Vib-Ribbon was “something that really stood out in my experience as being a completely PlayStation play, something no one else would have been crazy enough to try,” Layden said. “It takes technology and tweaks it in a weird direction. … I think the music is some of the best game music. Out of four generations, nothing beats the Vib-Ribbon soundtrack.”
So, as Sony executive Andrew House took the stage at E3 to introduce Shawn Layden to the PlayStation world, he filled those Brobdingnagian larger-than-anything panoramic movie screens that towered over him with photos and video clips of Vib-Ribbon, a game that had never merited so much as a passing mention at a PlayStation press conference in fifteen years.
Twitter went crazy. Many tweets were simply the words “VIB RIBBON” in all caps. The phrase “Vib-Ribbon” started trending in the United States. Was Sony bringing it back? A remake? A sequel? A downloadable re-release of the game on PlayStation 4?
“Vib Ribbon was unafraid to go against the tide,” said Layden after he’d taken the stage and walked the audience through PS4’s latest sales figures. “It was courageous in its ambition.”
“That’s why it’s a tremendous pleasure and a unique thrill for me,” he said, closing his presentation, “to introduce on this stage the worldwide premiere of gameplay footage for… Mortal Kombat X!”
Twitter exploded again, this time with rage.
Screen capture from Sony’s livestream of its E3 2014 press briefing shows Vib-Ribbon on the giant screens, dwarfing Sony exec Andrew House (center bottom). Sony/Screencap: WIRED
Sony’s press conference ended late on Monday evening, and Layden went back to his hotel room not long after. He woke up in the morning ready to do some interviews with the press, and spoke to his communications director Dan Race.
“You did a great job, Shawn,” Layden recalls Race saying. “Just… don’t look at the internet.”
Don’t look at the internet? “But, of course,” said Layden, “I’m laying in my bed, it’s six o’clock, I just get the phone out… maybe I’ll just see.”
“I don’t know why I went to NeoGAF,” a popular gaming web forum notorious for giving no quarter to game industry executives’ performances. “That was probably the wrong place to go.”
“I couldn’t believe the outcry,” he said. “‘Damn, you, Layden! At the end, we’re waiting for the announcement of Vib-Ribbon, and you show Mortal Kombat X! You’d better be bringing that thing out, or that’s the worst trolling ever!’ Boom, boom, boom.”
Of all the reactions to what Layden assumed would be the most boring part of Sony’s conference, this was not one of them. Then he remembered something, the import of which hadn’t really occurred to him until that moment, reading NeoGAF on his phone in bed.
Sony Computer Entertainment America had never actually released Vib-Ribbon.
While most American arms of Japanese game companies were subsidiaries beholden to Japan, Sony set things up differently. America, Europe and Japan could operate with large degrees of autonomy. And SCEA didn’t care for Vib-Ribbon.
“I had released it in Europe,” Layden said. “But even that was a hard sell.” The graphics were unique, but not technologically impressive; SCEA was notorious for turning down games simply because they had 2-D sprites instead of 3-D polygons. “[They] said, no market for it. We’re not going to localize it. Boom, that was it—never to be seen or heard from again.”
Until that day at E3. Layden’s name-checking of Vib-Ribbon wasn’t received as a showing of solidarity, it was reopening an old wound and pouring in the salt.
A collection of Internet reactions to the Vib-Ribbon E3 non-announcement. Sony
But Layden, as president of SCEA, could now do something about it. That very day, on the E3 show floor, he hunted down David Thach, Sony’s director of international game development.
“You have to get me Vib-Ribbon,” he said.
“We didn’t release that here,” Thach replied.
“I know,” Layden said. Oh, did he ever know. “You’ve got to find out how we’re going to get this thing to market, get it emulated,” Layden recalls saying. “If you can get the CD-swapping thing to work, great. But don’t let that be the game-stopper. Just get this thing to market.”
Layden had three more days of E3 to go, and was swept up in other work. Arriving back at Sony’s offices in Foster City after the show, he was still busy with other projects. A few weeks later, Thach stopped by.
“Shawn,” he said, “the Vib-Ribbon thing?”
“Yeah, Dave, I would really appreciate it if you could get on that,” Layden said, assuming Thach was about to get started on looking into the matter.
“Well, here’s the status,” Thach said. They’d called the licensing guys in Tokyo, who got through to NanaOn-Sha and Masaya Matsuura. They got the rights signed off. They had an emulator up and running on the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. They were tackling an interesting problem: The European version was in English, but it was in PAL television format; the Japanese version was in American standard NTSC, but was Japanese-language. They were working out how to solve it, but figured they could release the game in late summer.
“And I thought, gee, sometimes it’s convenient to be the president,” Layden said. “Because you can make a call like that, and no one’s going to say, did you run the ROI on that? Nope: I want it done and I want it done now.”
Sony
It was the summer of 2014, and the Ice Bucket Challenge refused to die. The viral stunt had become so popular that CEOs of major corporations were dousing themselves with freezing water to raise donations for ALS, aka Lou Gehrig’s Disease. In August, Layden took the bath on behalf of Sony—wearing a Vib-Ribbon shirt.
“I was trying to Easter Egg the thing,” he said.
A short time later, Sony made it official: Vib-Ribbon was back, available as a download for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. On PS3, you could insert your own CDs for that make-your-own-music-game functionality. Layden made the announcement himself, writing a blog post on the PlayStation site.
“I had forgotten that the American gamer was effectively denied the opportunity,” Layden wrote. “To mention it at E3 was to delight some and to squirt lemon in the eyes of others. For this, I apologize.”
So in the span of a few months, Layden went from PlayStation pariah to hero. Vib-Ribbon is finally available to play in America, 15 years later.
“Downloads have been pretty good,” Layden says. “Although I think everyone who screamed at me on the internet should make good on their scream and go buy it now.”
Now, says Layden, fans are asking for more.
“Of course, now everyone wants me to bring out Parappa the Rapper,” he said. “Which we are looking at. But that’s a more complex rights package.”
“It’s us trying to be more open at SCEA,” he says. “If someone comes to me about something that they would like to have back on the platform, and it’s in my power to make it happen… I mean, why wouldn’t we?”
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