#Shawn layden vib ribbon software#

But back in the day, the idea of being to choose your own game soundtrack was thrilling. This might not sound like a big deal in these days of console hard drives and multiple in-game radio stations. The game will then not only play your tunes of choice, but use them to generate unique soundscapes for Vibri to navigate.

#Shawn layden vib ribbon software#

It's hard to know where these developers making games at the height of late nineties rave culture got their ideas from.Д«ut although the in-game soundtrack is great, it's optional the Vib-Ribbon software is loaded into the PlayStation's RAM, so you can stick any music CD in the disc drive. The intention seems to be for the player to reach a state of flow, where they're performing rapid repetitive movements without the need for conscious thought, becoming one with the music as the rhythmic beats reach a euphoric peak. In other words, it's genius.Д®ach song starts slowly but gathers pace and intensity in sync with the gameplay. Weird and cool and jolly all at once, it sounds like what would happen if Joy Division and Shonen Knife got pissed in a karaoke bar. The soundtrack on the disc is provided by pop band Laugh and Peace, and it's one of the most Japanese things that's ever happened.

Mess it up and the rabbit becomes a frog, then a worm, and then it's game over. Get it right and the rabbit evolves into an angel. You control a rabbit, Vibri, walking along a straight line, and must navigate obstacles using L, R, down, X or simple combinations of these. Vib-Ribbon is subtly but impossibly Japanese (perhaps too Japanese for Sony Computer Entertainment America - it was never released in the US.) The in-game tutorial even reads almost like a haiku: But throw in a fabulous soundtrack, an impressive technical feat, a dash of quirky charm and a ton of minimalist cool, and you've got a game that could only have been made for one console.ДЄnd in one country.

On paper, the end result sounds rubbish: it's a game about a dancing rabbit, played with only four buttons and designed using a zero-colour palette. For the follow-up, released three years later, he stripped everything back, swapping felt tip colours and karate-chopping onions for monochrome vectors and stick figures. Masaya Matsuura had already established his credentials as king of the rhythm action genre with 1996's PaRappa the Rapper. If there's one game that exemplifies what PlayStation meant back then, it's Vib-Ribbon. Video games were no longer about chiptunes and cartoons they were about slick visuals and sick beats. Then along came PlayStation, flattening the battlefield and crushing the opposition with its giant tank of hip. That's how it was, right up to the mid-90s. The air is filled with thunderous primal screams, punctuated only by the sound of a hedgehog bashing a plumber's head against a pipe. It is the image of two perfectly matched adversaries locked in brutal combat, their faces twisted with a terrible rage that burns in their souls and blackens their hearts. But those of us who have been around a while know what real war looks like. They say there's a war going on in video games.