Super Meat Boy

''Super Meat Boy'' is a 2010 platform game designed by Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes under the collective name of "Team Meat". It was self-published as the successor to ''Meat Boy'', a 2008 flash game designed by McMillen and Jonathan McEntee. In the game, the player controls Meat Boy, a red, cube-shaped character, as he attempts to rescue his girlfriend, Bandage Girl, from the game's antagonist Dr. Fetus. The gameplay is characterized by fine control and split-second timing, as the player runs and jumps through over 300 hazardous levels while avoiding obstacles. The game also supports the creation of player-created levels. ''Super Meat Boy'' was first released on the Xbox 360 through Xbox Live Arcade in October 2010, and was later ported to Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Wii U, and the Nintendo Switch. A Wii version was in development, but ultimately cancelled.

Development of the game began in early 2009. McMillen worked on level design and artwork, while Refenes coded it. The game's soundtrack was written by Danny Baranowsky, who had also worked on the original ''Meat Boy''. ''Super Meat Boy'' won several awards, and has been cited as one of the greatest video games of all time. Critics lauded the game's controls, art, soundtrack, and challenging gameplay. The game was also a commercial success, selling over a million copies by January 2012. A sequel, '' Super Meat Boy Forever'', was released on December 23, 2020, without McMillen's involvement.

Gameplay

''Super Meat Boy'' is a platform game in which players control a small, dark red, cube-shaped character named Meat Boy, who must save his cube-shaped, heavily bandaged girlfriend Bandage Girl from the evil scientist Dr. Fetus. The game is divided into chapters, which together contain over 300 levels. Players attempt to reach the end of each level, represented by Bandage Girl, while avoiding crumbling blocks, saw blades, and various other fatal obstacles. The player can jump and run on platforms, and can jump off or slide down walls. The core gameplay requires fine control and split-second timing, and was compared to, regarding both gameplay and level of difficulty, traditional platform games such as ''Super Mario Bros.'' and ''Ghosts 'n Goblins''.

Levels in each chapter can be played in any order, but a certain number of levels need to be completed to access the boss stage, which unlocks the next chapter if cleared. The player has an unlimited number of attempts to complete each level. If Meat Boy is killed, he immediately restarts the level, though the ornamental red meat juice left behind on surfaces that the player has touched remains. A replay function, which may be accessed after a level is completed, simultaneously shows all the player's attempts to complete the level. Completing a level within a certain time earns an "A+" grade, which unlocks a harder alternate version of the level in the "dark world", an optional set of especially difficult levels. Hidden stages called warp zones are accessed by finding portals in specific levels. These warp zones feature bonus levels that have either the art style of older video games and a limit of three lives, or are patterned after another indie video game such as ''Castle Crashers'' or '' Braid''. The player may control characters other than Meat Boy, many of whom first appeared in other independent video games. Each character has different attributes, such as Commander Video's ability to momentarily float in midair. These characters can be unlocked by collecting bandage items placed throughout the game's levels or completing certain warp zones. Some bandages can only be collected by using certain characters. Some levels, such as warp zones and boss levels, can only be played with specific characters. The available characters vary depending on the version of the game played.

The Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) version features an unlockable mode called "Teh Internets", which is updated with new, free, officially curated levels. The PC version has a "Super Meat World" section, which allows users to play and rate additional levels that players have created with a level editor. This editor was released in May 2011. Players can also access an unsupported developer mode inside the game to edit their own levels using the "rough" tools that Team Meat used to create the game.

Plot

Meat Boy lives with his girlfriend Bandage Girl. One day, Bandage Girl is kidnapped by Dr. Fetus, an intelligent fetus in a life support suit. Meat Boy then goes after Fetus, until Fetus burns down the forest and tries to kill Meat Boy in his "Lil Slugger", which is destroyed after Meat Boy tricks him into running into a bunch of saws. Fetus escapes to an abandoned hospital, where Fetus unleashes C.H.A.D., a giant monster made of blood. Meat Boy shows the sun to the monster and redeems him, but then goes after Fetus, who goes to his salt factory. There, a clone of Meat Boy made of faeces called Brownie is created, leading to a race between the two, presumably killing Brownie. Fetus goes to Hell, where Meat Boy discovers that every time he dies, his corpse goes to Hell. Little Horn, a Meat Boy-esque monster made up of these corpses attacks Meat Boy. Fetus escapes and triggers a nuke, which opens a path to the top world. Meat Boy is lured to fight Larries Lament, three worms who inspire the Larry Jr. boss from The Binding of Isaac.

In the final level, Dr. Fetus runs after Meat Boy, who destroys the bridge he is on, destroying Fetus's life support system. Fetus tries to kill Meat Boy and Bandage Girl by blowing up his facility, but Brownie appears and saves the two while sacrificing himself. As Bandage Girl hugs Meat Boy after escaping, Fetus suddenly lands on Bandage Girl and tries to pummel her as the game cuts to credits. If Dr. Fetus is beaten in the Dark World, it is shown that Fetus's attacks were ineffective and Bandage Girl proceeds to stomp on him.

Development and marketing

The original ''Meat Boy'' is an Adobe Flash game created by Edmund McMillen and programmed by Jonathan McEntee. The game was developed over a three-week period, and was released on Newgrounds on October 5, 2008. By April 2009, it had garnered over 840,000 views at Newgrounds, and 8 million overall. A map pack for the Flash version was released on December 8, 2008. McMillen began development of ''Super Meat Boy'' after Nintendo and Microsoft requested that he make a game for their download services, WiiWare and Xbox Live Arcade, as they were impressed by the success of his Flash games '' Aether'' and ''Meat Boy''. At the time, he was working with Tommy Refenes on a Flash game titled ''Grey Matter''. Although McMillen initially pitched the companies a sequel to ''Gish'' or ''Aether'', the pair decided to form Team Meat and work on an expanded version of ''Meat Boy'' instead. Team Meat also includes soundtrack composer Danny Baranowsky and sound effects designer Jordan Fehr. According to the developers, ''Super Meat Boy'' is "a big throwback to a lot of super hardcore NES classics like ''Ghosts 'n Goblins'', ''Mega Man'', and the Japanese version of ''Super Mario Bros. 2''", with the plot written as "a mash-up of every videogame story from the early 90s". The game was explicitly designed by the team to be reminiscent of ''Super Mario Bros.'', and McMillen considered it a tribute to Shigeru Miyamoto, the developer of ''Super Mario Bros.''

McMillen worked on level design and artwork, while Refenes coded the game; it was tested primarily by the pair and their families. McMillen and Refenes lived on opposite sides of the United States, and met only a few times in person while working on the game. They developed the control scheme by iterating through several designs, trying to find one that felt fluid and logical. Rather than use a pre-built game engine, Refenes programmed an original one. The game was initially set to include around 100 levels, and to have co-operative and competitive multiplayer modes. During development, however, the multiplayer option was dropped and the number of levels was greatly increased. The pair designed the game to be deliberately "retro", imitating the aesthetics of traditional platform games, but with a modern sensibility regarding difficulty. They wanted the game to be rewarding and challenging, rather than frustrating; to this end they included infinite lives, quick restarts of levels, obvious goals, and short levels. They felt the replay feature transformed death into a form of reward.

Development of ''Super Meat Boy'' began in January 2009. Initially announced for WiiWare and PC, the game was set to be released in the first quarter of 2010. The release date was pushed back to the fourth quarter because the developers wanted more time to create extra levels, such as the dark worlds. A picture released on Team Meat's Twitter page on February 22, 2010, revealed that the game would also be released for XBLA. The next day, they announced that, while all versions would be released in the same month, the game would be released for XBLA first due to "contractual obligations". In August 2010, the developers were contacted by Microsoft with the prospect of inclusion in Microsoft's 2010 Fall GameFeast XBLA promotion two months later. As they were almost out of money, they did not believe that they could financially support themselves until the Spring event, but felt they had four months' worth of work left to complete on the game. For the final two months of development they worked daily, slept five hours a night, and frequently forgot to eat—a process that McMillen said he "would never voluntarily go through" again. According to McMillen, due to Microsoft's low expectations for the game, ''Super Meat Boy'' was lightly promoted. The level of promotion was not increased during the GameFeast, though the game greatly outsold the rest of the games in the event. The team described the effort required to finish the game for the promotion as "by far the biggest mistake heymade during SMB's development". Their development struggle is depicted in the documentary '' Indie Game: The Movie''. The game was released on XBLA in October 2010 and on PCs via Steam and Direct2Drive

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