Genres: Platformer, Adventure, Action, Difficult
Release Date: October 5, 2007
Developer: Michael "Kayin" O'Reilly
Official Website: I Wanna Be The Guy


I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game is a sardonic loveletter to the halcyon days of early American videogaming, packaged as a nail-rippingly difficult platform adventure. Players fill the role of The Kid, a youthful, vaguely Megaman-esque protagonist on a quest to become The Guy. This inscrutable plot, however, is just a vehicle for a wide variety of inventive, well-designed and frustrating jump-and-shoot challenges that pay homage to many of the games you loved as a child. The ever-fragile Kid explodes in a shower of red pixels at the slightest brush from the game's many obstacles, from traditional spikes and bottomless pits to more unconventional killers, such as plantlife and puzzle pieces.

Using a multiroute layout not unlike a Metroidvania, the game grants a degree of deadly exploration, without thoseextraneous upgades meant to make life easier. The game provides players with a choice in terms of their deathrate, thanks to a variable difficulty setting that changes the number of save points from frequent to nonexistent. IWBTG is open to all players; knowledge of videogaming history is optional, and may not help against the frequently ironic and always sadistic deathtraps located herein. And so, the question is left up to you...