There was a communal quandry of "huh...what?" last month when Nintendo quietly unveiled the Art Style brand of WiiWare titles with Art Style: Orbient. Some immediately recognized the game as a hi-def update of the late Gameboy Advance genre-breaker Orbital (previously loved by me here) and asserted that Art Style is a WiiWare rebranding of the bitGenerations series. This theory was reinforced when it was confirmed that skip Ltd. would be developing the Art Style games (they developed six of the seven bitGenerations titles) and that two more Art Style titles would hit WiiWare by the end of October.
Let's take a quick step back here. For those unfamiliar, bitGenerations was an experimental series of Gameboy Advance games released only in Japan that favored style over substance. With smaller iconic packaging, minimal graphics and sound, and simple controls, these games almost all hid impressively deep gameplay. Much like Sony's PixelJunk series (developed by Q Games, who uncoincidentally developed DigiDrive, the seventh bitGenerations title). The games were never released outside of Japan due to the release of the Nintendo DS and unlikelihood that anyone would buy intentionally simplistic games with no corporate mascots attached, regardless of their low price point and critical acclaim.
Two years later, digital distribution has finally taken off as a means of selling "experimental" games. XBox Live Arcade's Braid and Playstation Networks aforementioned PixelJunk series would arguably have no success whatsoever in retail stores, but at the low price of a download direct to your console they are finding the gamers they so very much derserve, and now the Wii has a series of inexpensive, unique, and beautifully stylish downloadbale games to call its own.
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