They say there's a war going on in video games. But those of us who have been around a while know what real war looks like. 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. The air is filled with thunderous primal screams, punctuated only by the sound of a hedgehog bashing a plumber's head against a pipe.
That's how it was, right up to the mid-90s. Then along came PlayStation, flattening the battlefield and crushing the opposition with its giant tank of hip. Video games were no longer about chiptunes and cartoons; they were about slick visuals and sick beats. They were cool.
If there's one game that exemplifies what PlayStation meant back then, it's Vib-Ribbon. Masaya Matsuura had already established his credentials as king of the rhythm action genre with 1996's PaRappa the Rapper. 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.
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