8-bit Bayonetta
Some time ago, I went to look for Bayonetta on Steam, only to leave in disappointment when I realised it’s a bit too pricey for then-jobless me. But while typing the word “Bayonetta” into the search bar, this little thing popped up.
Out of curiosity, I downloaded the game and took her for a spin. The game started with the standard Unity quality settings menu, as seen below:
This is a rather curious detail, because this isn’t something you expect from a fairly distinguished studio. But then, I don’t expect them to release an 8-bit game either, so I just shrugged my shoulders and went right in.
After getting my ass kicked since I have no idea what the controls are, I restarted the game and clicked on the “Input” tab to check the controls. To my absolute bewilderment there are only three controls: Jump, Fire1 and Fire2. Having absolutely no idea what was going on, I just pressed the “Play!” button and hope that I don’t get trashed by the game again.
I was greeted by the screen below once more:
Since there are only three buttons needed, I bound all three of them onto my mouse. Within the first five seconds I found out that Fire1 and Fire2 are exactly the same, meaning this game only has two controls. What happened next was a clicking frenzy never seen ever since I stopped playing Cookie Clicker.
So I played and died again when I neglected to look above me, much like when I first started in TF2 and was wondering why the game is raining rockets at me from above. I saw this screen:
Followed by this screen:
And when I clicked “Retry”, it brought me back to this screen:
After replaying enough times to get the achievement you saw in the very first image of this article, I can confirm that this is the entirety of the game.
It is rather odd to have a game with less gameplay than the average mobile app store clicker game to be on Steam. Out of curiosity, I went on to do a little digging. Apparently, this was on Platinum Games’ 404 page since 2015, essentially their version of Google Chrome’s T-rex game. After a bit more scrolling of the game’s Bayonetta Wiki entry, I found out that some time back, Platinum Games teased a 2D sidescroller version of Bayonetta, called Angel Land. The teaser was accompanied by a chiptune version of Bayonetta’s theme, Mysterious Destiny.
And it turned out to be an April Fool’s joke. Yippee ki-yay.
Later in 2015, a Platinum Games employee tweeted the 404 link claiming it to be the link for Platinum Games’ newest title. And they are greeted with 8-bit Bayonetta, which was technically their newest title at that point.
This game was later added onto Steam at 2017 as an April Fool’s joke, which was when I found it. The game was removed from Steam a few days later. Which means the copy on my laptop is probably going to turn it into a collector’s item, like one of those million-dollar phones that has the original Flappy Bird on it. I hope.
As a small fun-size game for a 404 page, 8-bit Bayonetta is a rather neat idea. More game companies should probably embrace that! Blizzard can have a Pong minigame where the paddles are Lucios and the ball is a very pissed-off Tracer. Devolver Digital can have a 8-bit shooting gallery. EA can have Plants VS Zombies on there. And Ubisoft can have a digital whack-a-mole game where you need to smack bugs that are crawling out of a copy of Assassin’s Creed: Unity.
