Bit Trip Beat: An Unholy Fusion of Breakout and Guitar Hero

When indie studio Gaijin Games released a mysterious web video entitled “Commander” few expected it to be a viral video for a downloadable rhythm game series for the Wii. Despite its strange advertising campaign, The Bit Trip series has brought two of the cleverest games on WiiWare this side of Nintendo’s Art Style franchise. The two released games, Bit.Trip Beat and Bit.Trip Core, are soon to be joined by a third called Bit.Trip Void and according to the developers, three more are on the way too. This review will be a look back at the original Bit.Trip Beat.

Being the first in the series, Bit.Trip Beat established many of the franchise’s enduring conventions. There’s an abstract story about pixilated man called the Commander who’s on some sort of psychedelic 8-bit musical journey. His story is supposedly to span the entire series, out of chronological order as that would make too much sense, but frankly the “plot” is borderline incomprehensible, slightly pretentious and ultimately unnecessary. The real star of the Beat and the entire Bit.Trip series is the stellar rhythm gameplay. 

At first glance, Beat resembles an Atari 2600 game with is blocky graphics, primitive bleep-filled soundtrack and muted neon color palette. The gameplay is also reminiscent of the classic 2600 game Pong. By tilting the Wii remote back in forth in a fluid and satisfying motion, you move an onscreen paddle up and down on the right side of the screen in order to deflect pixels flying in from the right. What makes this a modern game is that blocks come in on a beat and must be hit in rhythm creating a sort of song. It is like an awesome unholy fusion of Breakout and Guitar Hero. As you progress things get harder and more complicated. Blocks stop merely coming in straight on and begin adopting patterns such as bouncing back or coming in groups of three that must be deflected simultaneously.
Gaijin Games set out to make a thoroughly retro game and they succeeded.

As you do well, pixilated explosions go off in the background that are so funny to look at you forgive them for obscuring your vision. If you start to slouch however, the graphics get worse and worse. Right before death, the screen becomes black and white with scan lines and sound coming from the terrible Wii remote speaker instead of the TV itself. It is touches like those that make Bit.Trip Beat feel like a love letter to a forgotten era. An era without advancements like online leader boards which Beat lacks as well. Maybe that letter is little too loving.

600 points gets you three songs which is fair considering most downloadable songs for rhythm game cost about two dollars. However, you may not even get past the first song. The steep difficulty curve in Bit.Trip Beat is by far its biggest problem. Songs tend to drag on for too long, becoming more like endurance tests than fun challenges, and while the motion controls feel great, they are not quite precise enough. However, a high level of difficulty is another calling card of retro games.

Players looking for a game that mixes fresh and modern design with old-school challenge and feel should check out Bit.Trip Beat. If you like it, be on the lookout for the rest of the games in the Bit.Trip series. 

Rating: 4 out of 5

- Jordan Minor