Reviewed by Michelle Thurlow
Need some help with the game? Check out our feature guide, Memories Mode and Rabbit Hunting Tips!
The Rub Rabbits is developer Sonic Team’s follow up to the date-centered Nintendo DS launch title Feel the Magic XY/XX released in late 2004. In this iteration of the franchise, the game’s new protagonist is gadding about the mall when he spies a beauty heading up the stairs and instantaneously finds love on a escalator. Sounds like the basis for an Aerosmith song, if you ask me.
As in its previous incarnation, Rub Rabbits’ gameplay consists of mini-games presented to the player via a dating-themed skin and storyline. Thus, the typical air hockey stage in a mini-game compilation becomes in Rub Rabbits an innocently flirtatious, giggle-filled snowball fight, while the ubiquitous jigsaw puzzle level is transformed into a quest to dress the heroine in leaves as she shifts and wriggles like a sinner at a sermon.
Personally, my favorite “Scene” is the innuendo-filled Poke stage (which I enjoyed far more than my puritanical heart should have permitted) resembling the Simon Says tomfoolery indulged in in schoolyards all over the world. In the Rub Rabbits’ version, however, your girlfriend playfully pokes you in the forehead and shoulder in a certain pattern that she expects you memorize and reciprocate. If you bungle the sequence or jab her in an inappropriate spot, she’ll be offended at you – as well she should, you pervert.
The fact that I’ve powered-up this title daily since receiving a copy of it testifies to Rub Rabbits’ excellent replay value, and by game’s end I’d unlocked more items than a career bicycle thief. Clearing Story mode, for example, grants access to the Memories option, which is just slightly more than seventeen times as brutal as Story mode. There’s also an Attack scoreboard that records your best performances on a smattering of the game’s levels.
Clearly intended to be a party game, Rub Rabbits naturally boasts some rather healthy multiplayer innovations. Besides the requisite head-to-head competition for various scenes, there are two mini-games designed by Sonic Team to foster greater intimacy between romantic couples. First, in Baby-Making mode, significant others input vital statistics information (birthday, blood type) then slice a virtual wedding cake to test the couple’s communication and cooperation skills. Additionally, the Hullabaloo diversion is basically the finger adaptation of Twister, devised to foment “accidental” touching between established or potential romantic partners.
For visually creative types, the Maniac feature allows players to mix and match the girl’s apparel and accessories or crayon their own patterns for her outfits and lingerie. Even those with the hand-eye coordination of a drunk puff adder can fashion some natty kaleidoscopic motifs for the garments of our amorous hero’s beloved.
Ultimately, the only disappointment I experienced while playing Rabbits is of a politically sensitive nature. I cannot deny I was chagrined that the passive heroine of the game is faceless and buxom – the ultimate erotic object – whose patronizing boyfriend does everything for her from snatching her from the clutches of officious rival suitors to repairing her computer. She spends the entirety of the date (including snow levels) in little more than a bikini, and even the wardrobe-altering options in the Maniac menu offer only equally skimpy or fetishist ensembles (maid, dominatrix, schoolgirl). Furthermore, clearing the game on Hell difficulty activates Heaven mode wherein the silhouetted heroine is in fact wearing no clothes at all.
Feminist issues aside, however, Rabbits’ fun, frenetic mini-games are sure to rub twitch aficionados the right way. Players (and playaz) undaunted by roseate graphics, hearts, and flowers against a backdrop of Japanese chivalry will discover that Rub Rabbits pleases both guys and grrls right down to their happy, wiggling toes.
Special thanks to Jennie Sue and Sega for providing a copy of this title.