Dreamcast 20 #15: Samba de Amigo

2018 marks the 20th anniversary of the Dreamcast, Sega's final - and in my opinion the finest - home videogame console. Despite a range of excellent games, it simply failed to compete against Sony's PlayStation 2. To celebrate, The Angriest counts down its 20 best games.

As I noted in an earlier review of Sega Bass Fishing 2, the Dreamcast was a console big on peripherals, with multiple titles making use of their own dedicated controllers. Samba de Amigo is another one. A charming rhythm action game, it's core appeal came in its own special extras: a pair of maracas.

Seriously, who doesn't want to play a smiling monkey shaking a pair of maracas in time with the music?

PSX20 #4: Vib Ribbon

In 2014 Sony's PlayStation turns 20 years old. It was a revolutionary console, exploding the Nintendo vs. Sega paradigm that had dominated videogaming for a decade and its effects can still be felt today. PSX20 celebrates the 20th anniversary of Sony's Playstation videogames console by counting down my 20 favourite videogames for that platform. These aren't necessarily the best PSX games ever made, but they are the ones I liked and played the most. Today I take a look at #4: the 1999 rhythm-action game Vib Ribbon.

Much of what I wrote about PaRappa the Rapper - rhythm-action gameplay, distinctive design aesthetic, a game quite unlike others on the shelf - also applies to Vib Ribbon. Not surprisingly, it even shares a designer: Masaya Matsuura. The biggest differences are that Vib Ribbon is even more abstract and distinctive, and I like it even more. This isn't just one of my favourite PlayStation games - it's one of my favourite games on any platform.

You play as a skipping rabbit, rendered in deliberately crude wire-frame graphics. It's a black screen, and the rabbit is designed with a bunch of white lines. She skips along another line, and occasionally a weird bump or shape will scroll up along the line, and you'll have to press the right button at the right time to successfully skip over it. As the music continues, the shapes get more complex and approach faster. The better you perform, the more advanced your character becomes. Eventually, if you play well enough, she transforms from a rabbit into a fairy. Perform poorly and you'll devolve into a crudely animated frog, and then a tadpole. Then you die and have to begin the level again.

PSX20 #5: PaRappa the Rapper

In 2014 Sony's PlayStation turns 20 years old. It was a revolutionary console, exploding the Nintendo vs. Sega paradigm that had dominated videogaming for a decade and its effects can still be felt today. PSX20 celebrates the 20th anniversary of Sony's Playstation videogames console by counting down my 20 favourite videogames for that platform. These aren't necessarily the best PSX games ever made, but they are the ones I liked and played the most. Today I'm highlighting #5: the 1996 game PaRappa the Rapper.

PaRappa the Rapper really stood out among its fellow PlayStation games. It wasn't a third-person action game for one thing, nor a car driving game, or a platformer. It was a rhythm-action game, in which the player had a press a combination of buttons in time with some music. The genre really peaked in the last generation of videogame consoles with titles like Guitar Hero and Rock Band. PaRappa may have lacked the guitar peripherals, but I actually enjoyed it a lot more.