There was a thread about this game some three years ago, but I thought it might be nice to bring it back up and have a common discussion thread about it.
I Wanna Be The Guy is a game by Kayin, who designed the game as a throwback to the mega-hard old-school games of the NES and Arcade era(Contra, Megaman 2, Battletoads etc) with one single intention: To torture the player and kill him in every possible manner.
IWBTG is an old-school 2d platforming game in which the main character "The Kid" travels through all the worlds of old school NES adventures. He'll fight Mother Brain, Bowser, Dracula and many other old-time favorite boss fights from 8-bit games.
When I say IWBTG is a difficult game, I don't mean it's hard to understand the controls or it takes a few tries to kill a boss. In this game, EVERYTHING is out to get you. Walking under a tree? Well an apple just landed on your head and caused you to explode into a million pieces. Jumping over that same tree? The apple has defied gravity and launched upwards towards your helpless character.
This screen will be your constant companion.
Death and destruction waits at every corner for The Kid and you'll likely spend a few hours on the very first couple screens.
Oh and there's also a half-finished sequel called I Wanna Save The Kids, he never finished it and probably never will but if you look around you can find a demo.
game is hard but not due to the execution aspect. i can only think of 1-2 places in the game where it's actually hard to live knowing what's coming.
for the new players, if you don't know what can kill you in the screen, prepare to die a lot while you're figuring that out. it's a little frustrating but rewarding
More fun to watch others play than to play yourself. The infamous michael on JTV plays this and similar games quite often, or at least used to...
Don't even start playing this unless you're ready to commit a lot of time to it.
Edit: It is not at all the hardest game ever. It is hard, but every level is extremely doable. Kaizo hacks put this to shame in terms of difficulty though.
I don't like trial and error games. And hacked Super Mario Bros 1 levels are way harder, but is also in the same spirit (hilarious to see people die because every level is a practical joke).
I prefer the old-school NES hard games where you see what's in front of you, and it's all about consistent execution. Not this walk and see what hidden stuff kills me.
I just like running the first couple levels on insane (or whatever it's called, the one where you can't save). I don't think I ever made it past the dragon guy at the end of the cart ride when playing on Normal though, pain in the ass.
Really surprised to see a thread about this when i just had another go at this last week! I finished this game a couple of years ago and when i came back to it I was surprised how much my subconcious remembered, there were a couple of times when i knew something was about to kill me but couldn't remember what, i also remembered a couple of the tricks (jump forward then a little bit back on the part where the spikes chase you to avoid all the apples etc.)
I kinda agree with jeejee, i found myself sailing through some screens easily but some bits (especially bosses, hate that dragon) are still quite hard to pull off because the timing on some parts is so exact.
Good fun to play with other people around, a lot of my friends enjoyed watching me die a lot without having to get their hands dirty. Worth a try if you're bored at the very least
It is hard but probably not the hardest since you can just "learn" everything in the game , like exactly when or how to perform a jump. It's not a reactionary game or a responsive game but more of a trial and error game ... in fact it is very much just a trial and error game . Personally I don't like those kinda games and just to be a bitch I think playing BW at a pro level is actually harder than beating this game at the hardest difficulty beacuse most people can beat this game with enough time and dedication , can't say that about beating the MSL
On March 02 2011 03:55 HollowLord wrote: Oh and there's also a half-finished sequel called I Wanna Save The Kids, he never finished it and probably never will but if you look around you can find a demo.
uh there's a finished "sequel" called i wanna be the tribute, very similar.
beaten them both 100%
On March 02 2011 07:19 xZiGGY wrote: iwbtg is hard but it certainly isn't the hardest game ever D:
Well that's actually impossible though, and can only be done with tool assistance.
Anyway, IWBTG is hard, but its a really bad kind of hard. The only enjoyment I ever got from the game is laughing at all the crazy ways the game tries (and succeeds) to kill you. It's not really a good game. And not really the hardest either, once you have learned all of its tricks.
Okayyyy maybe I shouldn't have called it the Hardest Game Ever because that's sort of objective and caused a discussion about it. But look, the game IS hard, whether you enjoy it or not. The boss fights are so deliciously impossible and the game is hilarious in all the ways that you die.
When a game is hard to the point of being impossible without outside assistance it isn't really that interesting, it's not hard to do something like that.
The charm comes in something being challenging but attainable. It's trivial to make something excessively easy or hard, getting it right is what's tough to do.
On March 02 2011 03:55 HollowLord wrote: Oh and there's also a half-finished sequel called I Wanna Save The Kids, he never finished it and probably never will but if you look around you can find a demo.
uh there's a finished "sequel" called i wanna be the tribute, very similar.
On March 02 2011 07:19 xZiGGY wrote: iwbtg is hard but it certainly isn't the hardest game ever D:
on hardest difficulty it certainly is,
IWBTG is not difficult in and of itself.
It simply requires precision after you learn where all the random shit that kills you is located.
Pure difficulty wise I rank Super Meat Boy higher because that doesn't try to trick you by upwards falling apple...it just requires pure platforming precision.
On March 02 2011 09:35 Clamev wrote: Hey if you look for something similar there is Kaizo Mario: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua6pbz3ROvQ Its also a smw hack but its actually possible.
When a game is hard to the point of being impossible without outside assistance it isn't really that interesting, it's not hard to do something like that.
The charm comes in something being challenging but attainable. It's trivial to make something excessively easy or hard, getting it right is what's tough to do.
I agree on the notion of a good challenging game. It's like the youtube videos you see of "impossible guitar hero tracks" that are just a long string of seemingly random notes at a high speed. Those are terrible "challenging games". Yeah, sure, they are nearly impossible to beat without tool assistance (which is a VERY tedious task to create all around btw, but that's another discussion), but that's not what I think of when I hear a "challenging game".
Some of my favorite challenging games: -------------------------- Ninja Gaiden [NES] The original still is my favorite, though 2 and 3 are decent. There aren't many ways to die in this game, so you have to proceed carefully until you memorize what enemies appear, where they do, and how to deal with them. There's a lot of precise jumps you have to make, and precise timings of jump-slashes to defeat enemies as you traverse to the next platform. This is one of those games where you would chuck your controller on the ground, yell a profanity, and then pick it up and play it until you beat it!
Mega Man [Various] It's really tough for me to call a favorite here amongst the series. This series requires patience, strategy, precision, and overall execution. For example, learning each bosses patterns requires a good amount of pattern recognition, then you need to adopt a strategy to beat him, and then you have to execute your gameplan with precision (ESPECIALLY when killing bosses with just a mega buster). The stages often have interesting mechanics as well that require patience to complete, especially your first time around to avoid constantly dying.
Contra [NES/SNES] Amazing games. I have such fond memories of playing this game solo and with friends. Nearly everything 1 shots you, and you only have 3 lives (barring that famous Konami code). If you've never played, or beaten this game, you really should put it on your to-do list. It's a blast!
Battletoads [NES] Remember the motorbike stage where you are zooming along and have to avoid the obstacles at high speed? Requires some quick reflexes! Then the later stages in the game have some challenging mechanics to master as well.
Double Dragon [NES] The original or the second one are the best by a long shot. Perhaps the most difficult side-scrolling fighter I ever played? Damn Abobos and ninja bosses
I could go on and on... NES had some of the most challenging yet rewarding games to play.
On March 02 2011 04:24 Spekulatius wrote: Everyone who likes this, should try Syobon Action. It once broke a LAN party cause noone wanted to play CS after I brought it up
Pure difficulty wise I rank Super Meat Boy higher because that doesn't try to trick you by upwards falling apple...it just requires pure platforming precision.[/QUOTE]
This game is definitely a contender for the hardest game ever.
nah, beating the game is not that hard. going for highscores though is another matter entirely. i'm still in awe when i watch the vid of fully chaining 12 bonus rows at the end of 2-2 while maxing out the generator chains. i haven't really kept up to date with ikaruga in a while, but i doubt anyone managed to beat that haha. would be amazing if someone did though
that said, it's definitely a lot more fun and the better kind of hard than iwbtg for sure. if you haven't played ikaruga it's highly recommended
On March 02 2011 09:35 Clamev wrote: Hey if you look for something similar there is Kaizo Mario: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua6pbz3ROvQ Its also a smw hack but its actually possible.
That ending is garbage! How do you win? I have to say I LOL'd pretty hard at the commentary. Especially the QQ at the end.
I got through several bosses until I reached Bowser's Clown Car. Everything went fine until the second phase of the battle in which you have to rapid-fire the bullet bill... The "One-Bullet-At-A-Time" glitch was what killed me and my motivation to beat IWBTG.
My friend beat the entire thing though, earning my utmost respect for such perseverance.
Have you seen the successful, straight-through, impossible (or whatever the hardest level was--iirc there are no checkpoint in impossible) completion of this? I can share the first video if you guys want. The guy who beat it was freaking amazing. Call it a waste of time, but it was freaking amazing. The comedic scenes were also enjoyable especially because he went straight through the game with flawless planning and reaction... X___X
Adventure Island is the hardest actual published video game ever from an execution standpoint...IWBTG is just an exercise in memory and trial and error.
This game is amazing. I played through it a while back and posted it on youtube. Beating the game took me a while because I got stuck on the final boss for a couple months. If you wanna see it for yourself here's a link to the playlist.
There's a second game to it that never got completed called "I wanna save the kids" which is basically the mechanics of IWBTG plus Lemmings. I have yet to record that game. Shame there's only a couple screens to it.
When a game is hard to the point of being impossible without outside assistance it isn't really that interesting, it's not hard to do something like that.
The charm comes in something being challenging but attainable. It's trivial to make something excessively easy or hard, getting it right is what's tough to do.
So it doesnt prove your point. If its not the hardest game, its not the hardest game. You arent talking about hardness then, but some other artistic quality which you have left undefined for some reason
On March 02 2011 09:35 Clamev wrote: Hey if you look for something similar there is Kaizo Mario: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua6pbz3ROvQ Its also a smw hack but its actually possible.
That ending is garbage! How do you win? I have to say I LOL'd pretty hard at the commentary. Especially the QQ at the end.
if you look right before the goal, there's a block to turn those coins into blocks. gotta stop before you go through the goal and hit it
On March 02 2011 16:14 HollowLord wrote: Anyone claiming this is just trial and error and memory tricks needs to actually try it. Even when you know what's coming, avoiding it is damned hard.
yeah but still its a MAJOR part of the game which totally kills it for me.
ive always been a platformer lover. from the COUNTLESS hours i played mario allstars(esp lost levels) and others like the DK games with friends over the last 15 years ( we still play it sometimes when drinkin/chillin) over N game which i beat 100% to meatboy which im soon 100%.
but after a very short time i deleted IWBTG cause it just seemed stupid and unfair to me. i dont want to be guaranteed to die 50 times evrytime just to memorize evrything till finally the actual gameplay starts.
On March 02 2011 08:32 Half wrote: It isn't hard, its unpredictable. Apples blow up and kill you etc etc. No single room had me stuck for more then a few trys :/.
EPT![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/F0shL.png)
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/8Jhpt.png)
Jaws of deathhhhhh T_T
