When I was seven, I got a dark blue Nintendo DSi XL. This was the first Nintendo handheld that had an online store, which I would peruse when I got bored. A specific series of games would always show up at the lower prices - the Art Style series. I didn't know anything about it, but I ended up buying two of the games, and enjoying both of them.
It would take 13 more years for me to find out exactly what this series was, which is the Cublex classic of getting really into something the second time I do it. A friend mentioned the game in a conversation, then encouraged me to speedrun one of the games that I had already played all those years ago, which brought me to a small Discord server which revolved around the series. And now we're here.
The Bit Generations and Art Style games are a series of experimental puzzle/action games mostly made by Skip Ltd, with up to two exceptions developed by Q-Games depending on how you count sequels. They're audio-visual experiences first and videogames second, although it's an intensely close race between the two subjects. The Bit Generations games were only ever released in Japan, while the Art Style games were worldwide releases. These games span the Game Boy Advance, the DSi, and the Wii. While the names suggest that they're two different serieses, they're basically the same, and they share a lot of sequels anyhow. I've now played all of them and have many opinions to share with you.
Before we continue, this is a series that you don't necessarily want to spoil yourself on. While going into these games with info about them doesn't break anything, you do miss the full experience a little bit. I've already decided to describe them as experiences - go experience them. Play all of them. Become a fan. Start with Light Trax (Wii) or Digidrive (GBA, DSi), they're good videogame-y games. The whole series is all bite sized experiences, you can come back later.
Actually, before you go: if you do play all of them before coming back to reading this, when you get to Soundvoyager (GBA): play with headphones, and don't look at the screen during gameplay. Focus on sound alone. Trust me on this. Now leave, and go have fun. Remember to come back though, I do want my opinions out there.
For those that already have played the BG/AS games or can't bother to do so, here's some meta-info. The tierlist ranges from F to S, with the list starting at the lowest rank. I use the names that were used in NA regions for games that have multiple names, as they tend to be the best name for the game in my opinion. Everything in this list is fully my own opinion, and people will absolutely disagree on what the "good" or "bad" BG/AS games are with no exception whatsoever. This information is not objective in any way.
Here we go!
Boundish is five Pong variations. As the classics go, Pong is very much on the lower tiers, not being very enjoyable as a singleplayer game, and being a "let's play one round and move on" game as a two player experience. Pong is very easy to iterate on, and it's definitely possible to make a good iteration of Pong, but Boundish doesn't do this in a way that makes me want to play Pong on the GBA. It also absolutely squanders its human-based theming in every way - it's the only BG/AS game that I think not only doesn't hit its intended style but also doesn't even look good at all. As a game in an experimental game series, it just doesn't really experiment. It's the only one that I think fully flops on its head. F tier.
Orbital has a neat concept - you're a planet that has to orbit around a set of other planets and collect things along the way. You can control your gravitational pull by holding a button to draw in, or a different button to push out, but that's about it. It's a very slow game, but I don't take any issues with that part. I just don't think I really get it. The controls feel awful, there's not really much response, and I end up crashing into everything without feeling like I could've changed the fact that I crashed into something. It doesn't feel like something you can get the hang of, you just either get it or you don't. And I definitely do not. D tier.
You're a guy! There's blocks! They're falling! They can crush you! Quick, you gotta climb up them, and step on as many as you can for points! There's a combo system with making lines of blocks via the ones you've stepped on for the aforementioned points. You also slowly die over time unless you step on a block that heals you, which is a random occurrence, but one that happens often enough to not feel unfair.
This adds up to something that sounds like a fun arcade experience which, when I actually play, does absolutely nothing for me. It's almost Q-bert with less stuff, although I'd argue that makes it better than Q-bert in some ways. They're still similar though, as both Q-bert and this game make me want to go to bed. D tier.
Zengage is basically Chuzzle Deluxe's mindbender mode with a way more puzzling soundtrack. It's not doing anything new and I can't get myself to stick with it for more than a stage or two, but that's more just because I've done it before with a soundtrack I like better and a bunch of cute fuzzballs I can harass when I get bored with the game given to me. But, even if it's been done better, that's still not bad! C tier.
You make boxes. I'm tempted to keep it at that, but it's actually a very interesting concept for a puzzle game - you're given a shaped sheet of grid paper, and have to find all the ways you can cut the paper into ways to fold up boxes. You will become very familiar with how the net for a perfect cube can be created. Unfortunately, the audio-visual aspect of this one doesn't do anything interesting, and I also can't get myself to stick with it for very long. But it's neat! C tier.
It's Orbital, but on the Wii! A second go at the game gave them a chance to potentially refine the controls. They did not do this. Instead, they utilized the better visual fidelity to show the source of your push and pull when you hold a button. This, along with better beginning level design, is enough to get me into it a little bit. I now understand the game and how you play it and why the controls end up working the way they do. Unfortunately, you're still fighting with gravity, which is an immensely frustrating and slow task that doesn't feel like it gives quite enough payoff once you've collected the thing you need to collect. C tier.
It's a match-3 game! The match-3 genre is often maligned due to the modern mobile game landscape, but there's a lot of good ones. Most of those have you swap, delete, or add pieces to make matches, but Coloris is different. In Coloris, you transmute the pieces into a different color by recoloring them towards one extreme end of a gradient. It starts as a simple 4 shade gradient, then goes to a 5 shade gradient, then you have to balance a 6 shade color wheel, which will eventually become a 9 shade or 12 shade color wheel. Each color palette gets a different level, of which there are 50. This is a fantastic concept for a game that runs into a few issues.
Firstly, some of the gradients are insanely fucking difficult to parse. Every time there's two yellows it sucks, and all of the 12 shade levels have 3 different yellows. Additionally, the way you can lose gets annoying very fast. Blocks that aren't deleted or moved in some way will turn gray over time, and gray blocks aren't affected by gravity and can only be removed by making two matches next to them. You can also make a gray block on your own by doing an invalid transmutation on a color wheel stage (like trying to make an orange tile more blue) which is really easy to do if you already can't tell which yellow the yellow tile is. The worst part is that the existence of a gray block prevents you from making level progress in any capacity, so if you end up with enough (or any) of them you might as well just restart.
Despite all of that, and the general fuck you to colorblind people that this game concept is, it's still pretty neat in my eyes. The pieces all have a cute little animation displayed on them, which is different for each advanced level, and if you can see colors well it's a fun challenge to try to find matches across the board quickly. It also has the most satisfying level complete sound I've ever heard in a match-3 game. This game certainly isn't perfect but they swung for the fences, and it at least got a double on the bases if nothing else. And I clearly like it, considering how much I wrote. B tier.
Dialhex is the start of a trend on this list where I like games that seem a little bit like Tetris. Colloquially known as "block games", they're games where you manipulate sets of blocks to clear out those blocks. In most cases, the blocks are just that, but in this case they're triangles. You can rotate these triangles around a point, and if you make a solid color hexagon out of them they'll clear out. As you progress, more colors show up, and the pieces fall onto the board faster, making things somewhat hectic as you try to collect the few cyan triangles in a sea of every other color of triangle. Thankfully, there's a couple powerups to help you on your way. If you're a block game amateur or journeyman, this could last you a while, but I got through the 8 color portion and beat the game on my very first try, so there's not anything to go back to for me. B tier.
It's Dialhex, but on the Wii! Besides visual and audio fidelity, there's pretty much no differences between the two. The only one that matters is the brand-new Sprint mode, a very short level-by-level mode where you have to make 6 hexes in a chosen color. This mode is weirdly a lot more difficult than the main Solo mode, so it's a good excuse for veteran block gamers to come back to the game. With that being said, the most valuable thing this game does is be a release of Dialhex that officially happened outside of Japan. B tier.
Aquia is also a block game, which does in a very "pass it back and forth" way - you push your piece in, and the blocks that get pushed out are your next piece, which you can then swap the colors around and push it back in somewhere else, which then gives you your next piece, so on and so forth. You're trying to make lines of 3 of the same color, and if you do this quickly you start to build a chain. You can make non-matching moves as you like, which allows a lot of freedom.
This is all done in service of a deep sea diver, who will drown if you don't go fast enough. Death is a downward spiral, as it darkens your playing field. The more dead you are, the less of your playfield you can see and therefore use to make matches with. Thankfully, there's a special block that can spawn which glows in this darkness. They're quite rare, but matching them will completely replenish your air and unobscure your vision. This drowning effect is strangely compelling. It's one of those "oh I forgot how fun this was" mechanics. Unfortunately, you probably will forget about it. B tier.
There's a clump of differently colored cubes, known as a Cubello, coming your way somewhat quickly, and you need to destroy it by shooting more cubes at it. Making sets of at least 4 cubes of the same color gets rid of them, and knocks the Cubello back by a bit. Making a match also refills your magazine of cubes, which if you were to run out of would guarantee your death. Unfortunately, you absolutely will be missing shots, as shooting the Cubello also makes it spin around based on where you shot it at. There's also a slot machine. That feels pertinent to mention.
This is not a game of luck. Obviously there's the slot machine, and the cubes you get in your magazine seem random, but it's very easy to tell that they make sure you always have at least one cube in your magazine that can make a match. This is a game of fast-paced strategy and match-finding that's a lot harder than it seems to be at first glance. The game's slight vectorheart visuals and the music that Certainly Exists compliments this very well, and it's a tried and true usage of the Wii's pointer functionality, which always makes me happy. A tier.
Dotstream is a minimalist racing game where you play as a beam of light. Everyone goes at the same speed normally, and you're automatically placed in last at the start of each race, so you have to play smart to win. You get a couple manual boosts, which also act as your lives since you can crash into obstacles, but you also slowly gain speed when you're next to another racer's trail. This is a very simple system, but makes for a very engaging race.
There's a blend of strategies to take here. Moving to avoid obstacles is slower than going straight, so you have to take the best line. But you'll also want to take a line next to another racer to get your speed up. But you need to be careful, as the space between obstacles might not fit you and the others that have already gone that direction, so you might end up crashing, which is a boost you won't get to use later. And using a boost in the middle of a race could guarantee that you win, but it also might not even be worth it as you'll have less leeway for when the course gets tricky. But you could also take a pitstop to get your life back if you think the time it'll take isn't so long that you couldn't catch back up.
There is a lot to consider, and in a racing game that can be tough to manage. However, with the immensely clear cut visuals and the music that puts you in the proper mood, it's easy to sink into a groove where you feel like you can always take the best route, even if you haven't managed to do so at the moment. The only downside to this game is that the passive boost mechanic is a bit opaque and doesn't always feel the best, but the results of using it definitely show when you get first place. A tier.
In Digidrive, you play as a traffic director. You're at a four way lack-of-stop organizing cars by color. They'll come from one way and you'll send them down one of the other three. The car metaphor breaks down at this point - collect five of the same colored car in a spot and they become a power cell. Send more of the same color that way and the power cell grows. At some point in the game, either manually or automatically, you'll get a cop car on the road. When a cop car is sent down the path of a power cell, it will spend said power cell, which launches a disc on the side of the screen forward across a never-ending path. This disc is slowly being chased by a plunger, which will end the game if it plunges into the disc. Your goal is simply to get the disc as far as possible.
Power cells expire over time when not given cars. You can also trash a power cell by sending the wrong color down its direction, which can be beneficial - if there's two cells, it just combines them, so now you have one larger cell. If you have three cells, the one you get rid of doubles, and gets added to BOTH cells. At a high level, the game becomes maintaining your power cells and getting as many of these doubles as you can, as the cell size growth becomes exponential.
This sounds very complex when written out, but the moment you play it you will realize how simple it is. This simple yet engaging gameplay, along with the unlockable themes and music selections, will keep you coming back for just one more game every so often. It's pure arcade score attack fun with a distinct visual style that unfortunately seems a little held back by being on the GBA. The only truly bad thing it does is give cops a positive attribute. (Although maybe it's not a cop car, it could be an ambulance.) A tier.
It's Digidrive on the DSi! I don't think I have to tell you that. The main differences are that the visual style now has enough room to be fully cohesive, which unfortunately also means it has a lower amount of customization. It also utilizes the two screens very effectively - one is the playfield, the other is the disc and plunger. Either screen can be used for either - if you want to control the game using the touch screen, you can, and it might be preferable if the cop car/ambulance system is a little hard to handle. The best advice I can give you for the differences between GBA and DSi Digidrive is just pick the soundtrack you like best, they're basically the exact same game. A tier.
Pictobits is another block game. You've got single minos you can move around freely via the touchscreen, and some multiminos of various shapes and colors slowly falling from above. Making 2x2 squares or lines of 4 that include a falling multimino will clear them out, and if the multimino hits a still mino that doesn't match, it'll stop moving and split into regular minos. Any cleared minos are sent to the top screen to help fill out some pixel art that will look familiar to any Ultra Epic Classic Nintendo Gamer™, as it's all sprites taken from various first-party NES games. The trick is to make multiple matches from one single cascade of pieces, as there's a combo system which will speed up the building of the sprite greatly.
This game is a love letter to the NES era, but to be fair there's enough of those that it's not worth talking about anymore. Instead, this game is great because of the level design. As the levels progress, the falling blocks get more complex and the ways to deal with them perfectly get more difficult to set up, making it a rush to play well on the later levels. And if it ends up not being hard enough, there's a second set of levels that are intentionally much more difficult. I loved this as a kid and I still appreciate it now. Despite 100%ing it and not having any reason to play it again, I'll still pop it on for a little bit every now and then. I did while writing this. That's a good videogame. S tier.
Rotozoa is weird to explain, but it makes sense in-game. You're some circle thing with up to five tentacles, each one a different color. Coming in from the sides are a bunch of micro-creatures that each have a color, which corresponds to a tentacle. If a creature bumps into the right color, it grows that tentacle, and if it bumps into the wrong one, it breaks the tentacle and damages you. You can move and rotate, and your end goal in each level is to grow each tentacle a certain length, so you have to carefully manipulate you and your tentacles so you can properly color match without causing any problems. It ends up feeling a bit bullet hellish, as the stage isn't huge and there will be dozens of these micro-creatures on the field at once, which can each have several different movement patterns.
That's the game. It's a lot. It's hard. It's good. It's aesthetically strong. It's got multiple endings. It feels weirdly highly polished for a BG/AS game, but it still fits. It slots right into the weird WiiWare titles, ala And Yet It Moves. And just like the other weird WiiWare titles, you should play it. S tier.
I've talked about the block games, and we're at the last one, but while I am calling it a block game, that doesn't feel quite right. Maybe it's a post-block game? Or maybe the term neo-block game fits better. All the blocks are 7-segment display numbers. I think that information gets my point across.
Base 10 is about swapping these numbers around and lining them up to make them total 10. It starts with just 1s and 2s. When you swap two tiles, they flip, so you can turn the 2s into 5s. You can put two 5s next to each other and tap them to clear them, or you can get more ambitious and do something like 12151. Matches can also be chained - they take a little while to disappear, so you can use matched numbers as the endpoint for another match, although you can't swap tiles mid-chain unfortunately.
The game takes this as far as possible - there's a stage based speedrun mode that uses each possible digit, from including 1s and 2s, then adding 3s, then 4s, and so on all the way around to having 9s and 0s. There's also a survival mode that does the same but forever, and a puzzle mode that shows you a set board and challenges you to fully clear it. The tile swapping mechanics are ingenious, making certain numbers more of a risk than others. 1s, 3s, 4s, 6s, 7s, and 9s all have invalid rotations, so sometimes you just can't use them. It's a level of design you can't do on purpose, yet it's definitely not accidental. And chaining a match series like 352 into 514 into 4141 into 2701 just feels amazing in the rare moments you can pull it off. S tier.
Remember Dotstream? It's been a minute since we were talking about Dotstream. This is that game but better. The increase of visual fidelity allows for some cool 2.5D shenanigans, but also makes it even easier to tell things apart. The added Freeway mode breaks up the campaign in an interesting and distinctly racing themed way. But most importantly, the passive boost system is now an active one - rather than trailing opponents slowly changing your top speed, it fills a meter that can be activated to go faster. This, along with the tighter track design, is enough to make the game feel truly special. It's a true test of strategy and skill, and a strikingly flashy one at that. S tier.
All of the games so far have been talked about like games. This one needs to be told differently. When I went into Soundvoyager, I knew two things: that you need to use headphones, and that you can play the game portions without the visuals entirely. That is all I knew. I did both of these things. I plugged in my best headphones, selected the first level, and hid the screen. There was a loop from a song in my left ear, so I pressed left on the D-pad to approach it, and it centered itself. The loop played a couple times, then seemingly got collected, now locked panned to the center. Then another loop appeared, I recentered, it got collected. And another loop. Slowly but surely I was building and progressing through a song, the kind of thing I've heard before one or twice, but definitely not in this context. And I was making this happen only through audio, which is not something that happens in games most of the time.
This first song, known as Voyager in the game, could not have been a better first selection. This wasn't just a game, it was an experience. I felt like I was playing a videogame for the first time all over again, the first step into a great unknown that I know I'd enjoy. The song matched this feeling perfectly, perhaps even created it. There was a lot of genuine emotion with this experience, a level of almost overwhelming joy and awe that doesn't happen often. This is what games should be. This is true art.
Now that you've read this, this will likely not be your experience if you've yet to play it. And it really shouldn't have been mine - as it turns out, the game does have visuals for this first stage to help you understand what the game is doing. Remember that advice I gave you, back before the tier list even started? This is why. I want people to have this experience. It's beautiful.
Soundvoyager has issues and some bits I don't like. Some of the loops in later levels are really hard to tell the location of, some of the non-song levels are annoying, and the center point almost never feels like it's actually perfectly center. But for something in an experimental audiovisual series trying to give an experience? Better than S tier. You can't beat that first play. I will forever remember it.
Does a tier list need a conclusion? I feel like the BG/AS series deserves one, at least.
In the earlier tiers, I did a lot of hand-wavy "it's not my thing"isms and used the word "neat" a few times, which sounds like veiled criticisms. If you wanted to be uncharitable, you could say that I called 6 of these games "bad" and another 4 of them "okay", and only truly recommended 7 of the 19 games due to sequels overtaking prequels or whatever. That is not how I see it. I recommend 18 of these games, and the 19th you should at least do the museum-style 30 second look at.
The Bit Generations and Art Style series are an experimental bunch that don't always land for me and definitely won't land for everyone. They weren't supposed to. The GBA lineup was only ever released in Japan, they knew what they had. This is why I think you should play all of them, and you already should have by this point. They might work for you. I know I talked shit about Orbital and Orbient - those two have their fans, and I can see the quality! I love Digidrive, but a couple people on the Bit Generations discord can't get into it like I can! You might end up loving all of them, or none of them, or specifically just Boundish and nothing else, and that'd be weird but that's how these things go.
Skip Ltd experimented, and they found some things that should've been hits, damnit. You might do that too, even if they don't actually take off. The success matters more than the popularity. Go experiment. And go take some notes, play these fucking games. Go do it. The ROMs are out there, go. Get to it. I want to see Light Trax times in my DMs by tomorrow.