Insufficient Funds: Meat Boy

Insufficient Funds is a regular post in which we feature a free, or very close to it, piece of media that you can enjoy without overdrafting your bank account.

If a game has simple enough controls, then no matter how excrutiatingly difficult it is, you'll know it's your own fault when you meet your demise. Meat Boy operates on this principle to the absolute extreme limits. It can be soul-crushingly difficult, but you only kick yourself. And then go back... again, and again, and again.

It's a simple enough platformer -- left and right arrow keys to move, space bar to jump -- but it has all the charm in the world. You play as a big hunk of meat, trying to save the only girl that would ever accept you; one made from band-aids. And who has stolen your sweet from your embrace? None other than Dr. Fetus, a fetus in a jar, with a grown man's body and, inexplicably, wings.

But it's not only the ridiculous story that keeps you sucked in, the game is designed in such a way to give you a hearty slap on the back for encouragement, as it simultaneously chews you up and spits you out. Every level can be beaten in at least 30 seconds or less, if only you were that talented. And should you... when you, meet your untimely death, over and over again, the level instantly reloads itself, never letting you second guess a 54th... or 104th try.

And don't worry, once you are thoroughly in love with the constant stream of synchronous abuse and charm, there will be plenty of pain/delight for you to endure/enjoy. After the original Meat Boy, Edmund McMillen and Jonathan McEntee (Team Mic) gathered a collection of the most ridiculously brutal player created maps, and released the Meat Boy (Map Pack).

Let's just say you are the sick kind of masochist that can make it through all of the Map Pack. Never fear, because on the horizon is Super Meat Boy for WiiWare, which looks to take our 8-bit style hero into the 16-bit age. But that probably doesn't matter to you, because if you can make it through all of the Map Pack, then you most be a robot. And we all know that robots come from the future. So you've probably already played Super Meat Boy. How was it? Or... is it? Will it?