BIT.TRIP.IDÉAME

English Version

RG: Here we are a year later!

Neuse: Oh, yeah.

RG: This year, you've come here with BIT.TRIP SAGA and BIT.TRIP COMPLETE. Could you describe to our readers COMPLETE's whole package?

Neuse: Sure! BIT.TRIP COMPLETE is all six games on one disk. We've added a lot of new features including new difficulty modes (because, you know, these are very challenging games). We've added an easy mode, but we've also added a hard mode, so if you didn't think they were hard enough you can play that [way].

We've also added 20 new gameplay challenges per game, so every game has 20 brand new levels. They are pretty short, but they are very, very difficult, harder than anything else you've played before - which I think is very, very fun.

Then, we've also got online leaderboards, so you can track your score in every level against everyone else worldwide. There's also an unlockable art gallery, an unlockable video gallery, an audio gallery which has some fan remixes of our songs, and some letters to the fans that I've written where I tell you a little bit about the story.

Finally, a super cool bonus feature is the soundtrack CD that we're including with the game that includes 18 tracks of our ingame music.

RG: I wanted to note that the CD doesn't include tracks from featured artists like Anamanaguchi. It only has ingame music.

Neuse: Exactly. The soundtrack CD doesn't feature any of the chiptune artists that we've worked with because they all have their own contracts with labels and all that stuff.

RG: Now that we're talking about those chiptune artists, what was the process of getting their tracks in the games?

Neuse: It basically started when, working on BIT.TRIP BEAT, we were approaching what kind of chiptune music would we use for inspiration. My favorite chiptune musician is Bit Shifter, he's amazing and he's the nicest guy that I've ever met: I just emailed him out of the blue, I didn't know him but I said that we were working on that game, that he was a big inspiration and that we would be honored if he contributed with two songs (one for the main menu and another for the credits). And he was so gracious and wonderful that he allowed us to use two of his songs.

From then on, I started to get involved with the chiptune scene a little bit and I got to know some of the other chiptune musicians, so we asked some new musicians we hadn't worked with before if they would contribute. And, you know, they were all super nice! I think that they really understood that the music inspired by videogames was going to be in a videogame inspired by that music, and that was kinda cool!