Five Best Rabbits in Gaming

Every Easter, tens of thousands of rabbits are bought as “holiday appropriate” pets, with cute depictions of the Easter bunny encouraging lots of people, often parents, to get themselves their first lagomorph. Sadly, despite their reputation as an “easy pet” that’s “great for children”, rabbits are actually pretty difficult to keep, and as prey animals who are terrified to be picked up in most cases, they’re also dreadful pets for children. As a result, over 35,000 bunnies end up in animal rescues every year, more than half of which have been abandoned before their first birthday. 

As a rabbit lover myself, I find this to be very sad. Whilst I do think they’re great pets, I’m keen for people to realise that they are also temperamental pains in the backside who chew everything, make more mess than should be possible for something so small, and cost a small fortune. I always feel it’s best to go into everything fully informed: so if you were considering impulse purchasing an Easter bunny, why not play one of these excellent bunny-themed games instead? That’ll give you a bit more time to think about if you really want to replace your phone charger four times a year because your fluffy companion has helpfully destroyed that stringy thing they were worried you might trip over.

Max (Sam and Max series)

Max is violence-obsessed, petulant, and frankly quite rude a lot of the time; but he’s still a lovable rogue, nonetheless. This is typical for rabbits in my experience, and makes him a perfect example of his species. One half of the crime-fighting duo Sam and Max, he first appeared in a series of comic books in the late ‘80s, which had a limited amount of success but saw far more copies sold after the unlikely dog and rabbit partnership became a videogame and cartoon series.

The debut videogame outing was Sam and Max Hit the Road back in 1993, and this was a one-off outing for quite some time. It was the reimagining by Telltale Games in 2006 onwards that saw the pair hit superstar status, and this was one of the very first examples of a successful episodic series. A VR title was released in 2021, and Skunkape games are currently in the process of remaking those Telltale outings, with the third and final due for release later in 2024. 

Rayton (F.I.S.T.: Forged In Shadow Torch)

The release of F.I.S.T.: Forged In Shadow Torch in 2021 wasn’t met with a huge amount of fanfare, and this is something I think is a shame because the indie metroidvania title is actually a tremendously fun game. When it became the weekly free game on the Epic store in 2022, it did pick up a bit more momentum, and that’s helping it earn a bit of a cult status. A Switch version followed later in 2022, and an Xbox version in 2023.

The main character, Rayton, is a moody, reluctant hero, reminiscent of some of my favourites like Squall from Final Fantasy VIII or Joel Miller from The Last of Us. The fact that he doesn’t really want to save the world but hasn’t got much of a choice in the matter makes him more relatable than a bionic rabbit really should be, but that’s one of the reasons why I enjoy this slightly hidden gem of a game. It’s out on basically everything now, so if you haven’t played it, I thoroughly recommend giving it a try.

Cream (Sonic the Hedgehog Series)

With appearances in over a dozen Sonic games now, Cream the Rabbit is an established part of the series’ lore. As a loyal companion to everyone’s favourite blue hedgehog, she was first seen in Sonic Advance 2, which many still think of as one of his crowning portable outings to this day. She’s meant to be one of the younger characters in the universe and sometimes comes across as perhaps a bit twee or naive, but ultimately, her heart is in the right place, and she’s got a charm to her that I always really liked.

We’ve yet to see her in any of the movies yet, and 2024’s Sonic The Hedgehog 3 is likely to feature Knuckles as a new addition, so we might have to wait a little longer, but in the meantime, Apple Arcade users can play as her in Sonic Dream Team. She was in the original Sonic Generations, too, so with 2024 seeing a follow-up starring Shadow, fans of this adorable little supporting character might have a glimmer of hope

Vibri (Vib-Ribbon)

Vibri is a little bit of an obscure inclusion here, but she was one of the most unique characters that I can remember from my younger years playing on the original Sony PlayStation. Vib-Ribbon, her debut title, was a rhythm action game that saw you pressing buttons to make her jump, duck, glide, and otherwise manoeuvre around a line that was morphing in time to the music. The graphics were black-and-white line art with a very low resolution, even for the time, so it wasn’t exactly a visual masterpiece. What made the game stand out, though, was that once it was all loaded into memory on your console, you could remove the disc and play with your own music. This was a unique feature, and I don’t recall seeing it again until Audiosurf decades later.

The nature of Vib-Ribbon was such that there’s not really any lore about Vibri and so we don’t know that much about her as a character. From the Japanese-only sequel Vib-Ripple, we do know that she loves jumping on people’s faces, which is again not entirely unlike real rabbits, who rarely have any concept of personal space. 

Bugs Bunny

We can’t talk about famous rabbits without mentioning this guy. Pre-dating videogames by many years, Bugs is the main reason that so many of us mistakenly believe that rabbits eat carrots. In fact, they’re far too high in sugar to be anything but an occasional treat. Ultimately, we have Clark Gable to thank for this misnomer, as Bugs eating carrots was originally an homage to his performance in It Happened One Night. Ever designed to be the suave epitome of the chilled-out superhero, Bugs was an obvious choice for videogames, and has appeared in dozens, including the hugely popular Crazy Castle series on the Nintendo Game Boy. 

While it’s fair to say that the heyday of Bugs Bunny in videogames was the ‘90s, he’s started to pop up with a bit more regularity in more recent years. He was featured prominently in Space Jam: A New Legacy - The Game in 2021, as you might expect, but most recently, he’s become one of the most popular characters in Multiversus, expected to come out of Early Access and question just what is up, Doc?, in 2024. 

Hopefully, that’s enough rabbits to keep us all entertained right up until next Easter, but if not, then there’s always the notable mention of “The Rabbids” to keep us entertained. I didn’t ultimately include them because technically, they’re not actually rabbits, even if the wanton destruction and crazy behaviour is a dead ringer for their non-fictional counterparts. Either way, remember everyone, rabbits are for life, so play a game this Easter instead, and you’ll be helping a poor rescue volunteer from another headache in six months' time.