Art Style: Light Trax Hands-On

The bit Generations series of games were released in Japan on the Game Boy Advance in 2006, and in the past few years, Nintendo has released a handful of the games via WiiWare. The latest is Art Style: Light Trax, which is based off the bit Generations game Dotstream. It's a racing game, but instead of motoring along in a souped-up car, you're a line of light zipping toward the finish line on a 2D plane. Along with another game in the Art Style series, Rotozoa, Nintendo showed Light Trax for the first time.

The premise here is simple: You race a beam of light along a twisting, turning 2D plane and--in Race mode--the first to cross the finish line is the winner. The controls are simple: You press the 2 button to accelerate, the 1 button to brake (though you won't need to do much of that), and use the D pad to steer. Because steering your light beam temporarily slows you down, you mainly want to stay on as straight a line as possible. However, clever steering at the right time has its benefits. First of all, two light beams can't share the same lane, and the beam in the rear will need to change lanes immediately, which--in tight turns with multiple lanes taken--can often mean veering far off course to find an open lane. Secondly, tracks feature occasional obstacles you'll want to avoid because they might slow you down or destroy you.

In Race mode, staying close to another beam's lane will fill up a turbo meter that will give you a temporary speed burst when you press the A button. Another mode, Freeway, has you racing along curving landscapes without a finish line. Your goal here is to stay on the road for as long as possible--once the time runs out, it's race over. You can earn additional time by passing certain glowing lines that are also racing along the track. Freeway mode doesn't have boost; instead, there's the concept of gears. By drafting off another beam's lane, you can move up through five available gears--the higher the gear, the faster you will go. Hitting an obstacle or another beam will cause you to slow down, however, and you'll have to pick up speed once again.

Light Trax features a number of different race series to choose from, and like other Art Style games, it holds some surprising complexity beneath its minimalist exterior. The game is due for release later on WiiWare this year.