Last year, a couple of months before the Wii U was released, I wrote a series of blogs about my favorite games on the Wii. One of the categories I wrote about was game collections. One game missing from my favorite game compilations on Wii was Bit.Trip Complete. I hadn’t gotten around to buying it yet, and I wasn’t sure if I should get the Wii or 3DS version. After several people commented and recommended I get the Wii collection, I finally broke down and bought it a few months ago when I saw it on sale. So in honor of the recently released Bit.Trip Runner 2 (which I will have a GamerDad.com review posted on that in a couple of days, so watch for it), here is a short run-through of the games found on Bit.Trip Complete for the Wii.

While each game in the Bit.Trip series is different, they do have a couple of things in common. They all have a retro-80’s style to them, with blocky graphics and chiptuned music. Speaking of which, that’s the other thing Bit.Trip games have in common. Music plays an important part of the games, and many of your actions are done in time with the beat. The Wii version of the game even comes with a CD soundtrack! I haven’t listened to it yet, and I’m not sure if the 3DS one has it, too. I do know you can download the 3DS collection on the eShop, though. Bit.Trip Complete also has extra challenges and unlockables like artwork, videos, and more. There’s also an ‘easy’ mode added to each game, but other than being a little more forgiving if you miss, I can’t tell much of a difference. The games are still hard. I’ve reviewed a few of these games in the past when they were sold separately on WiiWare, so if you see a link, you can click on it and read my full review I wrote in the distant past! So let’s get started!

Bit.Trip Beat

The first game was like BreakOut. Except with no bricks. So I guess it was like a single player Pong. You held the Wii remote horizontally and twisted it around forward and away from you like a knob to move the paddle. The balls would come at you directly and at angles, and you hit them in time with the beat. If you hit a bunch in a row like a combo, you’d go up a level and it would help your score. But if you miss too many times, and if you went down low enough, the screen would turn black and white and with no music. And if you missed too many times then, it would be Game Over.

Bit.Trip Core

This was the first one I reviewed. It’s a bit more like a shooter. Dots come from all sides of the screen, and you can shoot them when they are in your line of sight as they pass by the top, bottom, left, or right of your crosshairs. Use the d-pad and button to shoot. This is probably one of the harder ones in the series.

Bit.Trip Void

I don’t think I reviewed this one. At least I don’t remember playing it before now. This one uses the nunchuck on the Wii remote, so make sure you have one handy. You move a black circle around the screen and must collect black dots. Kind of reminded me of a basic Katamari game, or for us old folks, the old arcade game Bubbles. As you collect black dots, your circle gets bigger and bigger. When you’re big, it makes it easier to collect black dots, but you must also avoid white ones! You can press the A button to ‘pop’ your circle and make it small again so you can avoid white dots. Don’t miss too many black dots or collect too many white ones, or it’s Game Over! This one took a while for me to figure out how to play!

Bit.Trip Runner

This one’s probably the least abstract of the bunch. You actually get to play as the Commander Video character this time, instead of just a bar or dot. He continuously runs from left to right, and you must make him jump, slide, and block obstacles. It’s similar to all those auto-running 2-D platformers you see all the time on iPad and mobile phones now. It’s neat how all your actions are done in time with the beat, and your movements create notes, too. But the game is REALLY hard. If you miss a jump or get hit, you are sent back to the beginning of the level. No checkpoints or anything. I wish I could remember how you unlocked the bonus levels that looked like an Atari 2600 game.

Bit.Trip Fate

This one’s kind of like a horizontally scrolling 2-D shooter. Except you point the remote at the screen to move an icon that tells Commander Video which direction to shoot. And you can only move on a fixed line with the nunchuck. Every so often you’ll meet up with one of Commander Video’s friends who act like power-ups, and one of them is from another indie game: Super Meat Boy.

Bit.Trip Flux

The last game in the Bit.Trip series on Wii is pretty much just like the first game, except your paddle is on the right side of the screen instead of the left. In this one, not only do you have to bounce back blocks, but there are circles that you must avoid, too. I guess they figured they’d go back to the series’ roots so it would come full circle. Or something.

Bit.Trip Bits and Pieces

And that’s all the games on this collection! Bit.Trip has been in other games, too. Super Meat Boy has appeared in a few Bit.Trip games, and I read that Commander Video was in Super Meat Boy as well. Guess indie developers like to have cameos in other games. I know that in Retro/Grade, there was a MineCraft ship you could unlock, as well as other ships based on indie games. I wonder if Bit.Trip was one of them.

In Retro City Rampage, there is an arcade where you could play an 8-bit version of Bit.Trip Runner. It’s as hard as ever, too! Retro City Rampage also has an arcade game with Super Meat Boy in it, but it is all red like a Virtua Boy game! There is also an arcade game based on the popular YouTube videos, Epic Meal Time. But when I previewed Retro City Rampage at E3, one of the arcade games was an 8-bit version of ‘Splosion Man. Guess they had to take it out since Microsoft bought Twisted Pixel. Maybe it’s still in the 360 version, as I only reviewed the PS3 version of Retro City Rampage.

One last Bit.Trip cameo I know about. Anyone remember WarioWare D.I.Y. for the DS? I named that my Game of the Year for 2010. One neat thing that Nintendo did every week for a long while was they would have other game developers design micro-games that you could download. WayForward did a micro-game based on Shantae, for instance. Well, one of the guys from Gaijin, makers of Bit.Trip, made a micro-game based on Bit.Trip Runner. It was pretty good, too! Did you know that one game I made on WarioWare D.I.Y. got featured in one of Nintendo’s contests?

Anyway, Bit.Trip Complete is rated E for Everyone with an ESRB descriptor of Mild Fantasy Violence. Considering how abstract the games are, there really isn’t much graphic violence to speak of at all. The games are easy to figure out with no reading skill needed, but younger gamers may still get frustrated at the high difficulty. Make sure to read my GamerDad.com review of Bit.Trip Runner 2 when I post it in a couple of days! Later! –Cary

Tags: Game Reviews