Rhyme Rider Kerorican

Rhyme Rider Kerorican

released on Jan 06, 2001

Rhyme Rider Kerorican

released on Jan 06, 2001

Rhyme Rider Kerorican is a music video game in the style of Vib-Ribbon, an earlier game developed by the same studio. The game's plot is quite simple involving the adventures of Kerorican, a female astronaut wearing kemonomimi-style frog-helmet, as she walks along accompanied by jazzy techno music. As Kerorican continues her walk, she encounters more and more enemies and obstacles. Kerorican must jump, duck, kick aside, or otherwise dodge these obstacles to progress and as she does so, the actions she takes add notes to the song such that the player's actions results in a generative melody. By successfully clearing strings of obstacles, Kerorican's combo count increases and this can result in a reward to the player of a crown that acts to skip the player over obstacles. This game is played with the WonderSwan Color held diagonally, the only game on the system to do so. This is why all text in the game is oblique. The game has been criticized for difficulty of gameplay as timing and tricky button combinations often result in the player's death. The game also only contains 4 levels so replayability-value has also been considered a negative factor.


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As charming as it is, the timing feels off (it's also rather strict) and the visual cues are not very helpful. Your slow movement speed makes it even less readable and it becomes more frustrating than anything

the dark souls of rhythm games

Kerorican is just strolling along and vibing, no matter who gets in her way. The scuffed soundscape of the WonderSwan Color, adds an extra layer of charm to an overall immensely charming and colorful rhythm game. The game has a learning curve and getting the controls and flow down especially on the original hardware might be frustrating. Like even critics were divided on the game for that reason, but I feel that button configuration on emulators can make the experience less frustrating, even though the game also has an option for an easy button control scheme. I was surprised that I ended up vibing with this game so much, that it really got me itching to get into more of NanaOn-Sha's games and all the other rhythm games I still haven't tried. Vib-Ribbon is the closest to this one which I loved as well, this strolling kind of rhythm game is just so captivating to me.

wonderswan audio quality is....fucking cranked lmfao

The final game in NanaOn-Sha's initial debuts, but also the most overlooked one. Following a Space Channel 5-esque premise, the player must help Rhyme Rider Kerorican through various interplanetary songs. The art style, is super strong and I wish that there was more of it because we never see a NanaOn-Sha game that looks like this ever again.

I don't think there are many songs in Rhyme Rider Kerorican, and perhaps thats why it is so little remembered. However, there is an embodied emotion in the game design that I don't feel from any of the other NanaOn games. The sound is crackly and low quality, and once you hit the flow of notes, the animations string together into an absolutely wild frenzy of images. It captured the surprises of jazz and the pleasures of keeping the beat. On top of this, it isn't incredibly punishing while you figure things out. Something that is rare in many rhythm games today.