The bizarre game controllers of BitSummit

Japan's leading indie games event features unhinged, inspired hardware

I recently dropped in on BitSummit in Kyoto, which for several years now has been an unmissable annual event on the Japanese video games calendar. It’s by far the biggest indie games show we have here, with a huge chunk of the domestic industry braving the summer heat every year to descend on the city and check the pulse of the scene.

What does that have to do with Multicore, I hear you ask. Well, this year there was a particular section focused on hardware that you won’t find anywhere else. It was organised by make.ctrl.Japan, which has been running events focused on unusual game controllers since 2020; this was its 10th show overall and second appearance at BitSummit. It’s modelled after the alt.ctrl.GDC exhibit at San Francisco’s Game Developers Conference.

Japan’s indie game scene has had its challenges. I wrote a feature for The Verge last year that goes into that, as well as how BitSummit has played an important role in spotlighting and spurring on its successes. Solo entrepreneurship can be difficult in Japan for a whole bunch of reasons, and that goes for game development as much as anything else.

But if you consider the country’s culture and history of arcade games, it makes perfect sense that independent creators would pour their efforts into this sort of thing without any expectation of a commercial return. Here are some of the best I saw — or at least the most bizarre.

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Boss, Blinds, Brandy

A truly inspired creation from Wataru Nakano and Miyazaworks, Boss, Blinds, Brandy is a two-player fighting game where you wear down your opponent by sneaking looks at them while enjoying a motion-controlled beverage. The control scheme involves Venetian blinds and a glass of brandy; you have to time your peeking and swirling in order to maximise your damage.

Acid Foot

Kenji Okuda’s Acid Foot uses a delightfully low-poly 3D-printed foot as a motion controller. Scoot around minimalist landscapes and aim to kick wardrobes as accurately as you can. (For some reason, you have to hit the corners.)

BARC

A personal favourite, BARC uses actual barcode scanners and printers in combination with on-screen codes that you need to scan — the printer feeds you real receipts that you match by scanning the screen. It’s truly chaotic, like a bloodless Time Crisis set in a supermarket, and play sessions invariably end up with the player drowning in paper.

BARC is the work of the National University of Singapore’s Interactive Materials Lab, and was demonstrated at BitSummit by Yong Zhen Zhou.

Jet Cola

Jet Cola, developed by Tamakotronica, is a game where you shake a Coke bottle to launch a rocket ship. There is not a whole lot more to it than that, although it does also have surprisingly deep lore involving an alternate-history Cold War where your country decides to leverage its sugarcane industry to win the space race.

Bear Runner

Bear Runner is a runner game that Shunte developed for mobile platforms, but this year’s BitSummit appearance had a twist: the simple one-button control scheme was converted into a setup where you smash a cartridge into a Nintendo Famicom.

HoooPizza

There’s an appealing symmetry to Hi Score Boys’ HoooPizza, which uses a hula hoop as its controller: the better you hula, the bigger your pizza. You have to shake, hold, or roll your hoop in order to turn out the best pie. It’s rare to see your actions interpreted on screen so directly.

While there are more advanced mechanics like choosing your toppings and cutting your slices, the developers originally designed the game as a way to improve hula hoop technique.

Key Panic

Key Panic is developed by “ハードウェアとか研究所”, which more or less translates to “Laboratory for stuff like hardware” and can be found on X as HASO_Lab. It’s a wildly cool puzzle game that uses locks and keys as the controller; you have to direct an abstract train’s path by turning keys on a 9x9 grid.

Minna de mogura tatakare

Another showing from Miyazaworks and Wataru Nakano, Minna de mogura tatakare does what its Japanese name would suggest: everyone plays whack-a-mole and gets whacked. The whacking is now done by an on-screen hammer, and it’s up to the players to avoid it while jumping out of their turf-cut holes.

Kick and Loud

Tamakotronica’s Kick and Loud is a game about screaming after your slipper flies off your foot. You kick the slipper off and yell into a microphone as loud as you can. It is quite the experience, although I feel bad for the developers who landed booths right next to this one.

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I am not sure you’ll ever be seeing dedicated home controllers for these games like in the halcyon days of Beatmania, Densha de Go!, and Sega Bass Fishing. But I think this make.ctrl.Japan space at BitSummit is a great encapsulation of the spirit of Japanese indie games right now, even as more and more developers come to find a degree of mainstream success. Commercialism isn’t the point — it’s still about creativity.