Rabio Lepus (Arcade, PC Engine, PS 2, PS4/5, Video System, 1987)

[Randorama]

We move forward at a relentless pace, and finally zoom in on the shmup I planned to squib about in February: Rabio Lepus. You can find SturmVogel’s review of the PS4/5 port here, and there is a PS2 port. The game also saw an updated port back in the day on the PC Engine (i.e. Rabio Lepus Special), but the version I use as a reference is the arcade one, via emulation. As I kid, I adored this game, even if its non-trivial difficulty was a mountain to climb for my kid self. I admit that clearing the “hard” course became one of the earliest grudges in the shmup domain that I decided to clear, aside the one I had with Side Arms. The review is 1889 words long or 4.7 pages in times new roman, size 12, single space, in case you wonder, and the squib containing the personal experiences of your scribe is here. Without further procrastination:

Rabio Lepus/Rabbit Punch! (Video System) is an HORI(zontal) shmup from Video System, the small but glorious company that created the Sonic Wings series. The game combines typical 1980s anime visual tropes with classical 1970s S(cience)F(iction) themes and involves rabbit-looking giant robots rescuing the royal family of Planet “BunnyLand” from evil forces. The game is notable for being one of the first games on which Psikyo founder and main brain Shin Nakamura honed his skills. Many mechanics introduced in this shmup also resurfaced in Psikyo shmups via various iterations and influenced other companies’ titles as well (e.g. Success’ Cotton series). A cult classic with a loyal following (viz. the game’s wiki entry), the game should be a necessary stop in any shmup player’s grand tour of the 1980s. The goal of this review is to offer an argument on why you, dear readers, should indeed undertake such gaming stop.

Rabio Lepus saw its release in a year that was quite intense for shmups, both HORI(zontal) and in TATE (vertical) formats. The direct competitors to this tile in the genre were the legendary Irem’s R-Type and Taito’s Darius. For TATE games, Rabio Lepus had to compete against Toaplan’s Flying Shark and Kykyoku Tiger, Capcom’s 1943: The Battle of Midway and quite a few other titles. 1987, for the shmup genre and its fans, was a golden year indeed. With such a fierce and blazoned competition, players could justify themselves if they would not have noted this perhaps less eye-catching title. The game however built its own cult following and success, probably due to its high production values, innovative anime-looking design, and intriguing mechanics. It also laid the foundations for Psikyo’s approach to the genre, as Shin Nakamura apparently started his designer career on this title.

The story underpinning the game and its overall theme is rather simple and quite camp. The planet “Bunnyland” is a peaceful and tranquil kingdom in which citizens lively happily. One day, the evil army from “Mahou Land” come and kidnap the royal family. It is up to the robot fighters “Rabio” and “Lepus” to kick the bad guys’ army ass into oblivion and save the royal family. Interestingly, the royal family trio are human-looking individuals who however were bunny suits of differing degrees of silliness. Rabio and Lepus are giant rabbit-looking mechas, complete with complementary buckteeth and giant bunny ears. The game thus offers a rather silly twist to another rather bland setting, anime-style. The royal family members, Rabio and Lepus appear in the Sonic Wings games and other Video System games in various forms. The game thus played a lasting influence in Video System’s lore.

The game mechanics work as follows. Players control the robots and move them in eight directions with the joystick; the A button is for shooting; the B button is for missiles attacks. Rabio and Lepus can walk on surfaces and jump up via quick down-up movement while walking. Players can tap the A button to obtain a high-frequency stream of bullets or hold it down to use a slow auto-fire mode (8hz or so). Tapping in a semi-automatic manner releases fast salvos of bullets approximating higher auto-fire frequencies when players can time these salvos properly. The B button releases a salvo of missiles that work as smart but not so powerful bombs: a full salvo is about eight ammos; players start with 20 ammos and can get more stock as they proceed. Missiles can deliver good damage and have limited homing functions: do not expect them to be efficient.

Shot rate can increase if the robots get very close to enemies, thus allowing players to land quicker damage. When the robots are roughly at one sprite’s distance from an enemy or some other objects, they can also land a powerful physical blow: a punch, as per alternative title of the game. The robots can collect a ribbon power-up that increases shot frequency and aim and power of the missiles, and a tanuki-looking power-up. This power-up grants temporary invincibility: the robots gain a flashing tail-like weapon and can destroy any adversary upon touching them. The tail shortens as time passes, to signal the duration of the power-up. Robots can also stock up further missiles and collect bonus items, too. Most items appear after the robots shoot giant floating cans that carry carrots icons, in line with the “rabbit theme”. The two extend lives are at 300k and 600 points, respectively.

Rabio Lepus approaches the problem of HORI shmups being a tricky genre by adopting some aspects of so-called ”Euro shmups”. The robots start with three lives that correspond to three energy bars. Hit deplete H(it)P(oints) to varying degrees, so that the robots perform a dramatic death animation when they lose one bar. After resurrecting back, the robots can keep fighting: if they collect the giant “carrot” power-up, they regain some energy. At the end of each stage, after the boss fight, the robots can replenish their energy by collecting carrots falling from the ceiling. The carrots fall in increasingly random trajectories as the game progresses. Furthermore, the robots have no i(invicibility)-frames, so they may take multiple hits and lose lives quickly, especially against enemies landing multiple contact hits or multiple ultra-fast shots. Hence, be sure to dodge bullets and enemies anyway, as the energy bar can be rather misleading.

The game thus anticipates quite a few of Psikyo’s mechanics, except maybe for charge shots. The foundational aspect of the game also emerges once one looks at the game’s structure and stages. The game has 12 stages, with three environments of four stages each. The first three stages for each environment (“Space Ship”, “Asteroid Base”, “Planet”) are relatively short battles (around two minutes) concluding with intense and brief boss fights. The fourth stage of each environment is an equally brief and intense boss fight, after which the robots rescue one member of the royal family. Bullets are always fast and lethal, with bosses and bigger enemies shooting thick, vicious patterns. At the start, players can choose between the “easy” and “hard” courses, with the “hard” course featuring faster and nastier patterns and enemies. Players can thus directly access the equivalent of a second, quite more difficult loop of the game.

With this compact description of the game mechanics, we can move to the audio-visual department. The game has excellently detailed graphics and rather fluid animations for the time. The colour palette is rich, and the design of most sprites is quite intricate. The two rabbit robots have lovely walking animations when they land on surface and thus walk rather than fly. In general, the game looks sharp and detailed, with stages including high levels of detail in their background (e.g. Stage three’s giant human faces in the background). A perhaps weak point in the game is that bosses seem a heterogeneous bunch: The “Space Ship” bosses are robots, but the “Asteroid Base” and “Planet” have less mechanical appearance. Stage six’s boss looks like a ghost from Namco’s Pac-Man, Stage 10 is a giant Mammoth. The exact links to the “Rabbit” theme and the S(cience)F(iction) genre may appear uncertain, I believe.

The OST may be the weaker aspect (or Facet, to broaden the use of our terminology), at first glance. The game features mostly music that I would label as “generic, non-descript anime music”, perhaps with some stages offering a more SF-oriented sound. The themes for the “boss battle” stages (i.e. Stage four, eight, 12) are simple, dramatic-sounding themes that seem to aim at creating a tense atmosphere. An impressive aspect about the game is that it features voice samples for the announcer (in English, even), and minimal voice acting for the royal family. Once you save them, they will offer a few words of gratitude but in the J(a)P(anese) version only, however. Overall, however, the game looks visually impressive for its period and has a strong SF, anime vibe: the non-descript OSTs are certainly fine enough in how they accompany the action.

Let us now move to the discussion of the difficulty, benefitting from the fact that we have already introduced Facets as our terminological and conceptual tool. I believe that Rabio Lepus follows a trend akin to Capcom’s games. Players need to master mechanics and Stages’ layouts as distinct aspects, before they can 1-CC both versions of the game. The two facets seem not to interact in significant manners: once players can use the robots well and know how to handle stages, the 1-CC can boil down to question of good performance. Game mechanics present a subtle but not so difficult challenge: mastering the semi-automatic tapping requires some practice, and so do close-range shooting and rabbit punches. Using missiles may also reduce risks, but one can clear the game without ever using missiles. Collecting carrots as end-of-stage bonuses becomes tricky on the last few stages: be sure to master the technique.

Stages and their layout act as the main source of difficulty, in my view. I would suggest that the first two stages are rather easy. However, from Stage three players begin to face environmental hazards and tricky situations (e.g. narrow passages, enemies shooting from vantage points). The first boss battle (i.e. Stage four) is a short but tense affair: the bullet count increases considerably. Bullets become faster from Stage five onwards, bullet patterns become thicker and kamikaze enemies start appearing as well. The last four Stages require very fast dodging and rote memorization, with Stage 11 being a tricky “boss rush” Stage, Gradius-style. The final’s stage dual boss requires precise dodging movements in its two forms, even if stocking up lives and missiles and adopting a kamikaze approach may reduce the difficulty. Players ultimately need to work on having safe routes for stages, once they know the mechanics well.

Overall, I suggest that we have a 4/25 level of difficulty for the four mechanics. We then have a 11/25 level of difficulty for the ten stages and the dual final boss (N.B. we divide a total of 50 points in two halves). The “easy” course sits at 15/50 points, what I consider to be a mid-tier difficulty for intermediate players. The “hard” course is, in my more limited experience, twice as hard. From Stage one, enemies shoot more and faster bullets, have more hit points, and move at faster speeds. Thus, each Stage offers a supplementary layer of difficulty, clocking the partial difficulty for this Facet a steep 23/25 points. At a grand total of 19/50 points, the game becomes a high-tier challenge for expert shmup players. A supplementary observation is that Psikyo fans may find the challenge more immediate, given how Rabio Lepus plays as a proto-Psikyo game.

In conclusion: Rabio Lepus is a HORI(zontal) shmup with an anime-style SF design in which two rabbit-shaped robots must save the royal family of their planet. The game introduces in prototypical form many mechanics that will recur in Psikyo games, such as close-range attacks and fast bullets. The game features great design and colourful stages, interesting bosses, solid game mechanics and two notable challenges via the “easy” and “hard” modes. Players who wish to discover the roots of Psikyo unique style can experience this title as a genuine time capsule for its company, and for the 1980s in general. Try it out, as a less-trodden but excellent path to classic shmups.