Bop It! Twist It! Pull It!
Bop It is a series of handheld electronic games marketed by Hasbro. It was designed and patented by Dan Klitsner in 1996, with the first game being released in the same year. It would later give way to many Spin-Off versions of the game such as Bop It Extreme, Bop It Extreme 2, and Bop It Download.The games themselves are focused on hand-eye coordination and commands. When the game commands a player to do an action on the game, the player has to obey. If successful, a sound effect plays and the player earns a point. If unsuccessful, the game ends.
The first game consisted of three commands: a purple button (Bop It), a yellow crank (Twist It), and a blue knob (Pull It). Beginning with Extreme, two more staple commands would be added: a red (1998-2006)/orange (2010) wheel (Spin It) and a green lever (Flick It).
The games provide examples of:
- Checkpoint: When choosing to start from a specific level in Download, the score starts from where the previous level left off.
- Difficulty Levels: The 2008 version introduces this trope to the series by having three of these, respectively called Novice, Expert, and Master.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The 1996 version had sound effects to represent the modes rather than The Announcer reading the names of the modes. It also only had a solo game for Vox Bop called Solo Bop. Extreme renamed this to Vox Bop Solo and added a solo game for Beat Bop.
- Have a Nice Death: Beginning with Extreme, various sarcastic and witty comments play whenever the player loses.
- Download's voice recording feature can take this to extreme levels, given that you can record whatever you want it to say.
- Beginning with the 2016 version (dubbed Refresh by most fans), the game can call you out for not doing a specific command. An example from Maker:Announcer: The game is literally called Bop It!
- If you lose with enough points in Extreme, a short melody will play proceeded by Pull It noises resembling Big Win Sirens.
- Let Us Never Speak of This Again: One Game Over comment from Beats is "Let's pretend that didn't happen."... and then it reports the score and ends the game.
-
Nintendo Hard: Extreme is one of the fastest games in the series, with the 1996 version being a runner up.- Levels 13-15 in Download also only feature the fast speed while combining everything from the previous levels into one.
- NOT!: One of the Game Over comments in Extreme is "Hey, you win... NOT!"
- Plug 'n' Play Technology: Download revolves around USB to download beats, sounds, and voices.
- Spin-Off:
- Bounce, Smash, and Tetris are focused on entirely different game tactics.
- Two were made in 1999 called Zing It (based off a yo-yo) and Top It (based off a kendama), and two more were made in 2002 called Groove It and NuJam Guitar.
