#digidrive

[hardcore-gaming-101]

Art Style (part 3)

The third (and final) part of our Art Style series coverage includes ZENGAGE, precipice, DIGIDRIVE, light trax, and Rotozoa.

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[animatedscreenshots]

Digidrive

[sporadicbeepboops]

Arriving in Style

I think I’m coming around on Nintendo making mobile games. It’s early enough that Iwata could completely let me down a few years from now, but he’s saying all the right things in interviews, and Nintendo has built up an extraordinary amount of goodwill in this fan’s eyes. And while I appreciate that it’s not shoe-horning existing 3DS games onto our phones, it has enough forgotten properties that could be smartly repurposed for touch interfaces. Specifically, I hope Nintendo and Skip Ltd. are considering rebooting the Art Style series.

Never played an Art Style game? That’s a shame, but I don’t blame you. They were largely ignored due to their status as “DSiWare,” a service that felt years behind the times when it debuted and seems practically prehistoric now. (Anyone griping about the eShop doesn’t realize how good we have it.) DSiWare became a magnet for the stinkiest of shovelware, so I think many just dismissed the whole library completely.

But that would be a mistake! The Art Style games were so wonderful, and more importantly, inventive. Anyone can make a match-3 clone; Making a truly original puzzle game is considerably tougher. And Skip (with some help from Q-Games) managed to do it a dozen times. There's the beloved pixel-dropper PiCTOBiTS (above), which as a nice bonus features some of the best Nintendo music remixes ever. BOXLIFE managed to redeem the maligned box industry after years of ridicule. And I’m not even going to try to describe DIGIDRIVE, but trust me when I say that it’s magical. I swear, it will just click eventually!

Not every game in the series was a gem, but Skip’s batting average was incredibly high here. That they were designed with a touchscreen in mind means they’d lend themselves well to mobile, but I’d love to see the team chart new territory. Either way, the Art Style games could show the world that puzzle games can be so much more than Candy Crush.