Rhythm based games tend to be hit or miss, for every success story like Dance Dance Revolution, many more go entirely unnoticed. Case in point: Vib Ribbon.

Vib Ribbon was developed by NanaOn-Sha (Same company that created the critically acclaimed Parappa The Rapper series and the lesser known Um-Jammer Lammy) and released on the Playstation in Japan late in 1999, although not a huge commercial success it did see a PAL release as well.

Gameplay involves pressing the right buttons at the right time depending on the next obstacle. The main character is known as Vibri: Essentially a wireframe rabbit with a high pitched voice, sounds great huh? As the level’s progress, Vibri either gets “promoted” or “demoted” into different forms such as a princess or a frog.

There are three modes of dificulty in the game, each with unfortunately only two Songs a piece, for a total of only 6 levels. Vib Ribbon’s saving grace however is the ability to use normal audio CD’s to add to nthe variety. The game actually attempts to analyze the sounds on the disk and create brand new levels to experience, the experience is somewhat flawed as the game seems to pick and choose when it thinks it should register certain sounds, but it also offers some fun.

Vib Ribbon may not be a perfect game, if anything it is sinfully short, by the time you master the gameplay you realize the experience has already ended, but it’s an amusing ride nonetheless. The menu’s are all in Japanese, luckily there are many FAQ’s available to help you navigate them, and once you remember which is what you completely eliminate any sense of language barrier.

Bottom Line:

Graphics: Although the graphics are extremely simple, they seem to have some level of charm to them, Vib Ribbon has a style all of it’s own, but make no mistake, your two year old nephew could draw it easily.

Gameplay: A simple but fun rhythm game, with only four bottons used ever it may seem simple, but the first time you play hard and try to remember which combination of buttons creates what shape it begins to show it’s challenge.

Sound: Every song is memorable, but somehow no matter what you listen to the sound on it somehow sounds “unbalanced”. There are some true Gems, and all the songs are done by “Laugh and Beats” a Japanese group that has some rather fun “engrish”.

Import Friendliness: Once you learn the menu’s any sense of language barrier is removed, however with limited japanese knowledge it may be dificult at first to figure everything out.