The players move their rabbits left and right in a scrolling scenery of a spaceship, punching and shooting enemies with a laser or carrot missiles. Canned carrots power-up your firepower and punching to defeat the enemies quicker. When a boss enemy has been destroyed, the players move on to the net level.
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Rabio Lepus is the little Rabbit that could. Among the late 80s environment of Konami, Technosoft, Toaplan, Irem and others bashing out horizontal shooters like there was no tomorrow, the mostly forgotten Video System (of whom's staff later formed Psikyo) slapped out Rabio Lepus, and it's bizzarely better than nearly all the output of those shooting legends. Yeah, I don't really get it either.
And almost all of it is frankly, down to pacing. Horizontal shmups of RL's era often feel like they're going on forever, with horrendously slow scrolling speeds and a stupid amount of game time where nothing really exciting happens. This is probably Gradius' fault, though that game actually justifies it's slow scroll speed.
In comparison, Rabio Lepus is an absolute head rush. 12 stages, each of which barely lasts over a minute, with nary 2 seconds of dead air in any of them. Usually each of these stages consists of a handful of enemy formations, power ups in the forms of cans to punch, and the occasional environmental hazard, and it's all mixed up to the point where each of them is distinct, with a final boss level for each environment. Enemy bullets are also fast, and whilst it's hardly dangun feveron, there's a frantic quality to the whole thing.
Oh, and it's very cute. The eponymus Rabio Lepus is an adorable punching robot rabbit, there's plenty of silly boss and character designs, the little cut ins of story are nice, and the whole thing is just outright pleasant.
Core gameplay is really the game's only failing, though that's not to say it's bad. I like how the player is restricted only to a very thin shot with no power ups for the entire game, with a ammo-limited missile weapon which is neat. Enemy bullets are fast, which I like, but a bit all over the place which makes the game somewhat hard to read at times. Difficulty balance is also a bit of a mess with each level tending to have one section which will stack a load of fanning bullets which you'll probably take a hit on - though this game is also unusually lenient about the amount of bullet hits you can take, so it's not really a huge deal.
If I was of the mind to, Lepus would probably be easy to pick apart. Maybe it's a bit repetitive, enemy reuse is a bit much, could do with some more environments. But when a game is this pleasant, easy to pick up and play, and is cute, I don't care. Rabio Lepus is just nice. It might not challenge the legends of the genre, but there's room in this world for a simple palette cleanser like this. What a lovely little surprise to come across.
And almost all of it is frankly, down to pacing. Horizontal shmups of RL's era often feel like they're going on forever, with horrendously slow scrolling speeds and a stupid amount of game time where nothing really exciting happens. This is probably Gradius' fault, though that game actually justifies it's slow scroll speed.
In comparison, Rabio Lepus is an absolute head rush. 12 stages, each of which barely lasts over a minute, with nary 2 seconds of dead air in any of them. Usually each of these stages consists of a handful of enemy formations, power ups in the forms of cans to punch, and the occasional environmental hazard, and it's all mixed up to the point where each of them is distinct, with a final boss level for each environment. Enemy bullets are also fast, and whilst it's hardly dangun feveron, there's a frantic quality to the whole thing.
Oh, and it's very cute. The eponymus Rabio Lepus is an adorable punching robot rabbit, there's plenty of silly boss and character designs, the little cut ins of story are nice, and the whole thing is just outright pleasant.
Core gameplay is really the game's only failing, though that's not to say it's bad. I like how the player is restricted only to a very thin shot with no power ups for the entire game, with a ammo-limited missile weapon which is neat. Enemy bullets are fast, which I like, but a bit all over the place which makes the game somewhat hard to read at times. Difficulty balance is also a bit of a mess with each level tending to have one section which will stack a load of fanning bullets which you'll probably take a hit on - though this game is also unusually lenient about the amount of bullet hits you can take, so it's not really a huge deal.
If I was of the mind to, Lepus would probably be easy to pick apart. Maybe it's a bit repetitive, enemy reuse is a bit much, could do with some more environments. But when a game is this pleasant, easy to pick up and play, and is cute, I don't care. Rabio Lepus is just nice. It might not challenge the legends of the genre, but there's room in this world for a simple palette cleanser like this. What a lovely little surprise to come across.
Cotton candy