I Wanna Be the Guy

I Wanna Be the Guy: The Movie: The Game (IWBTG) is a 2D platform indie freeware video game, created by Michael "Kayin" O'Reilly for Microsoft Windows using Multimedia Fusion 2.[1][2] First released on October 5, 2007, the game is not in active development despite being listed as a beta, though the game's source code was released by Kayin four years later.[3] IWBTG is mostly known for its unusually difficult platforming elements, unorthodox level design, and its utilization of sound effects, characters and music from many other games.[4]

I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game
I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game
Title screen of I Wanna Be the Guy, influenced by the title screen of Mega Man 2
Publisher(s) Independent video game development Edit this on Wikidata
Designer(s) Michael "Kayin" O'Reilly
Programmer(s) Michael "Kayin" O'Reilly
Engine Multimedia Fusion 2
Platform(s) Microsoft Windows
Release October 5, 2007
Genre(s) Action-adventure, platformer
Mode(s) Single-player
Gameplay Edit

The player controls "The Kid". The controls are limited to left/right movement, jumping, double-jumping and shooting. IWBTG is made up of several stages split into many screens, which are mostly pastiches of Nintendo Entertainment System games, such as Tetris, Ghosts 'n Goblins, The Legend of Zelda, Castlevania, Mega Man, and Metroid. At the end of each stage, a boss must be defeated to progress. The first seven bosses (Mike Tyson; Mecha Birdo; Dracula; Kraidgief (a parody of palette-hacked character glitches); Mother Brain; Bowser, Wart, and Dr. Wily in the Koopa Klown Kar; and a mix between the Mecha Dragon from Mega Man 2 and the Yellow Devil from Mega Man and Mega Man 3) are adapted from classic games, mostly platformers, but their behavior and appearance have been modified and enhanced for IWBTG. The final boss, The Kid's father, is unique to IWBTG. The game parodies many 8-bit and 16-bit era video games, such as the frequent use of references and sound effects from the Nintendo game Mario Paint.

IWBTG is most famous for its difficulty.[5][6] Most of the landscape is engineered specifically to kill the player character. Alongside a traditional range of recognizable dangers, such as spikes and pits, there are many less obvious threats as well, most of which are all but impossible to avoid without either previous knowledge or trial and error (such as Tetris pieces and "Delicious Fruit", which can fall downwards, upwards, or sideways).[1] The Kid always dies with a single hit, at which point he explodes into a mass of blood. Although each death results in a "Game Over", the player is allowed an infinite number of attempts.[7] From the starting screen, there are three different ways to progress; all of them ultimately lead to the same warp screen which returns to the first screen. Thus, to complete the game, the first six bosses along each path must be defeated before the warp screen will allow the player to access the final area.

The game has four difficulty settings: "Medium", "Hard", "Very Hard", and "Impossible", with "Hard" considered to be the "normal difficulty". The only difference between the difficulty settings is the number of save points available throughout the game, from 62, 41, 22 to none at all. Also, while playing on Medium mode, The Kid's hair has a pink bow in it, and any save points exclusive to Medium difficulty are labeled "WUSS" instead of "SAVE".