Take some 8-bit graphics, a generic placeholder of a plot, a few well sprinkled cameos, a dash of masochism and what do you get? I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game. Players are taken to the year 200x, thrust into the shoes of The Kid and given the immense task of becoming The Guy. This candid plot, however, serves as little more than a means by which Mike “Kayin” O'Reilly has designed a near impossible platform adventure game.
Environments and enemies are hodgepodges of various video game influences ranging from Castlevania to Zelda. Virtually every aspect of the game has been engineered with the ability and purpose of destroying the player, a fact that is joked about throughout the game's website. Perhaps the most infamous of these deadly mechanisms would be the physics defying apples which have the ability to fly upwards as the player attempts to bound past them. As “Kayin” remarks in his sardonically voiced FAQ, he faced the challenge of creating a game that could surprise a player while in their most alert state.
The difficulty of this game is immense and rivals that of the Impossible Levels of Super Mario (a.k.a. Super Mario: Frustration to you YouTube goers) and the 2ch flash game Jinseiowatta no Daibouken, which likely served as Kayin's inspiration for IWBTG. While the game isn't really impossible, the window of success cuts it pretty close. The Kid is given no spare lives and explodes in a flurry of blood at a single hit. Each death is game over and the player is required to start over from their last save point. Save points themselves may even be non-existent, depending on the player's settings, and is just about the only impact a player can make on the game's difficulty.
The difficulty is extreme and the task of navigating through each and every stage successfully is a daunting one. Any serious attempts to beat the game require both an over abundance of patience and an impeccable memory.
Ultra Hard Core
Well, it's an interesting game...It just strikes me that games like this have a very narrow fanbase. I played the game a bit, but it took me at least half an hour to get past each screen (on easy difficulty). I'm pretty sure it's impossible to play through on the highest difficulty; human reflexes just aren't that precise with such consistency. The point is, the only people who will really enjoy the game are those willing to devote a lot of time to mastering its skills.
Maybe it's just best as a spectator sport, like, we all watch the truly obsessed players play it, but we don't actually want to do it ourselves. Like, I don't know, demolition derby.
Indeed, I had more fun
Indeed, I had more fun watching the Youtube movie than playing the game.
The game is highly comparable to Syobon Action (also featured on this website), but this game is less about being funny (because many of the cruel jokes are repeated) and more about precise timing and memory.
To me, execution and memorization aren't the type of challenges I'm looking for in a game, so don't expect me to be part of the following.