Hino Yuusaku or Jingoro on them.
Ayuakawa Madoka's Message Card piece cannot enter spaces on an Esper Card with a pic of Hiyama Hikaru or Jingoro on them.
Hiyama Hikaru's Message Card piece cannot enter spaces on an Esper Card with a pic of Ayukawa Madoka or Jingoro on them.
Hino Yuusaku's Message Card piece cannot enter spaces on an Esper Card with a pic of Kasuga Kyosuke or Jingoro on them.

 

Where a player has no Esper Cards or can't place any of those cards on board to move his or her Message Card piece, then they should of course instead spin the roulette and move their player piece to collect Esper Cards.

 

Abcb Coffee Time

Before a player can move his or her Message Card piece onto the goal of the character to whom the message is intended, the Message Card piece must first pass through Abcb in the centre of the game board.

Upon the Message Card piece moving to Abcb, the player must take a Coffee Time Card and follow the directions on that card. There are three types of Coffee Time Cards:

  1. Coffee time, miss 1 turn.
  2. The player can change the Message Card of another player into another Message Card. Presumably the effect of this is that the goal of the other player then changes. For example, let's say the other player was Yuusaku and had secretly chosen to send a Message Card to Hikaru. That player would be trying to move their Message Card piece to the Hikaru goal. However, if another player picked up this Coffee Time Card, he or she could force the Yuusaku player to change his or her Message Card, that is, since the other Message Card for Yuusaku is addressed to Madoka, the Yuusaku player's goal would then be to move their Message Card piece to the Madoka goal.
  3. Meet with Kurumi and Manami at the Abcb and receive one Esper Card.

You leave Abcb by placing an Esper Card as if the Abcb did not exist. The normal rules of movement apply. I guess this means that if you enter Abcb from the square to the right of Abcb and from a space with a pic of Kyosuke on it, then to leave Abcb, you must place an Esper Card on the square to the left of Abcb and the card must have a pic of Kyosuke on it for you to move your Message Card piece onto.

 

Where there are Esper Cards which others have placed in the direction which you would like to move

It's okay to move onto Esper Cards which others have placed - the same rules apply (for example, to move onto the other Esper Card, the pics must still match up). But if you can't move onto an Esper Card which another has placed (that is, because the characters don't match up on the edge that you want to cross), you can simply place your own Esper Card on top of that card and move your Message Card piece as usual. You can place an Esper Card on top even though this may mean that the characters on other edges of the card don't match up - all that's important is that the characters on the edge which you're crossing match up. However, you can't place a new Esper Card over an old one when there is another Message Card piece on that first Esper Card.

 

WINNING THE GAME

The player who first gives their message to its intended recipient, that is, who moves their Message Card piece to the goal of the character to whom the Message Card is addressed is the winner. Remember that the Message Card piece also has to pass through Abcb first. I guess when the goal is reached, the winning player should open up their Message Card to show that they did in fact address their message to that character...

 

CREATING YOUR OWN MESSAGE

As mentioned above, four of the Message Cards are blank - one for each of the characters. Thus, if players wish to think up their own messages to send (or if they'd prefer to send a message to someone of the same sex), they can write on the blank card and play the game that way.

 

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Thank you for reading the instruction manual. If anything is unclear, please read the relevant part a second time, add your own ideas, and enjoy the "Kimagure Orange Road Game".

 

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