The best bunnies in games

Ah, Easter! That time of year when everyone eats chocolate and hot cross buns. What are hot cross buns? They're buns, traditionally served hot, with a cross across the top (sorry to stammer) to celebrate Easter. That may seem like extraneous information, but you never know when such facts may come in handy. What a time to be alive.

So, seeing as it's Easter and this is a video game website, I thought we'd eschew the chocolate (well, actually I chewed the chocolate, by which I mean I've already eaten it all) in favour of bringing you the definitive list of rabbits in games. You might think that's the flimsiest excuse for a list article you ever heard, but you haven't witnessed the incredible jokes yet on every slide. I'm here all week. Well, except Monday. The UK gets Monday off. But the rest of the week, I'm here for all of it.

Rabbits are great in Skyrim. They hop about among the lush, 3D vegetation until they become startled by your presence, at which point they run, flashing their little cotton tails as they go. Some NPCs even have them as pets. Listen closely and some guards will say: "I used to be an adventurer like you, until I took an arrow to bunny". The loss of a loved one - even a pet - can spell the end of any heroic intent. Yes, it is tragic.

But who thinks about consequences when you've got destruction magic in your fingertips? When you start the game, you'll want to start leveling up your Destruction, and rabbits are perfect for that. Can you hit a moving target? Can you make a charred rabbit corpse roll all the way down a hill? Just line up those crosshairs, cast your Flame spell and what have you got? Hot, cross bunny.

Vibri is the star of PSone classic Vib Ribbon. Made of lines and shakier than a drug addict going cold turkey, Vibri is very much 'of her time'. But still, she's become an icon, personifying (or, more accurately, bunnifying) the state of technology at the time. Imagine technology being bunnified. Weird.

Which reminds me of a joke I once heard. Do you know what you get if you turn on Vib Ribbon, put in a CD of the hardest, fastest Death Metal you can find and then leave the controller so that Vibri crashes into all the obstacles? Not a frog or a worm like in the game, that spoils the joke. You get a (cue drum roll, please!) hot, cross bunny!

Cream the Rabbit in a food processor until it's reached the consistency of the clotted Cornish classic. Next, add thyme, garlic, apple liqueur, lemon and seasoning, then leave it to marinate for several hours (overnight if possible).

Preheat the oven to 150C/gas 1. Line a 900g terrine mould or loaf tin with lightly oiled kitchen foil and lay bacon rashers on the bottom. Spoon in the creamed rabbit mixture and wrap with the kitchen foil. Cover with a lid and place the terrine in a roasting pan of water. Bake for 90 minutes. Et voila! Hot Cross Bunny.

Ah, Peppy Hare. He opens his mouth (albeit closing it again in a flappy, Terry Gilliam kind of way) and out comes 'Do a barrel roll'. That phrase is pretty darn legendary around these parts. What a guy. Oh, but I know what you're going to say and I'm not stupid. I do appreciate there is a difference between hares and rabbits: the spelling. Look, he's got ears and everything. How could I leave him out?

Of course, such famous utterances over the intercom make it imperative that you keep him in the fight. Sometimes his ship gets hit, which is unfortunate. Especially if the lasers came from your own Arwing. He starts to burn up, before sodding off home a very (wait for the mic drop!) hot, cross bunny.

MIPS the rabbit was one half of the first ever Mario 64 gameplay prototype. Everyone knows the story by now, so rather than me explain that Miyamoto wanted the core act of controlling Mario to be so fun he made a game where you just ran around as Mario, trying to catch a rabbit, and that rabbit made it into the game as a little Easter Egg, let me tell you a joke I heard about MIPS.

Right, get this. MIPS is named after the N64's internal processor, right? So, what happens when you ask that now-primitive processor to run those landmark 3D graphics at 30 frames a second for, like, twelve hours? You get a hot, cross bunny! I bet you're thinking I can't keep this up for an entire article. YOU'RE SO WRONG.

It isn't easy being a forgotten mascot. People keep telling me that Oswald could have been Mickey Mouse. Yep, that's what I heard. By which I assume they mean he could have bought some yellow shoes, white gloves and some shiny-buttoned red shorts, and had expensive and painful surgery to shorten and widen his ears and augment his nasal protrusion. The lengths people (and rabbits) will go to to get into show business. Tsk. But, perhaps fortunately, Mickey Mouse was Mickey Mouse, so Oswald was spared the whole harrowing process.

But Oswald is still pretty cool. Well, at least to Disney fans. And people who liked Epic Mickey 2. OK, he isn't very cool. In fact, I'm not really surprised that he was fired before his career had even begun. And what do you get when you literally fire a rabbit? That's right! A hot, cross bunny! Damn straight.

Ash is the protagonist in Arkedo's side-scrolling platformer, Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit. And he is dead, which I suppose officially makes him 'just some bunny that I used to know'. Granted, it's unusual for a dead rabbit to be on a list of 'best rabbits', but hear me out. This rabbit carries a circular buzz saw. Yes, they should have called him Buzz Bunny. Missed opportunity if you ask me.

So we're talking about a zombified, undead, ultraviolent rabbit who is the actual king of hell. Can you imagine meeting a rabbit like Ash in hell? Think about how angry he would be. In fact, that reminds me of a joke I once heard: You know what you get if you meet a buzzsaw-wielding rabbit in Hell? You get (wait for it) eviscerated! Yeah, it's not the happiest of situations.