It was not my intention to rub salt in the Vib Ribbon wound, but to express my admiration for it as the genre-busting title it is and was. It faded, lost to the chronicles of gaming history. Vib Ribbon is the “one that got away” and back then, when we still had that old-school thinking around regional lockout, there was no simple way for those outside of Europe and Japan to even encounter the game. The game released in Japan and Europe, but in the Americas not so much as a demo. But it did show, again, that PlayStation is the place where everything innovative, challenging, new and somewhat off-course can come to find a fan, a market, and a home. Sure, it didn’t go platinum and it didn’t make a ton of money. Luckily, we eventually got the greenlight to release Vib Ribbon in Europe. I could not get this into the hands of European gamers without having marketing support for the release. What they did not understand was that Vib Ribbon, with all its retro madness, was also part of the new game continuum and, in fact, a very radical offshoot of that, which was worthy of praise. There’s me thinking, “I’M IN!!!”īut, curiously, marketing at the time was not a believer in this quirky game. This is the crew that developed PaRappa the Rapper and veritably created the genre of rhythm-action gaming, and here they were with 2D, black and white vector graphics featuring a vibrating rabbit that turns into the Archangel Gabriel - or a slug - depending on your skills in traversing an oscillating spline that morphs to the beat of either the groundbreaking soundtrack or any CD the player happens to have around. One day we came upon a game developed by a team I admired very much: Masaya Matsuura and NanaOn-Sha. When Vib Ribbon first appeared in the PSone era, I was working for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe in London evaluating US and Japanese titles for possible release in Europe. I figured Vib Ribbon was a perfect example, and today I’m pleased to announce that Vib Ribbon will finally make a long overdue release in the US, Canada, Latin America and Japan this week, with Europe following next week.įirst, some quick backstory on a gaming legend. I wanted to give Vibri some much-deserved, though belated, screen time as I felt this game really captured the crazy that PlayStation was keen to offer back then… and looks to continue now with our outreach to the innovative and indie game community.

Hey everyone! If you saw our E3 Press Conference a few months back you may recall, amid all the great games and oversized hand gestures, that I gave a shout-out to what I believe to be one of the most iconic games from PlayStation’s first generation: Vib Ribbon.

Vib ribbon rule 34