From capping pens to collecting golf balls, Byte Hell 2000 has something that will interest you.
One of the most noticeable things right after you boot the game is the crazed kitten with all sorts of Japanese text. Little do you know (at this point) that the game only starts there and works its way up the ladder of insanity. The main menu presents 3 items and an e-mail inbox. The first option allows you to access the games, the second the capsule machines, and the last is Ad-Hoc and the game sharing feature. I still have no idea what anything from the mailbox says. Through this review I will refer to the area where you access the games as the game menu, and the main menu from where you access everything else accordingly.
On the game menu you meet the Byte Devil, and he has some tasks waiting for you. The devils themselves are random, displaying one of 3. As far as I can tell there is no relationship with the devil displayed and the games available. In the upper right hand corner the games themselves are displayed, a random set of four. After you select and complete (or fail) a game you are returned to the game selection menu with another random assortment of games.
You can access any game you want at any time with practice mode – just to clarify that your game selection isn’t always random - by going to the game menu and pressing start you can access a tertiary menu, which has quite a bit of stuff on it. The very first option is practice mode. You can’t get any money in practice mode, but it is a great way to figure out what to do in a game before you actually attempt it for money, which is rewarded only from the random games on the menu with the Byte Devil, the amount is different for every game.
To unlock the games you can play for yen, you first have to get them from one of many capsule machines. There are 4 different levels of machines that each have increasing costs per capsule. The capsules start off at 100 then increases to 500, 1,000, and 5,000 yen per capsule. Another factor, which baffles me, is the fact there are 3 identical machines at each “level” of machine except for the 5,000 yen level, which has only one. I didn’t see any difference in any of the machines on the same level, and likely never will.
Apart from the games, you can also win several other types of items in the capsule machines. Utilities and trinkets are the two other items available, which can make getting a game from a machine rather difficult once you have unlocked some of the games since it is possible to get the same game, utility, or trinket more than one time.
The utilities in Byte Hell 2000 can be more entertaining than the games at some times. Some of these utilities include: ramen timers, counters, compatibility tests, and a multicolor flashlight program. These are accessible from the games menu by pressing start and then selecting the second option from the top. Whatever you do, brace yourself before activating the ramen timer.
I found that the games range very well across the board from throwing balls to capping pens. While all the games can get boring and repetitious, they all manage to addict you to your particular task. All of the games are simple and require only one or two button presses to complete the task once, the problem is that either the game doesn’t end or has a ridiculous goal that is almost physically impossible for any human to do without breaking down due to the mental torture.
What gets me is the point and reason to these games. Sometimes you ask yourself “why in God’s name would you do that?” This especially comes to mind when you get into the pen capping, chick sorting, golf ball collecting madness that appears often in Byte Hell 2000. Sometimes I wonder what these guys were smoking during the development process of this game – because I want some.
I found that there is a nice assortment of arcade type games mixed in with the games using modern graphics, which are accompanied by these nice artistic games. The arcade games not only look like they should but the sound is fairly true to them as well. All the games, regardless of style, are all crisp and fluid with bright colorful graphics. The graphics in the arcade games are especially interesting because they are very colorful and extremely abstract in idea and task.
Another great aspect of the game is Gamesharing. Albeit limited and rather tacked on, it is still worth mentioning. Another person running 2.50 firmware and above can play off your game disc by going to the third option on the main menu and then the last menu option on the following menu. There are only 3 games for a single player and 2 for an ad-hoc play mode. In the single player games you can collect all the money earned by your friend as long as he hasn't exited from the game first. So if you and a friend are capping pens for a lot of cash this could be useful, otherwise it is a rather bland feature.
The best thing, in my opinion, is the level of difficulty presented to finish the game with 100%. There are literally hundreds of those trinkets to get from the capsule machines and you can get the same one more than once, making for frustrating and difficult runs back and forth from the games to the machines. The games are more difficult to find, but there are fewer of them, so don’t expect to find them all at once. The game could be endless because by the time you get all of one thing you have to get the other stuff in the game; complete and utter insanity lies ahead for players of BH2000.