Retro platformer Mimeo and the Kleptopus King guides your iPhone through hardware history

Developer Shaun Inman has been blogging about his latest iPhone game Mimeo and the Kleptopus King, which promises to be an ultra-stylish Mario-like platformer that evolves your iPhone through the various ages of gaming hardware.

The game comes from a project to make a faux 16-bit game engine intended to recreate the flare and dynamism of the Super Nintendo, and to celebrate Inman's love of pixel art.

"Good pixel art strikes the perfect balance between appreciable craftsmanship and the gestalt. A single pixel out of place, one too few or too many, ruins the illusion. There’s an unmuddied, economy of expression, the thankless result of the limitations of cartridge-based consoles," he waxes poetical on his blog.

Mimeo and the Kleptopus King is the result of this unique design approach, offering a retro-styled platform game with a very unique twist.

When a power-up is activated, it not only affects the character, but the entire world. The levels evolve from 2-bit visuals up to 16-bit, recreating the aesthetics of each hardware generation beautifully along the way.

"The so-called Mimeoverse consists of two 16-bit demiverses sharing 32-bits between them," explains Inman. "When the evil Kleptopus King, an 8-bit octopus with an inferiority complex, discovers a portal into Mimeo’s realm and begins to syphon off its bits, Mimeo is sucked in and down-sampled to 2-bit. So begins Mimeo’s quest to restore balance to the demiverses."

Given that the entire game needs to be build in four different graphical styles and resolutions, Inman says the project still has a long way to go and is unlikely to be released before Christmas 2010.

In the meantime, check out his video about Mimeo and the Kleptopus King's development so far.