Sony finally released Vib Ribbon in the U.S. this past Tuesday after nearly 15 years. Being curious, I plunked down the $4.79 and checked it out. It's exceedingly simplistic, and incredibly charming. The game itself has a mere six stages of rhythmic platforming with some catchy songs. Outside of those, you can put in your own music CDs (PS3 version only) and have the game automatically generate stages for you based on your music. I found this mode to be interesting but not much fun since the high difficulty can be frustrating. I can definitely see why this game never got a retail release in the U.S.: it just doesn't have enough content to justify the price they would have had to charge. That said, it's an important piece of video game history, and fun to mess around with for $5. It's also neat to see how it inspired more well known games like Rez and Rhythm Heaven.

I imported the JP version years ago but could never get into it. I've never liked games with randomly generated dungeons/stages because they lack the fine tuning and balance that only good level design can provide. As it turns out, the principle holds true for rhythm games as well. Vib Ribbon ended up feeling more like an interactive music visualizer instead of a game.

Of course, it's also possible that its audio detection just wasn't too advanced. There's actually a Steam game, Melody's Escape, that came out earlier this year with essentially the same concept, and I wonder if their technology is an improvement on the concept. Bit.Trip Runner also rips off Vib Ribbon's core gameplay, though I don't think it allows for user-generated content.

Funny, I played the Japanese version on my PS2 some weeks ago for the first time. Interesting concept (for the time), but it didn't keep me hooked up longer than 20 minutes. Went back to Suikoden haha.

Vib Ribbon never had a release in the US? Really? I had no idea. It has one of the happiest songs ever made. I love this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGRHSyVUbZ4

I loved it back in the day but only very briefly. It didn't hold my interest. As you mention in your post, XLord, the generated tracks from CDs can be very hard and don't always feel like they make a lot of sense. The look and the soundtrack is fantastic though. I had to get some other soundtrack to get the music eventually (Vib Ripple or Mojib Ribbon, not sure...).