- Made By: Gaijin Games
- Cost: $6
- Where to get it: Wii Shop Channel
Bit.Trip Beat is a perfect example of why indie games are so great. A large publisher would never release a product like this game, rightly deeming it too risky and not profitable enough to bother with. To a small developer like Gaijin, however, this kind of small, focused project is what they thrive on. A larger publisher would, by their nature, spend too much money on art assets and overall game length, and then would have to charge around 15 to 20 dollars or more just to get a return on their investment. Gaijin keeps the game small and tight and is able to charge a mere 6 dollars while (presumably) still maintaining a profit. Without indie developers, fun games like this simply wouldn’t exist.
Bit.Trip Beat is a rhythm-action game that combines concepts from Pong, Activision’s classic Atari game Kaboom!, side-scrolling shooters like Gradius and R-Type and Sega’s whacked-out musical shooter Rez. Now that you’re thoroughly confused I’ll explain it in better detail: you hold the Wii remote NES-style and then tilt it back and forth (like the old Atari paddle controllers) to move a very Pong-like paddle on the left side of the screen up and down. It’s very intuitive and responsive. In classic scrolling-shooter style, pixels will fly from the right side of the screen to the rhythm of the music and it’s your job to knock them back.
It starts off really simple, with pixels just following the 4/4 beat, but it only takes about a minute before the designers start throwing completely counter-intuitive patterns at you (in a good way). Pixels will come at you in various formations and you must use a combination of reflexes and pattern memorization to make sure nothing gets past your paddle.
Your goal in this is to achieve a high score. Get enough consecutive hits and the game goes into ‘mega,’ a state in which the music becomes more dramatic and consecutive hits add to a point multiplier. Miss too many and you enter ‘nether,’ a monochromatic state that you must crawl your way out of in order to start scoring points again. Too many more misses in the ‘nether’ state will end your game. Trying to maintain a high multiplier is a heart-attack inducing experience and, along with the pumping tunes, is the main draw of the game.
All this musical action is accomplished with some truly wicked 8-bit chiptunes. A curious genre that didn’t exist 10 years ago, chip-style music works best in a situation like this, a self-referential ode to a bygone era. Modern style and synthesis has been mixed in with the old, making for a very stylish and cutting-edge sound.
There are only three levels, but like the old Atari games that it’s based on, the challenge lies not in the length, but in developing absolute perfection with what is given to you. According to Alex Neuse of Gaijin Games, this is the first in a series of retro-themed music games, so be on the lookout for the next ones. If you have a Wii, buy this game and support the indie scene. It’s games like this that make that scene so cool.
