GBA! Bit Generations! America! Yay?

Lord Jezo

Bit Generations

The trailer

I just found out about these things and I am a little bit excited. Small simple games with minimalistic graphics and addictive gameplay, just what my gaming days need.


Series I

Dot Stream




Boundish



Dial Hex




Series II

Coloris



Orbital



Digi Drive



Sound Voyager



I was looking at importing them and came across a post here from back in November..

Number_Nein wrote:

[Speculation On]

Could the Bit Generations titles from Japan be coming to the US?

Background:
I was digging around in the ESRB's searchable database partly due to the excitement in the Wii thread about the rerating of classic titles and the "confirmation" that these are being release on the Wii's Virtual Console. What bothered me about the confirmed lists were that I had thought that some of the titles might have already been rerated since they were release on the Gameboy Advance and I was looking to see if there would be a difference between a VC title and a GBA title if they were essentially the same thing.

That's when I stumbled across this:

Orbiter (Digiluxe Series)       | Nintendo of America | E | No Descriptors | Game Boy Advance
Sound Voyager (Digiluxe Series) | Nintendo of America | E | No Descriptors | Game Boy Advance
Rotohex (Digiluxe Series)       | Nintendo of America | E | No Descriptors | Game Boy Advance
Chromatron (Digiluxe Series)    | Nintendo of America | E | No Descriptors | Game Boy Advance
Boundish (Digiluxe Series)      | Nintendo of America | E | No Descriptors | Game Boy Advance
Dotstream (Digiluxe Series)     | Nintendo of America | E | No Descriptors | Game Boy Advance

So while it's not any confirmation that NOA is planning on actually releasing these in the states, it is interesting that they have been rated by the ESRB. It also makes me wonder if these would be separate cartridges or all part of one package.

Anyway, thought I would share.

tl;dr - Bit Generation titles exist in the ESRB database.

Some Wiki pages on it all

I wish I knew about these 6 months ago, now I wonder if I should import now or wait on a USA release. Either way, these things look like some good stuff.

earthwormadam

I really wanted these as well, but the price to get a few of them was just too much. A compilation of a couple of them on the ds would rule.

skippydumptruck

Dot Stream looks ultra sexy.

AlphaTwo

US?

WIN!

Ronen

Dotstream and Dialhex are awesome. Dotstream is (surprisingly) a fairly strategic racer, which gets pretty tough later in the game.

Dialhex is a really good puzzle design that could use some more game modes (I only say that because my girlfriend is infinitely better at it than I am ).

Boundish is pretty meh... some of the modes are cool, but overall it's a weaker package than the other two.

I need to get around to collecting Series 2 sometime. I've heard good things about Coloris and Orbital.

Edit: And if they come to the US, they better come in the same awesome boxes. The packaging is half the reason I bought them. Although if they came in a compilation on the DS, I'd probably buy them again just to have them all in one place.

dmauro

If you only play one, make it Soundvoyager.

LCDXX

So are they gonna charge $20 for mini-games? They look fun, but if they aren't reasonably priced I'm staying away. A DS compilation would be awesome, though, so I can always hold out hope for something like that.

MarvellousM

So is this actually coming out or did I get all excited over what is merely a possibility?

bruin

I think the chances of it being released here are pretty slim. I can't imagine it would sell very well and GBA software isn't really a big deal anymore for the most part. I hope I'm wrong though.

Vegan

Maybe they're slated for Virtual Console?

TheGreat2nd

I Orbital so hard.
Even find it better than DotStream.
They're all great games, with the exception of Boundish. What a crap mash up of Pong.

RainbowDespair

I'd love to play some of these, but $20 a piece seems awfully high. Throw them in a compilation and I'll be all over them.

bruin

Vegan wrote:

Maybe they're slated for Virtual Console?

Oh God yes. Although there is no word on portable games making it to the VC. I guess they could call them original games since they haven't been released here though.

Sol

I've been waiting for them to come out in the US for a while now...hopefully it happens sooner than later.

Agentflit

LCDXX wrote:

So are they gonna charge $20 for mini-games? They look fun, but if they aren't reasonably priced I'm staying away. A DS compilation would be awesome, though, so I can always hold out hope for something like that.

I can't speak for all of them, but dotstream is definately not a minigame and wholly worth twenty bucks. It's also one of my favorite GBA games, period.

Also, YesAsia has it for $19 w/free shipping and there's no language barrier so there's not any reason to wait for it to come overseas.

Lunker

dmauro wrote:

If you only play one, make it Soundvoyager.

I really want to try that one -- it sounds completely mindblowing.

Anyway, the only one I can vouch for is Orbital (which an awesome dude got for me as a Christmas present!), and it's a lot deeper than I originally thought. The best way I can describe it is Katamari Damacy in space. You control a small moon or planet or something, and the only controls you have are the ability to increase or decrease your gravitational pull. So you move around by pull yourself toward a larger planet, getting sucked into its orbit, then waiting for the right moment to launch yourself out of orbit. You can either suck up objects smaller than you to make yourself larger or -- by aiming right and grazing them but not colliding with them -- place those smaller objects in your orbit, which nets you bonus points. Each stage ends when you get one special planet (colored yellow) in your orbit, and you also get an extra bonus for getting a special yellow moon in your orbit (only one chance per stage; it gets destroyed if you collide with it).

It's a high-scorer's game, and you can just plow through it fairly easily (there are 30 stages, I think), but I've spent a lot of time going back for a better score. You get points for time spent on a mission, plus it's got something to do with how large you are versus how many objects you have in orbit. The sparse music and effects are also really serene.

Tom Barker

orbital lives in the gba slot of my ds phat. it has permanent residence there. its that good.

this whole series is the reason i bought a really nice pair of headphones for my ds, and ive never once regretted it.

BTP

Oh wow, how did I not see this? Nice.

Now we just need Rhythm Tengoku as well.

[spoiler:96836654c1]In other completely off-topic news, Anna Nicole Smith has died. [/spoiler:96836654c1]

mntorankusu

Agentflit wrote:

LCDXX wrote:

So are they gonna charge $20 for mini-games? They look fun, but if they aren't reasonably priced I'm staying away. A DS compilation would be awesome, though, so I can always hold out hope for something like that.

I can't speak for all of them, but dotstream is definately not a minigame and wholly worth twenty bucks. It's also one of my favorite GBA games, period.

Also, YesAsia has it for $19 w/free shipping and there's no language barrier so there's not any reason to wait for it to come overseas.

It just "qualifies" for free shipping. To actually get it your order has to be $25 or more.

Sheep

Isn't one of them a music game, similar to the droning/ambient game in Electroplankton?

ArcticXC

Dotstream needs to be ported to the Wii and become the first online title.

MAKE IT SO.

Thoughtless Muse

I can't believe I haven't bought these yet. I need to make Dotstream at the very least my topmost priority of new games to buy.

And a US release is very unlikely. If an official announcement followed those ESRB listings after a week or two then we'd be in the clear, but it was ages ago those ratings were put up. Don't get your hopes up.

bruin

The Bit Generation games are on sale for $15 each at PlayAsia.
http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-17-71-2-74-1bg-49-en.html

Say I'm going to buy two or three of them, and one is definitely going to be Dotstream, what are the others? I'm thinking Coloris and Sound Voyager.

The Deliverator

I imported Dotstream and Orbital last summer, and theyre both fantastic. Dotstream especially really impressed me with how much game there was.