8Bit Box
Unplug your PlayStation and avoid those square eyes with 8Bit Box, the board game console that wants to resurrect retro on the tabletop
Words by Matt Jarvis
PAPER PIXELS
Pixoid is a tabletop Pac-Man-like
The distinctly lo-fi world of bicycles might not seem like the obvious starting place for a board game that recreates classic retro video games on the table, but that’s exactly where designers Frank Crittin and Grégoire Largey discovered the spark that would go on to power their cardboard games console 8Bit Box.
The pair were working together to create a game about managing a cycling team during a race when they struck upon the idea of using two dials to imitate simultaneous player inputs in a similar way to a video game controller.
“One of the mechanisms was programming; we were using cards to select and program the actions,” Crittin says. “But as we were exchanging ideas about it, suddenly we had the idea to move away from the cards and use a pad. When we tested the idea it was really cool and all of a sudden it was quite clear that we could use the idea of the pad to generate a lot of different games. It was the start of the idea behind 8Bit Box.”