Collection essentials #391: Vib-Ribbon (PS1)

Here’s another quirky rhythm game from the people who made PaRappa the Rapper. This one has a very minimalist visual style, using a black background and squiggly white lines illustrating everything (which there’s not much of).

You play as Vibri the rabbit, who happily walks along a long white ribbon as a song plays. Certain beats in the music will cause some kind of obstacle to appear. There are four basic obstacles that are each represented by one of four buttons. There are also more complex obstacles which are a combination of two of the basic ones, and these require pressing both of the associated buttons. For example, a block requires the L1 button, a pit requires the down button, but a block-shaped pit requires pressing both L1 and down. Messing up can devolve Vibri into a frog and then a worm, but playing well results in her being dressed up like a queen.

There’s not a lot of content in Vib-Ribbon, with only a handful of songs. But that’s because of this game’s signature feature…the ability to use your own music CDs!! That’s right, you can swap out the Vib-Ribbon disc with any audio CD from the menu, choose a track on the CD, and the game will generate a level based on the audio! This means that this game has functionally infinite levels!! Of course, your mileage will vary quite a bit here, as some custom levels won’t be particularly fun. But it is certainly a very cool feature. 

You may notice I own the Japanese release. There was actually an English version too, but only in Europe, so I got the Japanese version since I didn’t have a way to play European PlayStation games. The game eventually did get a digital American release for a future PlayStation console, which I do also own. I’m not sure if it’s still available, I’d have to check.

For having such a neat gameplay gimmick, this game deserves a spot in my collection. It’s one of the few reasons to still burn an audio CD in modern times! How cool is that??