Vib-Ribbon

Vib-Ribbon is a unique arcade game, one of the first classical music-rhythm games in history. The Japanese studio NanaOn-Sha is responsible for the creation of the title, a team best known for the legendary PaRappa the Rapper music series. Vib-Ribbon was originally released on PlayStation in 1999. The title met with some interest on the part of the audience, but never gained great popularity. Its release was an extremely important step in the development of music and rhythm games, especially as for the first time in the history of the genre it enables the players to play to the rhythm of their own music recorded on CDs. Vib-Ribbon has seen a total of two sequels released on PlayStation 2 in Japan only. As a curiosity, we can add that the title is one of several games constantly presented in the prestigious Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) in New York at an exhibition devoted to the history of digital entertainment.

Mechanics

In Vib-Ribbon the gameplay is extremely simple and accessible, but depending on the level of difficulty it can be a big challenge even for veterans of the genre. The players control a little rabbit named Vibri, who has to overcome obstacles appearing in the rhythm of the music played in the background. There are a total of four types of obstacles. They can also be combined with each other. Each of them has been assigned to a specific gamepad button, which enables us to avoid it. The players earn points based on their accuracy and responsiveness. Each time we make a mistake, Vibri slowly turns into a toad, and then into a small worm.

Technical aspects

Vib-Ribbon features minimalist black-and-white visuals, made using simple vector figures. There are a total of six built-in songs, but the players can use any music tracks stored on Audio CD that we put into the PlayStation. This is possible thanks to the small size of the game, which is stored entirely in the internal memory of the console. The emulated version is unfortunately devoid of this option.

Last updated on April 9, 2020