Libble Rabble

Overview

Libble Rabble is a 1983 Namco Arcade game, created by the same Namco developer (Tohru Iwatani) that created Pac-Man and Pole Position. It features the characters of Libble and Rabble as they attempt to harvest Mushlins for dinner.

The gameplay resembles the once-popular board game where players wrap rubber bands around pegs lined up on a board. The player, as the red (Libble) and blue (Rabble) arrows, must maneuver their attaching string around the pegs on the board and touch in order to create a closed loop. Anything within the loop is either collected (Mushlins, and other bonuses) or temporarily thwarted (Hoodlins, other enemies). Once all the Mushlins on the board are collected, the player moves onto the next stage. If nothing is collected inside a loop, it may spawn an additional enemy on the board.

Libble Rabble ran on the Namco Libble Rabble arcade board, which was the company's first to use a Motorola 68000 processor to handle instructions.

Release History

The game was eventually converted to the Sharp X68000, FM Towns and Super Famicom in 1993/94. While keeping most of the basic in-game art of the original Arcade game, it also featured 16-bit cutscenes that described the story.