Reviews | Arcade

Rabio Lepus

By Alex Kierkegaard / August 29, 2006

In a peaceful kingdom, a dude in a jet fighter suddenly appears and kidnaps the princess, the king, and a hot girl in a bunny suit. Their only hope is a rocket-powered flying rabbit with boxing gloves, which you are called upon to guide through a number of horizontally-scrolling stages.

Rabio Lepus, a fairly unknown 1987 shooter, is Video System's first arcade game, and the first title Shin Nakamura appears to have designed (at least according to every database available online at the moment). Four years later he made the remarkable Sonic Wings (1992), before going on to co-found Psikyo, a famous developer of shooting games throughout the late 90s.

Nakamura is a designer I regard very highly. In quality and quantity of output I rank him fourth during the period in which he was active, behind Cave's Tsuneki Ikeda, Treasure's Hiroshi Iuchi, and Raizing's Shinobu Yagawa. Among others, he designed the Gunbird, Strikers, and Zero Gunner series of games, and was able to masterfully guide Psikyo in its transition from old-school shooters to swarmers, and from 2D to 3D graphics. His efforts were not enough, however, and the very innovative and all-around excellent Zero Gunner 2 (2001) ended up, ironically, being Psikyo's last shooter. The company effectively closed its doors a couple years later, and Nakamura hasn't been heard of since.

Now because hit games don't usually come out of nowhere, I wanted to see if some of the magic of his later titles could be found in this proto-cute 'em up with the nonsensical name. The short answer is 'nope', but there are a couple of points worth noting here, before moving on to more worthwhile shooters.

Rabio Lepus is rather oddball, even by today's standards. Your rocket-powered rabbit normally flies across the screen, but when you hit the ground he shuts off his engines and starts walking. However, there's no change in his handling characteristics while walking, and you can take off again instantly simply by pushing the stick upwards. So the gameplay is not much affected by this walking business -- all it does is make the rabbit look a bit cuter, and the experience of controlling him just a bit different.

The really original feature here is the close-proximity attack. If you get right next to an enemy and hit the fire button, the rabbit throws a punch, which causes much more damage than the regular shot. This is one of the first instances of such an attack in a shooting game. Nakamura would later make great use of it in Gunbird 2 (1998), and titles by other companies, such as Visco's Vasara 2 (2001) and Skonec's recent Homura (2005), would borrow this mechanic and turn it into the central game element with much success. All these games showed that maneuvering close enough to "kiss" the enemies can add a lot of strategy and fun to a shooter.

But in Rabio Lepus, this innovation is mostly wasted. Because you don't get to use it enough, it never amounts to more than a novelty. The problem is that most of the enemies fly around really fast, and if you try to get too close to them you'll certainly get hit. So you mostly end up punching the slower enemies, such as the grey floating faces scattered around most stages, or the occasionall boss -- if you are daring enough.

Apart from the main shot and the punches, you also fire carrot-shaped homing missiles, which you can replenish by picking up items left behind by destroyed enemies. These missiles are handy in various spots, but they don't make up for the game's greatest omission: the lack of power-ups.

So yes, there are no power-ups here; the starting shot is all you get. This means that you lack the necessary firepower to take on some of the dense waves of enemies that the game occassionally throws at you. On the other hand, the designers make a lot of allowances in your favor, which help to correct this imbalance, if not the missing fun factor (because, you know, power-ups add fun by definition).

For one thing, the game is relatively short, and the bosses are very, very easy, except perhaps from the last one. You also get three lives, with health bars and instant respawns. And if all that was not enough, after you beat each boss carrots start falling from the top of the screen, which replenish your health. This means you get to fill up your remaining life bar after every single stage.

If the above make you think the game is easy, you are not mistaken. I got to the half-way point after only three-four goes, and I never felt challenged. If you are one of those people who "collect" 1CCs, then this will make an easy game to add to your collection.

Up to this point the game has its good points (walking, punching) and its not-so-good ones (lack of power-ups, too easy). It still could have turned out well if the enemies, stage designs, art, and music were up to a good standard. Unfortunately, they aren't. The initial stages all look the same, the enemies are similarly nondescript, the music is trash, and the whole experience reeks of mediocrity. At least the controls are solid, and some of the latter bosses look cool, though they are still way too easy, even when you have to take all of them down again, one after another, in the penultimate stage.

I had originally planned to give Rabio Lepus about a week, but after two days I decided I'd had about as much fun with it as I ever would. Less patient players will probably give up after a couple of credits, and it will be a wise decision. The game is certainly playable, but there are so many excellent shooters out there to get hooked on, that spending your precious time with third-grade ones is not a smart move. Try some of Nakamura's other games instead. I am sure that's what he would have wanted you to do. Wherever he is these days, and whatever he is doing.