I’ll try to get a bunch of these done today so I can catch up…

Premise

You don’t know about Wario Ware? Go to the back of the class. Wario Ware is, in all its forms, a compendium of mini games. Each one lasts seconds rather than minutes and you must not only complete the game to keep going but first you have to try to work out what exactly you have to do to complete the mini game.

Controls

Wario Ware needs only a Wii Remote but it does ask you to use it in various fun and unique ways. Each of these ways is called a ‘Form’ and they can vary from putting it on the ground/table top and quickly picking it up to holding it above your head while you nod, duck or crouch.

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So my big pre-Christmas game was Zelda. There is nothing like sitting down at Christmas time and visiting Hyrule once again.

Premise

Nothing much has changed to the age old Zelda concept. Get the master sword, save the princess (Zelda), slay bosses in innumerable dungeons oh and then defeat Ganon. But the neat thing is all the new twists Nintendo have introduced to these familiar concepts. There is again a two world situation going on this time the twilight and the real ones and Link must navigate between them. Unfortunately for him he is transformed into a wolf any time he enters the twilight world (well at least at the start of the game).

Hyrule

Wil a similar layout to the classic Ocarina of Time, Hyrule plays on your nostalgia (the Gamecube version has the same layout as Ocarina, the Wii version is mirrored so that Link is right handed), the crumbling temple of time being a particular favourite of mine. Walking in there for the first time sends a shiver down your spine.

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Ok so I picked up a Wii in Hong Kong before Christmas and it along with a bunch of other things has made me slack. Anyway here are my thoughts:

Premise

Revolutionise the video games industry by giving it a neat new way to play.

Wii Remote

As we all know the main feature of the Wii is the Remote. This motion sensing beauty is used to point, pitch, shake, turn, push, pull and a whole host of other things me and other designers probably haven’t thought of yet (well maybe except Nintendo). The Remote sits really nicely in your hand and is a joy to use. My only current complaint is that pointing can sometimes be tricky because when you are pointing off screen there is no way of knowing how far off you are and so you can easily over shoot.

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Well we are slowly getting through the Bit Generations series hopefully I will have them all done before 2007!

Premise

Digidrive at first glance appears to be really complex and strange but after playing it for half an hour and working out what you have to do it becomes really addictive. It is probably closest to something like tetris or columns as it is a sorting game. The twist here is you are sorting traffic.

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Ok so this write up of the Bit Generations series is taking a while. I’ll try to speed things up over the next while. I’m off on holiday soon so maybe can do a bit of writing while i’m away and post loads when I get back!

Premise

Boundish is Bit Generations take on Pong and is probably the worst and most basic of all of the games. Only really one for complete-ists if you ask me. There are several takes on Pong here from the standard one paddle per side to more extreme variants like one situated on a record player…

Conclusion

There really isn’t much else to say about Boundish. It is a many flavoured clone of Pong with a bit of local wi-fi multiplayer thrown in. If you are after a great but unique take on Pong you should check out Pong for the PS1 published by Atari (shameless plug for the first game I worked on). It has many fun and unique takes on the bat versus ball game mechanic and will set you back loads less than Boundish.

-Nic

So I wrote the whole overview to Bit Generations a couple of weeks ago and am only now managing to get round to writing up my thoughts on Dotstream (who knows when the next ones will come along…).

Premise

Dotstream is Bit Generations take on racing. Simple in both gameplay and graphics (perhaps paired down is a better phrase). You control a coloured square which, from the word go, is always moving right leaving a glowing line of colour in your wake. All you can do is; steer up or down, turbo or collide with stuff. You have to do a number of laps (usually 2) and come first to win.

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I’ve had the whole Bit Generations series for a few weeks now and thought it was about time I wrote a little bit about them.

Premise

The whole idea of Bit Generations is: really simple, pure yet modern games (think clean graphic design, electronic music and clean game play). There are 7 games in all with each one coming in its own beautiful packaging and on a Gameboy Advance cart. Its a liitle bit expensive seeing as they could all fit on one but then you wouldn’t be able to have a significant other playing one while you play the other. Each game focuses on a popular gaming type: puzzle, racing, adventure, audio and simplifies it to its core. Dot stream for example is Bit Generations take on racing, think Tron light cycles, you can only steer up or down, you leave a light trail, crossing another trail slows you down and you start with 3 lives/turbos.

Happiness

As someone who is going through prototyping at the moment and trying to set up his own games company these games reinforce why I am doing what I am doing. Each of these games shows that a simple concept with simple yet beautiful graphics can still be fun and purchased by games players. They are in essence, to me, what our prototype should be like. If I can get our demo(s) to be as fun and as pure as this then I will be very happy.

More to come

I hope to do more writing about Bit Generations in the coming weeks.

-Nic