After throwing seemingly every version of Guitar Hero and Rock Band at us, and then confusing us with Art Style Intersect for a little bit, the 1001 list has found a game that sort of fuses all of those together in an homage to the 8-bit generation that is rhythm game Bit.Trip Core.
D-pads at the ready, eyes front and center, get ready to test your reflexes an- what are you looking at?
Fun Times
Back in the day, Bit.Trip Core was a WiiWare title that got players to zap incoming bits with a laser beam, all to score lots of points which had the side effect of amping up the backing music and making you feel like you were contributing something to the game, rather than desperately trying to keep up with it.
I've not got any Wii version, but a PC port that's plenty capable of showing me what on Earth this little musical oddity is all about.
The controls are simple. You use the D-pad to aim a laser beam in one of four directions, and then time a press of the A button to zap whatever dares to cross that line. The more you zap in a row without missing, the better your score, and you'll soon realise that there are patterns to follow along with and that those patterns - if you do well at zapping them down - play rather nicely with the music.
Don't you dare think about admiring the background, though, as when you miss the beat and lose your rhythm, Bit.Trip Core will knock you down the style levels, eventually to the point where you lose all colour and interest from the screen and simply have to get it all right to avoid a swift exit from the game.
If you're lucky, you can zap a power-up out of the sky in the same fashion as you zap everything else, and these can give you multi-directional beams or beams that are always on and can wipe out everything without you having to time any zaps, but these power-ups are short-lived.
There are also challenges here and there, where your D-pad inputs rotate 90 degrees, and if I wasn't already screwing everything up before, now I definitely wasn't making any progress...
Frustrations
This Xbox 360 controller took me halfway through the first level on Easy difficulty with its mushy D-pad and hard A button. This is definitely a game where you want a nice input method, and the analogue stick isn't an option here.
The only alternative input method I had was WASD and the spacebar. There are bombs you can launch to clear the screen in a pinch too, but I've no idea what button or key they're on.
If you ever want to find out how squeaky your keyboard is, try Bit.Trip Core. This spacebar is trying to compete with the backing music, and my fingers just aren't capable of switching rapidly between the directions as my thumb would be on a D-pad.
Playing this game with a keyboard was sounding like a right pain, and didn't feel comfortable either, but I somehow managed to get a little further into the level. Maybe I was more aware of what was coming and how the different coloured bits behave.
Ultimately, however, I was resigned to the fact that I simply cannot get too far into this game, even on the easiest difficulty. I blame my tools, obviously, but I know I can't be bothered putting in the time to learn the rhythms and get good because my reward - so far as I can see on YouTube - isn't worth it.
Final Word
And that's about all there is to say about Bit.Trip Core. It's a rhythm game that's nice and simple to understand (once you've worked out how to navigate the menus), challenging enough to not be an absolute walk in the park, and short enough to not outstay its welcome.
Three levels, each about 15 minutes in length is all you get, but as you're looking at nothing special, there's no need to complain about the lack of content. It's a small game that does one thing and challenges you to do that one thing well.
Will you? Won't you? I won't. A couple of attempts and I got the gist of it. If anything, I learned more about my hardware than I did about myself while playing this one.
It's not bad, but it's not remarkable. Might be what you're looking for though, and as it's so small, why not give it a little go?
Fun Facts
If the retro-style has your attention, you might want to check out the Bit.Trip series, with the collection of titles being bundled together for the Nintendo Wii as Bit.Trip Complete.
Bit.Trip Core, developed by Gaijin Games, first released in 2009.
Version played: PC, 2012.