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3DS

North America

Bit Boy!! Arcade

by Aaron Kaluszka - June 17, 2012, 3:56 pm EDT
Total comments: 2

A new indie take on Pac-Man is revealed in all its 3D glory.

Bit Boy!! Arcade was certainly one of the most unique experiences of E3. The game is reminiscent of Pac-Man, but from a fully 3D perspective. The main character, Kubi (a cube) must rescue his friends from a maze, while avoiding enemies and other obstacles. The premise is simple, so it all comes down to the level design and rules, though later stages promise more complex gameplay.

Each world is broken into a number of stages. The first two stages were standard stages with enemies that must be avoided. Kubi travels in discrete steps, while enemies move around smoothly. The enemies here always travel along walls and cannot climb slopes, which leaves Kubi with a number of safe areas. It takes a few seconds for Kubi to rescue each friend, so players must time the rescues carefully. Once Kubi has rescued all of his friends, he gains the power to smash through enemies, which he can do to gain bonus points before heading to the exit.

The third stage featured a massive spiked rolling chasing behind the player like the rolling boulder from Raiders of the Lost Ark. In this stage, not only must you outrun the spikes, but all of Kubi's friends must be rescued or the exit will not appear at the end of the level, leading to certain death.

The developer noted that one of the complaints some players had with the original Bit Boy was that the character moved too slow. While he seems to move pretty fast in this version when holding down the directional buttons, he will move as fast as you can press the buttons. Even more interesting is that you can move either with the D-Pad or the face buttons. And since speed is based on how fast you press the buttons, you can actually press both sets of directions simultaneously to move even faster, making for a pretty unique control experience.

While the playable portion at E3 featured retro-style graphics, each world will have its own theme, much like the original WiiWare Bit Boy. After beating all of the stages in the world, players are sent back to the beginning, but faster and more numerous enemies now populate the land.

Bit Boy!! Arcade was one of the more unique experiences at the show. The novel control scheme lends itself to a new style of score attack. Bplus's downloadable game is expected to launch in the fall, first in North America and later in Europe.

Talkback

KDR_11kJune 18, 2012

I remember the WiiWare Bit Boy getting savaged by reviews (most notably for having dead ends that could be impossible to escape from if an enemy wanders into them). B-Plus is generally a bad developer.

Quote from: KDR_11k

I remember the WiiWare Bit Boy getting savaged by reviews (most notably for having dead ends that could be impossible to escape from if an enemy wanders into them).

That's not going to change here. But it's level design of a previous era -- you need to survey the playing field before you move too far, and the levels are short and meant for heavy replay.

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Genre Action
Developer Bplus
Players1

Worldwide Releases

na: Bit Boy!! Arcade
Release Apr 17, 2014
PublisherBplus
RatingEveryone 10+
eu: Bit Boy Arcade!!
Release Apr 24, 2014
PublisherBplus
Rating3+
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