Buckle in, because I'm about to ramble for far too long about game's nobody's heard of. I'm sorry in advance.
Back in 2020 or so, I was watching a Scott the Woz video (you know, as you do), specifically the one about DSiWare. As someone who only discovered the service after its discontinuation, I found the topic pretty interesting, but largely disregarded it. During his segment about the Art Style series, which at the time I'd never heard of, he was casually scrolling through his list of games he'd downloaded, which included one title I found peculiar -- Art Style: Base 10. I'd only seen the icon of it, but the cycling number stared me in the face with such energy that I had to know more. A few months later, I modded my childhood 3DS (it's legitimately not that hard) and decided to get it on a whim. I played it, and it was a good game! I'd beaten Zerosum mode a few months after I got it (I didn't play it that often anyway), and played through a few of the puzzles, but ultimately forgot about it.
Four years later, I was chatting with a friend about, weirdly enough, the Streetpass Mii Plaza. (If you've ever owned a 3DS, you know what I'm talking about). One interesting thing about it is that almost all of the minigames were created by third party studios who had relations with Nintendo (specifically most of the developers who worked on Wii Play Motion). Naturally, one of the developers stood out to both of us: Skip Ltd. They were a company that made a lot of good games, and also a few bad games (they made Chibi-Robo: Zip Lash). This friend then proceeded to say the line that sent me into a months-long spiral into eighteen games that I'd never thought twice about:
"All the Art Style games". By this point I'd forgotten they were a series, and I forgot that Base 10 wasn't a standalone title. But then they went on to describe some of the other ones: Pictobits, Digidrive, games I'd never heard of before. The thought terrified me.
Of course, I then did research. The Art Style games were a successor to six Game Boy Advance games under the Bit Generations title, and there were a total of twelve Art Style games; seven for the DSi, and five for the Wii. I'd only played one of them, of course. A couple days later, I decided to download the six remaining DSiWare titles to see if they were any good. I played approximately ten minutes of each, and came to the conclusion that they were very solid titles. I wanted more though, so I eventually stumbled into the five WiiWare titles, which I thought were good (if not of a much higher visual quality). Naturally, the six GBA games came last, and they were all good (except for Boundish. Boundish isn't interesting).
I tended to play the games whenever I was bored. Digidrive (the DSi one) was my go-to, as I'd found out how to pull off the double maneuver fairly reliably, which was very satisfying. I'd also worked on the puzzles in Base 10, which were very hard. Shortly after completing every puzzle in Base 10, I came to the important realization that it would be a fun idea to try and complete as many of the games as possible. A fun idea, it would be, no?
This article will be an in-depth review of every Bit Generations and Art Style game. As of writing this article, I've 100%ed exactly half of the games, and have completed a total of 83% of the entire franchise (I have a spreadsheet for this. Don't ask.) The games will be presented in alphabetical order within the three consoles it spanned, which is not the order that I played and/or beat them in. If you want to experience the franchise blind, I recommend you do so. They're very good games.
Also, as an aside, most of these games have different titles in Europe or in Japan. The names listed are the Japanese names for the Bit Generations series, and the North American names for the Art Style series.
Now the fun begins.
All of these games were part of the Bit Generations series, which was Japan-exclusive. This is a shame, because they were pretty good. Most of them were remade later on, though.
I'm going to start off by saying that, in terms of the entire franchise, this game isn't very good. This article is organized by console (in chronological order), and then in alphabetical order, which unfortunately means Boundish comes first. I'd still recommend playing the game, but there isn't more than 5 minutes of fun to be had in it. It's also the game I have the least to say about, which means that this will be over quickly.
You know Pong, right? It was basically the first video game. Boundish is very little more than Pong, because it's just Pong with some newer visuals and some mild gimmicks. The game features five Pong variations; four of which are different courts of a two-player game, and the fifth one being a Game-&-Watch-esque singleplayer minigame that only barely resembles Pong.
- Pool Flower is the first court. I'm going to describe the gameplay as best as I can: it's Pong, but you can move back and forth on your half of the screen, along with some bubbles that change colour when hit, that mask and bounce the ball in an attempt to make it harder. That's it. That's all this court is. The rest of the game isn't much more.
- Power Slider is the second court. The whole gimmick with this one is that the ball can bounce vertically (i.e. out of the screen) and can be spun if you move in the right way. The court's also shaped a bit like a Venn diagram, and you can only move in a circular arc on its perimiter. It's hard to play and harder to utilize the bouncing gimmick.
- Human League is the third court. You control a second paddle (person?) at the same time, who can only move vertically and says funny lines if they hit the ball. That's literally it. I cannot express how uninteresting this is.
- Wild Go Round is horrible and also just so happens to be the fourth court. Both players occupy the perimeter of a spinning record, which moves the ball as it travels across (via centripetal force). It's horrible and impossible to predict, and all my dislike for this game probably stems from here. There's no strategy, only confusion.
- Box Juggling is not the fifth court, but instead the only singleplayer offering in the whole game. It plays like a Game & Watch game; you stand at the bottom, and juggle boxes, gaining more points and sending them higher if you time your A presses correctly. There's various powerups, such as preventing you from being stunned if you miss a throw, and summoning a helper to help juggle. That's about it, but I must admit it's actually not that bad of a time if you're into these high-score-type games. If you decide to play Boundish, you should reconsider, but also this is as good as Boundish gets.
That's it. What I've just described is the entirety of Boundish. The only good thing about it is that there are no unlockables, so if you're trying to complete all the games you can skip this one without any consequences. The theming is subpar and the music is even less par, so there isn't much to miss out on.
If you've just read the Boundish part, don't worry. The rest of the games are good.
Coloris is a Match-3 game, but plays very little like one. You're given a grid of coloured squares (initially in four shades of red), and have to tint the pieces towards two ends of a gradient in order to line up three of the same colour. It's a very fun experience, since there's no "must make a match" mechanics or anything; you can tint the pieces however you want (though the tint colours are predetermined). There are also two powerups which appear randomly; one that clears all blocks of the same colour as the one that bears the powerup, and another that clears all blocks diagonally in all directions.
This game has fifteen BASIC stages, which must be completed in order; and 35 ADVANCED stages, which are unlocked a couple at a time by beating the BASIC stages (which is just done by clearing enough blocks). The BASIC stages' difficulty curve comes in the form of chaning the colour palette, changing the board size, and adding more colours to the game. For instance, stage two is a four-colour gradient between yellow and blue, stage three is a four-colour gradient between blue and red, stage four is stage one but bigger, etc. Stage six adds a fifth colour to the gradient, but it's not too bad to deal with.
And then at stage ten, all hell breaks loose. Instead of a gradient, you now have a six-colour wheel. There are now three colours you can tint blocks towards (red, yellow, and blue). But most importantly -- and this is where the real difficulty comes in -- mixing complementary colours creates a gray block. Mixing green with red, orange with blue, or magenta with yellow will create a solid, garbage, gray block. It doesn't fall down due to gravity, and can only be removed by making two other matches next to it. But most importantly: if you have any gray blocks on your playfield, all progress in the stage is halted until they're all gone.
The goal of the game is no longer making matches of three. The goal of the game is now to not make gray blocks.
I'm sure they knew this when making it, because the difficulty increases quickly: stage 13 has nine colours to deal with, and stage 15 has twelve. And gray blocks aren't limited to just complementary colours; if it's anywhere close to being complementary, it still makes a gray (e.g. tinting a pink block yellow, or a chartreuse block red). The actual mechanics make more sense in-game.
TODO
I guess it's time to mention the most problematic part of this game: the fact that it solely focuses on colour. This is, of course, an issue to colourblind people -- but even if you're not colourblind, it's very difficult to tell the difference between some of the blocks. For instance, one of these blocks will cause a gray when tinted blue, and one of them won't. Guess which one. But by far the worst one is in the gradient stages. Granted, the gradient makes it easier, but I'm still not happy about the fact that these are two different colours:
Dialhex sounds like it should play a bit like Hexic, but is actually an entirely different thing. Triangles, initially in two different colours, slowly rain down from the top of a triangular grid in the shape of a hexagon, and you control a cursor that can rotate six adjacent triangles. Your goal is to rotate and twist the triangles to form solid-colour hexagons, and every time you create six hexagons of a certain colour, a new colour of triangle starts dropping. That's basically all there is to the core gameplay. There are also two powerups; a light triangle that converts all triangles of one colour into a different colour, and a dark triangle that empties the field from the bottom for a little bit. It's a very good game, and I highly recommend it if you're into twisty/slidy puzzles akin to Bejeweled.
There's not a super wide variety of content, but there's enough to still have a good time. The regular SOLO mode takes a bit to beat and is also fairly difficult; it lasts until you've cleared six hexagons of the eighth colour. The ENDLESS mode is what it says on the tin: an endless version of SOLO mode. It's a good game to zone out to, especially with the music. There's also a VS mode, which I haven't played with another person, but which seems fairly well designed and interesting. Each player's board overlaps in the middle, if you want to get an idea of what it's like.
The music in this game is really good. Despite being a GBA game, they made an entire, adaptive jazz-like soundtrack that flows really nicely with the game. The music adapts as you unlock more colours, and is overall very pleasant to listen to. The visuals are exactly what they need to be, but no more; though there's an argument to be made about minimalism or something. I find it quite nice, as there's no distractions.
There are a couple of gripes I have with this game, but they're minimal at best:
- There's only a subtle difference between the lime green and dark green hexagons (see for yourself: ), and they're hard to tell apart at a glance. It's not the worst thing ever, but it's enough to have an impact.
- There's not a lot of content, although the WiiWare remake (we'll get to it) fixes this problem.
That's basically it, though. It's still a very good game, and I highly recommend it. I actually prefer this game to its WiiWare remake (again, we'll get to it), since the music is more refined in this one.
This one is the most game yet, and I can't get enough of it.
Digidrive is a game where you direct cars of up to three different colours down a plus-shaped intersection. Your goal is, in its simplest form, to match identically-coloured cars to avoid losing; but it gets a lot more involved than that. Once you get five cars of the same colour stacked together, they merge into a triangular fuel cell (apparently cars are made out of fuel, who knew). More sets of five cars make the fuel cell more full, and once it fills up it turns into a square fuel cell. Filling it up makes it pentagonal, then hexagonal, then circular. If you fill a circular fuel cell, it still accumulates fuel, but only shows you how full it is when ignited or merged (they fixed this in the DSi version). Getting these fuel cells would take forever just by lining up cars, though; this is where the Fun Tricky Maneuvers come in.
You see, if you send a car down a lane of the wrong colour, it trashes the fuel cell. Except, and this is the fun part, if there's a second fuel cell in play. When you trash a fuel cell with another one in play, it merges the first cell into the second one, creating a larger fuel cell. But that's not all -- have THREE fuel cells in play, trash one of them, and it DOUBLES and gets added to BOTH other fuel cells! This is the crux of the gameplay: repeatedly doubling a fuel cell to create ungodly amounts of fuel. You get to experience exponential growth first hand, which is always a good time.
But why are you accumulating enough fuel to cause a concerningly large fire? While you're playing the game, a sharp spike is constantly ascending the side of your screen into a circular core. If the spike touches the core, you lose. Every so often, you recieve a trigger car (which looks and sounds like an ambulance), and running into a lane with a fuel cell will ignite it, burning all the fuel stored inside in order to propel the core upwards. Remember when I said you get to experience exponential growth? Well, you see, a triangular fuel cell is only worth around 10 or 20 meters... but a circular one can be worth several thousand. I cannot stress how important doubling your fuel cells are. There's also one more thing -- if you get four fuel cells in play at once, you enter the Autobahn; cars appear faster and faster, but are worth an entire set of five as soon as they hit a fuel cell. As soon as you mess up a fuel cell (either by mismatching or running out of time), it immediately gets ignited and you recieve a free trigger car, which you can use at any time to manually create a trigger car on the road, which is useful in a pinch.
Enough of the gameplay, though. This game has perfect visuals to complement the gameplay, if they are a tad simplistic. It feels like a calm realm of traffic, which is definitely something I can't say about the real world. If you don't like the colours, don't worry! This game has over twenty different skins to unlock, which change the colours up depending on how you feel. Some of the colour schemes are weird, though. One of them is brown, dark blue, and yellow, to give an example. The audio is nice, with four adaptive music tracks that change depending on how large your fuel cells are. There's also some more customization options, such as changing the announcer voice.
There's also a versus mode! In it, both players (or a player and one CPU) are trying to send the core in opposite directions, and whoevers side it hits first is the loser. There's also some fun, quirky items, such as doubling all your fuel cells, stealing your opponent's items, creating an instant attack, slowing down your opponent's game... okay, I have to go off on the slowdown item real quick. In this game, if you leave a fuel cell alone for long enough, it'll disappear; you have to constantly merge or feed it to keep going. Whenever you're slowed down, it slows down the cars and the rate at which they appear... but not the speed at which your fuel cells decay. Which means that you literally can't get enough cars to keep going; if the game was going fast enough, your only option is to ignite your fuel cells, which is the most temporary solution known to man. It sucks and it's unfair. It's the only thing I genuinely dislike. Don't let that stop you, though.
Digidrive is a good puzzle game, and it feels incredible when you ignite a huge fuel cell and sit for literally minutes while the core ascends. My issues with this game are, again, minor; large enough circular fuel cells just say "?" when queried about their size, and the harder CPUs are genuinely unfair with items on (you know why). For completion, it's a good challenge, but it doesn't tell you how to unlock anything, which can be annoying. (If you're wondering, you unlock everything by beating all three CPUs, reaching 10,000m in any difficuly, and triggering a circle x10). Overall, Digidrive is probably the second best Bit Generations game in my opinion. Second only to...
We'll come back to this one when I cover its remake, Orbient. Trust me. We'll come to it.
We'll come to it.
Remember back when we were covering the GBA games, and I told you I'd save Orbital and its remake for later? Well, now we're here. Buckle in, because I have a lot to say about this game and you're going to hear every word of it.
When I first heard of Orbital (the GBA one), I thought it was nothing more than a neat (albiet gimmicky), small game that Skip used as an experiment. In the game, you control a planet travelling around a system of other, larger planets, and your only controls are to attract to and repel from nearby planets. Your goal is to collect a series of pickups to increase your size, and eventually capture a goal planet to beat each stage. I played the first three stages, thought it was neat and that I'd come back to it later, and put the game down.
A few weeks later, I came back to it.
I decided that the game was fun enough for what it was, and played on. After all, there were six galaxies, each with five stages, so there were only 30 stages in all. There's a rather funny thing which is that your extra lives accumulate throughout stages as long as you beat them consecutively, so I sat down and beat all 30 stages in one go, accumulating more than 20 extra lives in the process. It was funny, and it was a good game (but the later levels are very difficult, and took me more lives than I'd like to admit).
As was tradition by this point, I watched the credits. As of writing this, Skip Ltd., the developers, had dissolved as a company; as cheesy as it is, I felt I should at least admire their work. The credits finished, and I was booted back to the main menu. I intended to go back in anyway, since each stage features a collectible moon which appears permanently on the menu when you get it, and I wanted to get all of them to 100% the game.
And then the seventh galaxy appeared.
The raspberry-appearing galaxy showed up on the left side of the menu, ruining the symmetry that was ever present throughout, and only provided the text "EXTRA" when hovered over. I felt nauseous at this point, but continued into the menu. There were five more stages to play, named EXTRA 1 through EXTRA 5.
My heart skipped a beat, but the worries quickly subsided. The stages were all unlocked, and after spending an annoying amount of time beating them (without the moon), nothing else unlocked. So I decided to get every moon, since I only needed to 100% the 35 stages in this game.
And then the eighth galaxy appeared.
The programmers, presumably consuming substances they shouldn't have, decided to add in an eighth, "FINAL" galaxy after you 100% the first seven. These stages had to be completed in order akin to the first 30, and were far too difficult to even comprehend. I need to talk about the gravity in this game, because its mechanics work against the player despite the fact that it's the core gameplay. By this point, I had (to my dismay) figured out that, in this game, gravity is a scam. You're constantly moving at the same speed. The only thing you can do is turn in different directions, meaning that not only are certain scenarios impossible to get out of, it's possible to encounter planets that you simply can't maneuver around because they're moving too fast for you to catch up.
As of writing this, I've yet to even beat FINAL 1. I'll update this whenever I (hopefully) do.
I had really hoped that there were no more stages, so I just decided to look up a video of someone beating Orbital so I can at least get closure on just how many stages are in it. To my delight, I found that there's nothing after the FINAL galaxies; beating them just unlocks a second credits roll.
But all of this writing is in the WiiWare section, and I've just been talking about a GBA game this whole time! Where does the WiiWare remake of Orbital, Orbient, come in?
During my (surprisingly difficult) search for a completion of Orbital, I'd also discovered a video of somebody beating Orbient. I thought nothing of it; all the sources I've seen just say that Orbient is a remake of Orbital. If I wanted to 100% them, I'd just have to beat the same game twice. I wasn't happy about it, but it would have at least been tolerable. I looked at someone else's 100% of Orbient, because I was curious.
And then the ninth galaxy appeared.
The person in the video briefly hovered over the eighth galaxy, which instead said "EXTREME" instead of "FINAL". They then hovered over the ninth galaxy, simply titled "MERCILESS".
I was horrified. Not only did this game have more stages, the fact that they're described as MERCILESS was enough to make my heart skip two beats.
And then the tenth galaxy appeared.
"Where did the FINAL galaxy go?" I hear you ask. Well, it's back, and with a vengeance. The video showed a very brief gameplay section of FINAL 5, which I can only describe as "too many planets in too little of an area". There were clusters of planets, all grouped together, and gaps between them barely larger than the player's starting planet.
As of writing, I haven't even gotten past the EXTRA stages in Orbital. I'm simply terrified of it.
Do not try to 100% this game. I cannot express how much it isn't worth it.