Blink And You’ll Miss It – Nitronic Rush Trailer Teases An ARG?

Thank Gord for my short attention span, my love of shiny fast-moving objects and a neverending hunger for catchy techno beats. If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t have idly re-watched the Nitronic Rush Update #4 Trailer, and wouldn’t have noticed that the URL for the game changes ever-so-briefly into a mysterious new site.

So far, it looks like an ARG (Alternate Reality Game) of some sort unfolding. There’s a strange bar-code like image that forms and un-forms when you mouse over it, and a SPECTRUM.MP3 file, which I’m sure contains no shortage of hidden information for the kind of folks that get their jollies turning pure, innocent data inside out. There’s also a couple of boxes to enter your e-mail to inform you of when the next phase begins.

Alright, Internet Detectives, it’s time to get your sleuthing hats on, because I’m too thick to solve any of this malarkey myself! What is the meaning behind the strange audio file and the pseudo-barcode image? There also seems to be a large amount of binary lurking in the HTML, which probably needs decoding by someone who knows things about stuff. I’m no good at this cryptography stuff – the cyphers in Fez were trouble enough for me.

If anyone figures out what exactly is afoot here, do tell us via the comment box below. Whatever it is, though, it’s rather interesting.

Update: @Krisu over on Twitter has kindly run the mysterious audio file through a Spectrogram, and found that it (unsurprisingly, at this point) contains an encrypted, repeated image. It reads ‘Refract Is The Future’, over and over again.

He also managed to translate the binary code to find a similar result:

“survival is key
refract is the future
bending light into the mind’s eye”

So, what’s Refract? The team’s next game, maybe? Or is this just the tip of an iceberg of mysteriousness? Stay tuned.