Bit.Trip Beat - Development and Release

Development and Release

Bit.Trip Beat was developed by Gaijin Games and initially published by Aksys Games. It was designed by Alex Neuse, its art by Mike Roush, and its programming by Chris Osborn. Their publishing agreement with Aksys was formed due to Neuse's personal relationship with its president, Akibo Shieh, with whom the two of them had wanted to work on a game together before. Despite the amicable relationship with Aksys, the budget and development time were less than they would have wanted, though they put up with it due to their good relationship and the challenge of developing with those limits. Because of being only three people, the developers had to do more than what they normally would have to. Before its reveal, Gaijin released a teaser on IGN. Its title was originally 8-Bit Beat, though this was changed to Bit.Trip Beat. Early on, the developers could only afford one development kit, causing them to have to interrupt each other's work to use it. One of the first ideas made for the game was to give it an Atari 2600 art style.

It was initially proposed as "Pong with music". While described as being "not a big selling point" by Roush, the enthusiasm given off by Neuse convinced him to stay and work with him on it. Roush attributes the development of Bit.Trip Beat on WiiWare over competing services Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network due to both coming off from the development of a Nintendo DS game before it and Neuse's Nintendo fanboyism. Its development time spanned three and a half months. He explains that it was easier to switch from the DS to Wii than it would be to switch to an entirely different company's platform. Neuse noted music video game Rez for inspiring Beat, calling it one of his favourite games of all time. The developers designed its controls with the intent of hearkening back to the era of "spinner controls" traditionally used in paddle games. Initially, they used several different kinds of controls, including having players control it with the d-pad, the analog stick, and by pointing the Wii Remote at the screen. However, they eventually settled on holding the controller sideways and tilting it. Boss battles were added near the end of development; while Neuse did not want to feature them despite his love for the video game trope, he felt that the game could benefit from them. However, due to the short time spent creating them, he finds them to feel rushed, even though they add to the game. Neuse explains that, while wanting the game to remain open to interpretation, Beat shows CommanderVideo's journey from the ethereal to the corporeal, ending with CommanderVideo becoming aware of himself and saying "I am only a man."

Near the end of development, the developers realized that they had mistakenly forgotten to localize the game, including error messages, such as those telling if save data has been corrupted. As such, they believe that they diminished its accessibility in other regions as a result. A bug, interpreted to be intentional, prevented the game from saving unless players achieve a high score. This only affected the North American version, as the other versions came out after it was fixed. A traditional patch was not easily accomplished on the WiiWare service, which Game Set Watch speculates drove them to their method of fixing it, which included putting up two save files that included high scores for the first two levels, thereby unlocking the third level.