Anyone that knows me knows that Super Meat Boy and I have an interesting history with each other. It’s an indie hit made by 2 guys (Tommy Refenes and Edmund McMillen) that I got into early in December.

When I first heard of the game, everyone went on about how it had a Retro difficulty that would make one want to hurl a controller against a wall. Also at that time I had decided to do a 48 hour gaming marathon that was streamed live to raise money for charity. So while culling the internet for games that people would find entertaining to watch, SMB continually came up. After purchasing the game on XBLA and playing it, I thought why not add it to my queue of games to play.

On the fateful weekend when the event came up I played and played, but by the 30th hour I (being a bitch) succumbed to exhaustion and failed my 48 hour goal. No thanks to me, over $500 was raised by really great people that supported my insanity.

Now I played a couple of games during that 30 hour run but none entranced me more than SMB. The games high demand of control and zero respawn time kept me coming back. The best/worst part about SMB is when you die (and you will a fuckload) you knew it was your fault and not some cheap tactic of the game. This is because of the precise controls the game gives you. The deaths were deserved and the lessons I learned from each one made me better. That was visually apparent when watching replays in which waves of my failed meat boys would be turned into a plume of viscera while the one true meat boy would make to the end. In a way it reminded me of the Nick Cage movie Next where he had the ability to see other timelines so he would make the correct choice. But this is not here nor there, just noticed.

As I was saying the game is punishingly difficultly and since I didn’t complete it during my marathon I continued to play it after the fact. After some time I finally unlocked the bonus levels where you play as meat boys love interest bandage girl. Upon seeing the first level I turned the Xbox off and did not return for a time.

Recently I repurchased the Ultra Edition on PC where there’s a map editor and whole lot more levels. I wait patiently for my copy to come in (Amazon hurry the f up), and hopefully I will revisit the nightmare with open arms and maybe slap together some levels myself.

Also while writing this article I found the REAL POST MORTEM of SMB over on Gamasutra. The creators discuss the high level of stress they dealt with while completing the game, the way Microsoft almost left them to drown, how they left the Wii version to die and other interesting factoids. One quote from the article sticks out for me as the mantra of the development of SMB, “Don’t die until the game is done;” a fitting statement by a game that would murder you without a second thought.

full article here.