The Rub Rabbits!

The Rub Rabbits!, known in Japan as Aka-chan wa Doko Kara Kuru no? (赤ちゃんはどこからくるの?), is a minigame compilation video game developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega for the Nintendo DS handheld video game console. It was first released in Japan on October 20, 2005, and was later released in Europe on February 10, 2006, and in North America three days later. It is a prequel to Feel the Magic: XY/XX.

Plot
The premise of the game is that the player's female love interest gets into perilous situations or is placed out of reach from the male protagonist. A minigame must be completed in order to rescue her, or sometimes, get the male protagonist out of trouble. All of these minigames require use of the stylus, and the DS to be held in a certain way, even upside-down. Some require use of the DS built-in microphone.

At the beginning, the protagonist is riding down an escalator when he sees an attractive woman riding the opposite escalator. He immediately falls in love with her, and races back up the escalator to chase her. Upon reaching the top, he professes his love with a rose, but discovers twelve competitors who are also smitten with the heroine. He attempts to prove his uniqueness over the others by playing a nearby piano, the first of several acts he performs to get her attention. His rivals respond by dropping in on parachutes when the heroine is walking down the street, only to be shot down by the protagonist, who appears from a nearby manhole, using a blowgun. Later, an unknown man hands the protagonist a "love disc" which he throws at the heroine to increase her affection for him

Some time later, the protagonist is attempting to seduce the heroine in a local park, and his rivals have caught wind of his plan and are rushing over to stop him. On the way, the rivals knock over a mysterious girl in a lavender dress, who falls toward the park fountain. Before she falls in, the protagonist saves her, then rushes off toward the heroine. The girl falls in love with him at first sight, and appears to recognize him as he leaves. Meanwhile, the protagonist attempts to make eye contact with the heroine while his rivals form a ring around her to block him. Despite their attempts, he manages to catch her attention, and begins walking alongside her. Frustrated, his rivals challenge him to a manly contest of rock-paper-scissors for the right to be with the heroine. After defeating them, they are left exhausted on the floor, but the protagonist helps them back up. For his gentlemanly attitude, the rivals decide that he is worthy of the heroine, and subsequently befriend him, supporting his relationship with her.

While walking with his newfound companions, the protagonist finds the heroine watching a fireworks display across the river, unaware of his presence. Encouraged by his friends, he takes advantage of the romantic mood to confess his feelings for her, and she accepts his confession, marking the beginning of their official relationship.

However, his friends who have been watching and cheering from behind them are suddenly trapped in a purple cage and flown off by helicopter to an unknown location. Here, the lavender-dressed girl uses a machine to control their minds, turning them into her servants. She commands them to capture the protagonist and bring him to her.

Later, the protagonist goes on a date with his new girlfriend, trying to impress her with a daring unicycle stunt. He attempts to cycle across the scaffolding between the roofs of two buildings, to take a picture with his girlfriend who is on the other side. While he rides, his brainwashed friends climb the scaffolding to abduct him and he must dodge them on his way to the heroine. Having thwarted this attempt, the protagonist and heroine continue their date, riding a bull together. Once again, the brainwashed attackers try to interfere, donning bull masks and chasing after the couple, who must fend them off while not attacking the gentlemen walking down the same street. After many minions are defeated, a large purple robotic bull enters, ridden by the lavender-dressed girl, who launches love potions at the protagonist. The robotic bull is eventually defeated and the couple ride off.

The bull ride ends when the heroine notices her house, introducing the protagonist to her parents. While in the house, she does yoga to relax, aided by the protagonist who holds a rose to her nose to soothe her. However, the lavender-dressed girl arrives at the house, and passes a cable through the window to infect the heroine's computer with a virus which opens windows rapidly while the protagonist tries to close them. He soon discovers the girl squatting outside the window and jumps out to confront her when her minions knock him unconscious, and another purple cage drops on all of them. The protagonist is then taken with his brainwashed friends to another unknown location.

Upon waking up, the protagonist is tied to a chair, with the lavender-dressed girl sitting on a table in front of him and staring at him intensely. She reminds him that they've met before, and he remembers her as the genius girl who used to live next to him ten years ago. She exclaims that he's gotten handsome, and invites him to fall in love with her, throwing various food items across the table at him. Her own rancidly bad cooking is mixed in with actual food items, and the protagonist must avoid the bad items while consuming the good ones. Taking him to a different part of what is revealed to be her mansion, she continues to press her invitation, more impatiently this time, while shooting him with love potions from an array of cannons. As the tied-up protagonist dodges her potions by rolling around, she becomes increasingly agitated, eventually jumping at the protagonist herself, which knocks her unconscious while her minions rush over to help. The protagonist takes advantage of this distraction to untie himself and escape, but upon leaving the mansion he finds himself in a large jungle.

Confused, the protagonist comes to a river, when he sees his girlfriend, the heroine, waving at him from upstream. He is surprised at her presence, and rows to her on a log while dodging crocodiles and other river objects. When he reaches her, she explains that she also rushed out the window when he was knocked unconscious, and was thus trapped in the same cage which delivered him here. Together, they explore the jungle in search of food, working together to harvest fruits from a tall tree. As they eat the fruit and chat, the lavender girl is shown to have discovered their location, riding on her helicopter. While exploring, they find a spring of water and the heroine decides to take a dip, stripping to her underwear. Unbeknownst to her, the lavender girl releases piranhas and other dangerous fish into the spring, which the protagonist must divert with his finger as a lure. The heroine finishes her dip, and the protagonist makes her new clothes from leaves of different shapes. They continue exploring the jungle, and discover an ancient temple. While walking to the temple, they trigger a pit trap which leads them on a minecart ride through the temple, after which they exit, having grown closer.

Frustrated by their relationship progressing, the lavender girl watches the couple from behind the bushes while they sit in a tree and flirt. She comes up with an idea, and interrupts their flirting with a blast from a cannon mounted on a boat. They fall into the water nearby, and the protagonist rescues the heroine from having her leg trapped in a giant clam. As they swim back to shore, the minions prepare to attack, but suddenly run away. The couple turns to see a large number of crabs coming from the water, and the protagonist climbs a tree and shakes minions off to knock down chasing crabs. After the horde of crabs is defeated, a large purple robotic lobster appears to climb the tree, but is defeated as well. The concussions from falling from the trees cure the minions of their brainwashing, and they return to being friend with the protagonist. As the protagonist reunites with his friends and girlfriend, the lavender girl climbs out of the robotic lobster, and fires a poisoned dart from a blowgun at the heroine, who collapses unconscious in the protagonist's lap.

Some time later, the heroine's parents receive word that she was poisoned with a serum which will cause her to slowly lose her memories, and the antidote is made from a yellow rose found high up in the mountains. The protagonist journeys with his friends and girlfriend to find the rose and restore her memories. On the snowy mountain trek they encounter many difficulties, such as hiding from bears, staying awake during the cold nights, and tripping and becoming human snowballs. Throughout the journey, the heroine occasionally looks at the picture she took with the protagonist, and the memories she can recall of him decrease in number each time. After she is rescued from rolling down the mountain by the protagonist, they are separated from their companions and spend a night together in a wooden shed and he keeps her warm first with a blanket and later with his body heat. They have a snowball fight and flirt on a tree, after which their friends catch up to them. As they continue their journey, the heroine falls and slides down the mountain, causing the protagonist to chase after her on a sled pulled by his friends. They continue the arduous journey until they finally spot the yellow rose after climbing a cliff. As the protagonist reaches for it, he is interrupted by a large purple robotic bear, which battles him with several inbuilt cannons. He destroys it with snowballs and reaches for the flower, but is stopped by a gigantic purple robotic bird, which scoops up himself, the flower and the snow around it before flying off.

The protagonist is tied up and brought to another section of the mountain where the lavender girl awaits, declaring that the rose is hers now and he should fall in love with her at last. She personally throws love potions at him, which he destroys by kicking them with his feet while his upper body remains tied. She grows increasingly desperate as he destroys her potions, and finally breaks down, asking him why he rejects her advances, to which he responds that he only loves his girlfriend. Out of spite, the lavender girl runs off with the yellow rose toward her robotic bird, which promptly takes off, with the protagonist chasing after it. As the protagonist chases the bird to a rope bridge, an army of robots on the other side begin crossing the bridge to attack him. He defends himself by using a torch and gasoline from several nearby gentlemen to breathe fire at the robots, destroying them one by one. Meanwhile, back at the original location of the rose, his girlfriend is losing more and more of her memories, forgetting even the confession made under the fireworks which led to their relationship. The only memories that remain are those made on the mountain itself. The protagonist continues chasing the bird through a valley, defeating robots as they appear in a similar fashion to the masked minions during the bull ride. As he is about to be defeated, his friends arrive and fight off the remainder of the robots, which then transform into spherical forms and attempt to run them over. The protagonist redirects one of the robots to catch up to and destroy the others, but by this time the lavender girl has flown off with the rose on her robot bird. She notes that by this time the heroine will have lost all her memories, and, confident in her victory, she shreds the rose and scatters its petals in the wake of the bird's flight.

The protagonist meets up with his girlfriend, the heroine, but she collapses in his arms once more, leaving him heartbroken. However, as he mourns the loss of her memories, his friends notice the petals of the yellow rose falling from the sky, and they mobilize to search the nearby rose field for the yellow rose's petals. Collecting the entire rose, they finally concoct the antidote, which the protagonist delivers to the unconscious heroine via mouth-to-mouth. It succeeds in reviving her and restoring her memories, and she kisses him while his friends celebrate around them.

However, nearby, the lavender girl watches them and is furious that they have thwarted her plans and continue to be happy together. With her robot bird, her strongest invention, she fires at the couple, but they do not back down, beginning the final battle (and final minigame) against the bird and its many weapons. To attack, the couple join hands and spin, creating whirlwinds which strike the bird, while dodging the bird's attacks, first cannons, then walking bombs, and lastly eye beams once it reveals its head. Eventually, the bird is defeated, and with it, the lavender girl, who ejects from it and lands haphazardly on the ground. While she lies face-down, a hand reaches out to her to help her up. Believing it to be the protagonist finally acknowledging her, she is frustrated to find that it is just one of his friends. Meanwhile, the protagonist and heroine reaffirm their feelings for each other, culminating in a kiss which triggers the ending sequence of the game.

Gameplay
Some examples of these minigames are:
 * The male protagonist runs up a downward moving escalator, and must avoid Sumo wrestlers along the way by moving left and right. There is a similar variation where he paddles up a river avoiding giant crocodiles.
 * The mysterious girl in lavender ties the protagonist to a chair and throws various food items at him. He must avoid eating the purple cakes, but can eat the other morsels like pizzas and white-iced cakes.
 * The female love interest performs yoga, while the male protagonist tries to keep a sweet-smelling rose within the range of her sense of smell.

The player's performance is graded as amount of 'Hearts', which are given at the end of a minigame depending on how well they did.

There are a few multiplayer minigames which involve four differently coloured protagonists competing over the love interest, such as an elimination based game of catching an ever-growing beach ball which eventually explodes, and log rafting while trying to rescue the female from the water, while trying to steal her from other player's log rafts.

Reception
The game received "average" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of two eights, one seven, and one nine for a total of 32 out of 40.

Detroit Free Press gave it a score of three stars out of four and stated, "The music here and the design all are distinctly Japanese, with crazy refrains like "Rub it!" being shouted all the time. Don't ask me to explain. Just pick up and enjoy." However, The A.V. Club gave it a C+, saying that "True love takes more than moony-eyed flirting; Sega needs to get the mechanics right to make the magic happen." The Sydney Morning Herald gave it two-and-a-half stars out of five, stating that the game is "inventive, creative and strangely compelling, but the more difficult tasks can be frustrating and its lasting appeal is limited." The Times gave it one star out of five and called it "mind-bogglingly shallow".