Vib Ribbon (games)
I don't blame them for not releasing it in the US. Of course, trying to figure out which kana options do what gives me a headache, in addition to the one I get playing that totally acid-trippy game.
Good kind of headache though.
9:50 PM It is no longer a good headache. Jittery non-antialiased lines + fast-updating LCD projection display = hurty head
The idea is very similar to Parappa, only much more funky to play. Basically, you put in an audio CD and it analyzes the beats and audio characteristics to make a playfield. This playfield is full of obstacles. To avoid the obstacles you have to press specific buttons just as Vibri (the bunny you control) steps foot on one.
As Vibri trips on more and more obstacles, she devolves. As she passes more, she evolves back up. If she's doing really well she becomes a super-bunny (with a cape and cute graceful moves and so on).
The graphics are totally vector-based. The sounds (aside from what comes off of CD) sound like the sorts of things which mid-70s vector arcade games would make.
And Vibri's so cute!
Anyway. The UI is pretty tricky since I can't read kana, but it's laid out consistently enough that I can more or less figure out how to get into the game. Once you get into the game there's absolutely no UI, there's just the ribbon and the bunny and the obstacles.
When things get really complex, it combines multiple obstacles into one (so for example, spikes+pit = spikey pit), and it also starts to make the obstacles move through the ribbon at different speeds so you can never really tell which obstacle is next without just tracking everything on the screen.
After playing with it on the normal soundtrack (which is cute), I popped in State Shirt - New Planet (which I also got today). That was muchly fun too. It really does perfectly follow the music's beat. It's trippy. It also forces me to concentrate harder on the music, so I actually listen to the lyrics and stuff too. Nifty.
Anyway, right now I'm burning a CD of some of my own (newer) stuff, and will be playing it in vib-ribbon after I eat some dinner. :)
Also, Vib Ribbon 2 is coming out soonish... yay! Probably only in Japan though. :(
Comments
From the look of your writeup, it sounds like an interactive Winamp plugin. From the screenshots, I would say that it was a game from the Atari 2600 era. It just goes to show that graphics aren't everything. =D
"Interactive winamp plugin" is one way of looking at it, yes.
And yeah, the graphics are primitive, but that's part of the style. Also, I have a feeling that the beat analysis takes up all of the PSX's paltry CPU. :)