Super Meat Boy (Xbox 360)

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Description

Meat Boy is a small sentient cube of meat. He loves his girlfriend Bandage Girl, a girl made of bandages, and Bandage Girl loves Meat Boy. However, nobody loves Dr. Fetus, a fetus in a jar clad in a tuxedo, so Dr. Fetus hates everybody...especially Meat Boy. Dr. Fetus decides to kidnap Bandage Girl, and so Meat Boy must chase after Dr. Fetus and rescue her! Is he a bad enough dude to rescue his girlfriend?

Super Meat Boy is a fast-paced scrolling platformer based on the earlier online Flash game Meat Boy. Meat Boy's only abilities are to run, jump, wall jump, and die. As the game's defining feature is its extreme difficulty, he will die a lot. To counteract this, each stage is short -- sometimes only a few seconds, sometimes up to a minute or so -- and upon death the player will immediately be returned to the start for another attempt. If Meat Boy manages to reach Bandage Girl, she is then swept away once more by Dr. Fetus, and the player moves on the next stage. After clearing enough stages in each chapter, the player can then fight the boss of that area, who must be defeated to move on to the next chapter.

The game features over 300 stages across seven chapters, including retro-style bonus stages, boss stages, and even higher-difficulty variants of every normal stage in the game. The Xbox 360 release also includes a special chapter called "Teh Internets", where the developers can release new level packs free of charge on a regular basis.

There are also more than a dozen playable characters making guest appearances from other indie games, including Tim from Braid, the Alien Hominid, and Gish. Characters are unlocked either through retro bonus stages hidden within the normal stages, or by collecting bandages hidden in many of the game's levels. Each version of the game contains a slightly different set of unlockable characters.

The player's best times are recorded for each stage and uploaded to a global leaderboard. Also, after completing a stage, a replay is shown that simultaneously displays every single attempt the player made, which can also be saved.

Screenshots

There are no Xbox 360 screenshots for this game.

There are 3 other screenshots on file for other versions of this game.

Part of the Following Group

• Meat Boy series

User Reviews

One of the finest platformers in recent memory.

雷堂嬢太朗 -raido.jotaro- (57792)

The Press Says

1UP	Oct 18, 2010	A	100
The A.V. Club	Oct 25, 2010	A	100
Xboxygen	Oct 30, 2010		100
TeamXbox	Oct 18, 2010	9.8 out of 10	98
Console Monster	Oct 18, 2010	94 out of 100	94
GamesCollection	Oct 30, 2010	9 out of 10	90
We Got This Covered	Oct 28, 2010		90
Extreme Gamer	Oct 26, 2010	8.9 out of 10	89
GameZone	Oct 10, 2010	8.5 out of 10	85
PAL Gaming Network (PALGN)	Oct 31, 2010	8 out of 10	80

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Trivia

Development history

The game's developers envisioned Super Meat Boy as a "flagship" indie game, which is why there are a large number of guest characters from other indie titles. They originally wanted to also include Quote from Cave Story and Lemeza Kosugi from La•Mulana, but the developers of those games declined the request.

Though it was originally announced as a WiiWare exclusive title, the WiiWare release was eventually canceled in December 2010. The developers were unable to get the file within Nintendo's size limit of 40MB without cutting most of the music. They also stated that a disc release was unlikely, as the publishers they contacted said there is no money in third-party retail for the Wii.

Inspiration

Each of the introductions to the different game worlds is based on a famous video game. The scenery is re-envisioned and of course replaced with the characters from Super Meat Boy:

• World 1: Street Fighter II
• World 2: Castlevania
• World 3: Adventures of Lolo
• World 4: Ninja Gaiden
• World 5: Mega Man 2
• World 6: Pokémon Blue
• World 7: Ghosts 'N Goblins
• World 0 (XBLA exclusive): Bubble Bobble

The Super Mario games also offered a lot of inspiration for various more general design choices. The replay system was inspired by the Quantum Mario video.

Iron Man Runs

The PC version has additional achievements called Iron Man Runs. Every chapter has this achievement and it is obtained by completing 20 levels in a chapter in succession, without being killed once. It was left out of the Xbox 360 version because Microsoft limits the amount of achievements to 12 for XBLA games.

Level editor

An official level editor for the Windows version of the game was released on 5th May 2011. It is added automatically through a Steam update.

Parodies

In December 2010, animal rights organization PETA released a free flash parody of Super Meat Boy called Super Tofu Boy. SMB developers Team Meat took it as a complement, and in turn added Tofu Boy as a hidden playable character to the PC version of Super Meat Boy the very next day. Tofu Boy boasts incredibly low mobility, and it is impossible to finish most stages using him. They also posted a response to PETA on their Twitter account: "How many Peta members does it take to change a lightbulb?.... None, Peta can't change anything." In December 2010 Dutch developer Vlambeer also responded to PETA's parody, with a game: Super Puppy Boy.

Sales

As of 2012, the game sold over one million copies. About 750.000 of those copies were sold on PC.

Unlockable characters

Many of the playable characters that are unlocked by completing warp zones and collecting bandages come from famous indie games. Each character has a different ability.

• Alien Hominid (Alien Hominid games - Xbox 360 version and Windows Ultra Edition only)
• Commander Video (Bit. Trip series)
• Flywrench (Flywrench)
• Gish (Gish - Xbox 360 version only)
• Goo Ball (World of Goo - PC version only, replaced with Headcrab in the Steam release, but there is a code to unlock it in that version as well)
• Headcrab (Half-Life series - PC version only and exclusive to the Steam release)
• Jill (Mighty Jill Off)
• Josef (Machinarium - PC version only)
• Mr. Minecraft (Minecraft - PC version only)
• Naija (Aquaria - PC version only)
• Ogmo (Jumper!)
• Pink Knight (Castle Crashers - Xbox 360 version only)
• RunMan (RunMan series - PC version only)
• Spelunky (Spelunky - Xbox 360 version only)
• The Kid (I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game)
• The Ninja (N series - Xbox 360 version only)
• Tim (Braid - Xbox 360 version only)
• Tofu Boy (Super Tofu Boy - PC version only)
• Viridian (VVVVVV - PC version only)

Related Web Sites

• Postmortem: Team Meat's Super Meat Boy (A retrospective about the game's development on Gamasutra)
• Super Meat Boy's retro reference guide (article about the retro games influences, on GamesRadar (October 2010))