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SUPER MEAT BOY FLASH SERIES

It’s a sign of perseverance and genuine skill. Ultimately the games instill a sense of accomplishment in which victory transcends putting X number of hours into a game. It signifies a reemergence of challenge in games, a torch carried by other titles such as Dark Souls and Spelunky. It’s hard to blame any death in Super Meat Boy on the game itself. That remains the case even when the run button is held down and the game moves at a far more brisk pace. Meat Boy can jump long distances, and the level of in-air control provided sits near the top of the platformer genre. Die enough times and these subtleties become second nature.Įven though Super Meat Boy is an experience with many deaths, the pinpoint precision of the controls forces players to take ownership of their mistakes. The first instinct is to play it safe and carefully navigate the level, but if the player constantly holds the run button and pushes forward at a steady pace in the first half of the level, they avoid every single enemy.

SUPER MEAT BOY FLASH SERIES

An example that immediately comes to mind is the eighth level of world two, which features crumbling walls and a series of small platforms surrounded by slug-like enemies. But when the game introduces new obstacles and more devious level layouts, players must familiarize themselves with the intricacies of the game’s design.

Anyone can learn to run and jump within seconds, and the ease of early levels stresses that fact. Super Meat Boy presents a gradual learning curve in content more so than mechanics. There’s nothing quite like the simultaneous joy and horror of watching a hundred Meat Boys die and the ensuing meat juice trail.Īdditionally, the difficulty emphasizes the relationship between challenge and progression and its importance within the genre. The game also combats frustration with an ingenious replay system that documents every death. It’s the ideal case of contemporary meets retro.Įach level takes roughly 10-30 seconds to complete (with the exception of some late-game content), and a single button press allows players to jump back in following a death. It uses old platforming classics such as Ghosts ‘n Goblins and Mega Man as references points, but unlike those games, it eliminates the fear of poor checkpoint systems and frequent game over screens.

The death count rises higher and higher by the minute, but Super Meat Boy doesn’t confuse challenge with frustration. Players must avoid buzz-saws, homing missiles, and the most dangerous obstacle of all – salt – in order to complete each level. Plenty of Super Meat Boy discussions address the game’s difficulty, and it clearly offers a challenge like few modern-day releases. It also allows McMillen and Refenes to focus their efforts on insidious level design that gets at the core of Super Meat Boy. The lack of extraneous content allows the straightforward mechanics to shine. One needs to only play Super Meat Boy for a few short moments to understand how it operates and what it asks of the player. The game stays true to the platformer genre – players merely run and jump to reach Bandage Girl and in turn the end of each level, but much of the game’s brilliance lies in its simplicity.

On the surface, Super Meat Boy doesn’t seem particularly special. When the game hit Xbox LIVE Arcade in October 2010, just two years after Meat Boy’s debut, a new indie sensation was born. Programmer Tommy Refenes joined McMillen to form developer Team Meat, and the two tirelessly worked on Super Meat Boy, an expanded version of the original flash prototype. Within six months the game received nearly one million views and inspired a larger and more ambitious project.

SUPER MEAT BOY FLASH FOR FREE

Indie designer Edmund McMillen created Meat Boy, a tough-as-nails platformer with a retro aesthetic, and released it for free on the popular flash website Newgrounds in October 2008. Great games often come from humble beginnings.

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