Vib Ribbon

Do you like your games to come with a bit of verve and rhythm? Then you might want to look into PSX classic Vib Ribbon. Vib Ribbon is developed by NanaOn-Sha, and was published by Sony themselves. As one of the first majorly successful rhythm games, Vib Ribbon managed to draw huge praise from fans of this interesting form of video gaming.

With an intriguing wireframe style and a very interesting vector style of art, this is a game that really showed what can be done with minimalistic art paired up with unique gameplay. While some might find modern rhythm games like Crypt of the Necrodancer a touch more engaging, Vib Ribbon offered a game-changing opportunity for its release.

Dancing like its 1999

The game, released in 1999 in Japan and 2000 in Europe, was a pretty big success at the time. Noted for being more of an experience as opposed to a typical game with a plotline etc. this is a game that caught a lot of attention at the time. You play as Vibri, a wireframe rabbit-like creature that basically has to make its way through the games various levels engaging in a rhythm game.

The whole purpose of the game is for you to move along a line that is filled with obstacles, like loop-the-loop systems. You need to try and work through the obstacles to the beat of the music, managing things like blocks, waves, loops, and pits, which require you to press the right button at the correct time to avoid losing your rhythm.

If you keep getting hit as you play, you devolve from a rabbit to a frog, and from a frog to a worm. If you get hit too many times in worm form, it is back to the start for you!

Intriguing score-based gameplay ahead of its time

While today it might not hold a candle to modern rhythm games in terms of unicity, at the time Vib Ribbon was a genuine game-changer. The game only came with six songs, though, which made it quite easy to burn through the content. However, the fact you could generate your own music with CDs was a hugely interesting feature that was copied by various other rhythm and music-based games as the years have gone by.

Pros:

• Addictive gameplay loop that was easy to learn, hard to master
• Intriguing graphical style that became a real cult classic
• Enjoyable variety and a change-up from most games of its era

Cons:

• Only six songs built-in with the base game
• Self-developed tracks could become very strange

Vib-Ribbon is the latest game from SCEI and developer NaNaOn-Sha, the same team that brought us Parappa and Umjammer Lammy. It's a music game, but a little bit different than either of those titles. At first glance, this game looks like crap. Graphically speaking, Vib-Ribbon isn't that impressive. It's entirely in vector graphics. You play as this rabbit-type character who has to jump, twirl, step and loop his way through a world created entirely by the beats and speed of music. You press a button that corresponds to the type of obstacle he has to get past (there are four of them). But the cool part is that obstacles can be mixed, so in those cases you have to press two buttons simultaneously.

That's not even the best part. The game itself comes with a few songs, but you can insert your own music CDs to come up with brand-new levels for each song on them. This adds almost infinite playability to the game, since any new CD you have means new levels to play. It's a shame this game will likely never come out in the U.S.