Hands up everyone who knows who Vibri is? Not many of you I’d guess. Vibri is a stick line rabbit who was the star of the PlayStation game Vib Ribbon, which was a rhythm action game created by Masaya Masuura of NaNa-OnSha, who also created Parappa the Rapper.

To call Vib Ribbon basic looking is a bit of an understatement. The entire game was drawn with white lines on a black screen, with very minimal use of colour. The premise was to get Vibri safely along a path which scrolled past with a series of odd shapes on it. Whenever Vibri reached one of these shapes, the correct button (or buttons) on the joypad had to be pressed to allow Vibri to pass them safely. The more you passed correctly, the more evolved Vibri would become, gaining a crown. Fail though, and Vibri would de-evolve into a frog!


The sequence of shapes that you had to traverse was determined by the backing music being played, and neatly you weren’t just limited to the music that came with the game. You could place any music CD into your PlayStation, and the game would create a level to match the pace and style of the music.

This wasn’t the end of Vibri however, although if you’ve never heard of Vib Ribbon then you’re even less likely to have heard of it’s sequel Vib Ripple. This was a PS2 game which required the use of the PS2 hard drive. Here pictures could be downloaded from a digital camera to form the levels of the game. You had to find objects hidden in the pictures by finding areas of the photograph that were a particular colour. Needless to say, the game wasn’t that popular due to the system requirements needed to play it.

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