The soundtrack is equally fantastic, with six quirky pop songs from Japanese band Laugh & Smile. When you get a high score, it sings you a little song. The graphics are a bit jaggy, sure, but infused with so much personality that it's fun to just watch the rabbit jump around. A lot of this has to do with the minimalist visual style, which almost makes it feel like a modern indie release. The most remarkable thing about Vib-Ribbon is that, as someone who has never played it before, it feels to me completely fresh despite being released three console generations ago.
Make too many mistakes and you'll fail the level, but stay perfect long enough and the rabbit will turn into an angel and boost your high score. Screw up too often and the rabbit will devolve first into a frog, and then some sort of worm with a TV for a head. It feels remarkably like wielding a guitar in Rock Band, just a lot more abstract. That means there are only four buttons in the whole game, but that doesn't make things easy, as you still have to worry about keeping in time to the music. Once you figure it out, the core gameplay is pretty simple: there are four different types of obstacles, and you just have to hit the corresponding button to get past it. something to get past them, but the game never actually tells you what, so those first few minutes are a bit bewildering. You play as a charmingly animated rabbit walking down a straight line, and eventually obstacles like spikes and ledges start to appear in time to the music. But yesterday Sony finally released the game here as a download on the PS3 and Vita (a PS4 version is expected later, though no date has been announced).įor $5.99 I was able to experience a 15-year-old game as if it were brand new. As a high school student, I never managed to scrounge together the cash to spend $100 or more on an import copy. Vib-Ribbon first launched in Japan, followed by Europe, but never made its way to North America in any official capacity. Parappa was followed by UmJammer Lammy in 1999, a game about a guitar-playing lamb, and Vib-Ribbon came out later that year - but not for everyone. Released in 1996 on the original PlayStation, the weird game about a rapping dog helped pioneer the concept of fusing gameplay and music, paving the way for games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Vib-Ribbon is the brainchild of Masaya Matsuura, a designer best known for his wildly influential rhythm game Parappa the Rapper. It's something I'd been waiting more than a decade to experience. I played levels multiple times, just to hear a song again, and when I did really good the rabbit danced for me. I stayed up until 1:00AM last night guiding a wireframe rabbit through a black-and-white world while listening to quirky Japanese pop music.
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