Like WarioWare before it, Bangai-O Spirits is an exercise in reducing videogaming’s first principles to a torrent of micro-levels. But where the games differ is in the execution and challenge of their myriad tasks.

If WarioWare is an introduction to mainstream videogame convention then Bangai-O Spirits, as you might expect from developer Treasure, is a masterclass in twitch extremism: 160 short, sharp levels based upon the engine, rules and assets of the Dreamcast and N64 classic, Bangai-O, see the company’s previous output ingeniously stripped down to its constituent parts.

Throughout, you pilot a mech that’s but ten pixels tall, the size of a mouse pointer. You’ve a choice of two main weapons from a bank of seven and the two trigger buttons release Bangai-O’s famous bombardment of up to 100 missiles, their size and ferocity increasing the closer an enemy bullet is to hitting you at the point of deployment.

These fundamentals are then spun out into a wide variety of play styles and challenges. Sometimes a puzzle game, sometimes a fighting game, always a shooting game, the range and subtlety of the game’s colorful and busy stages astonishes.

This review appears in this month’s edition of Edge magazine. You can read the rest over at Next-Gen.biz here.