Leger vs. Bit.Trip Beat (Wii)

In 2009 Bit.Trip Beat by Gaijin Games (now Choice Provisions) was a thing.

Arriving on the Wii Ware service it kind of blew people away with its audiovisuals going back all the way to Pong; A truly old game also acting as the main inspiration of Bit.Trip Beat.

Almost like experiencing an alternative timeline where all games played like Pong but with various unique twists and turns to make them stand out from the crowd.

In this particular case, a visual acid trip with a heart beating to the chip sounding blips and blops which actually makes upp the three levels the game consists of.

Three songs, where huge moving pixels (bounced back from where they came (from the right) with the help of the paddle controlled by tilting the wiimote) acts as what is added to the beats and rhythms the bulks of the songs consists of.

Of course, the moving pixels behave differently.

Some moves in a sine wave, some stop to think about life for a while before continuing their journey, some react to your paddles movement and some you will come to hate so much that you should consider having an insurance on whatever your wiimote might be thrown into.

See, Bit.Trip Beat is a hard thing to beat.

Too hard to be fun in the long run, unfortunately.

Thing is, if you die you have to start a song all over. No checkpoints, nothing. While the stages consists of different sections this is never put to use in any other way than to get a few seconds of breathcatching.

And the songs are up to 15 minutes long.

Playing the same song over and over and over just to learn the sometimes extremely difficult patterns of the moving pixels at a late part of a song takes the joy out of the experience.

I am tired of the second track Descent.

Tired of having to paddling my way through the first seven minutes over and over again just to fail in a couple of seconds when one of the hardest passages of the game kicks in, while knowing that there are another seven minutes to learn after that before beating the boss and opening up the third and final song Growth.

I do believe it took a couple of years until I finally beat Descent back in the days, and when I did I did so by getting help from a friend.

See, the game supports multiplaying... so that more than one paddle at the same time can try to bounce back the moving pixels.

It makes things easier, but at the same time it just helps to underscore the questionable game design where the single player experience suffers and the multiplayer feels like an afterthought.

Bit.Trip Beat thrives in its aesthetical presentation, the trippy attitude and the technotic soundtrack which sound rather timeless.

As an added bonus keeping up combos paves way for a higher state of trippy, whereas a filled meter evolves everything into... something MORE. Just like too many misses devolves things, at a final step back to what Pong looked like forever ago.

Black and white musicless gaming.

It is so sad, that the actual game design probably have resulted in most players never having experienced the third and final stage, Growth, which takes it all to the next level.

Somewhat chaotic, and at times even harder than Descent, but the trip in itself is well worth experiencing due to what it looks and sounds like.

While all that much more intense if being played, you could well look it up on YouTube if you are not up for the challenge.

A shame, really, considering how exciting the introduction of Commander Video and the prospect of following the character on a journey through life itself felt.

Fortunately Gaijin returned to this very concept at a later stage in the series, but when doing so they seemed to have realized that accessibility could be a good thing.

If you feel up to Ponging a couple of minutes of interactive music over and over again until your hair starts to fall off, sure.

Go for it.

As for me, well... I just can not stay with Bit.Trip Beat when I know what the rest of the series has to offer.