Better late than never, I always say. After being available on other consoles for many years now (since 2010), Super Meat Boy finally comes out for Nintendo audiences on the Wii U. Fun fact: Super Meat Boy was originally meant to release on the Wii as a WiiWare title, but technical limitations forced those plans to be cancelled. Still, it is great to see that the game has come full circle and is now available for Nintendo fans. I myself never played the game on the original consoles that the game was released on, so this port gave me the chance to play the game for the first time, and it’s been a cruel experience.
Super Meat Boy begins with Meat Boy’s girlfriend, Bandage Girl, being kidnapped by Dr. Fetus because… well, he “hates everyone”. There isn’t a greater impetus to go on a life-threatening journey than that, so away you go!
The game itself is a platformer. The goal is to reach the goal at the end of the level which is represented by Bandage Girl. While the objective sounds simple, the execution can be excruciatingly difficult. Spikes, spinning saw blades, lava, and more obstacles will try to kill you at every turn. Touching a single of these obstacles even once will send you right back to the beginning of the level. Precision is essential, and without it you are pretty much dead meat, literally. A single poke of any of the traps and Meat Boy will be kissing his pixel meat goodbye.
The controls are easy to understand since you will mostly only be needing two buttons: the run and jump buttons. However, being precise with the controls is where things start to become tricky. You will often find yourself attempting levels over and over again in an effort to finally get a perfect wall jump. Luckily, Super Meat Boy supports both the gamepad and the Wii U pro controller, so players can choose what feels most comfortable for them.
Super Meat Boy offers a variety of worlds and levels with which to challenge yourself. Every world has around 20 levels with an extra boss battle after completing enough levels to unlock it. Plus, if you manage to complete a level under a target time, you can play a variant of that level in the “dark world”. I use the word variant loosely because the levels are actually very different, with the dark world counterparts being even more difficult than the normal levels. Also, some levels offer bandages as collectibles. Collecting enough bandages will net you some new characters which you can also unlock by completing “warp zone” challenges. These warp zone leves are based off of retro systems with one of them taking inspiration from the Nintendo GameBoy. These levels offer a nice feeling of nostalgia and really add a twist of retro into the graphics of the game.
While the game itself is great and completely worth your time, it does fail in setting itself apart from its older releases. The Wii U version of Super Meat Boy offers nothing new that wasn’t already present in the 2010 version of the game. Starting up the game will only play the generic Wii U boot-up jingle instead of something from the game’s soundtrack. It’s a shame really because the soundtrack is great and adds to the intensity of the levels. Still, what really matters is that the game offers the same fun that it did in 2010, and finally it offers that fun for Nintendo fans.
Super Meat Boy is an extremely difficult game, but it is modern platforming at its best. Completing some of the levels may seem impossible, but when you do you may consider that to be your greatest life accomplishment, which is something a game like this should strive you to do.
Developer: Team Meat
Publisher: BlitWorks
Platform: Wii U
Release Date: 12th May 2016