I Wanna Be the Guy

I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game
Title screen of I wanna be the guy! Title screen of I wanna be the guy!
Developer(s)	Mike "Kayin" O'Reilly
Publisher(s)	Independent
Designer(s)	Mike "Kayin" O'Reilly
Engine	MMF2
Platform(s)	Windows
Release	October 2007
Genre(s)	Action-adventure game
Mode(s)	Single player, Boss Rush

I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game (abbreviated IWBTG) is a freeware videogame first released in October 2007 by Mike "Kayin" O'Reilly, but is still under development as of June 2008 (making it a beta release). The game is an adventure platform game and is designed in the style of 8-bit videogames. The game is best known for its incredibly difficult platforming elements and its unorthodox level design. The game is created with Multimedia Fusion 2.

Plot

Like many of the traditional games that IWBTG parodies, the game's plot is straightforward and does not heavily impact gameplay. The player takes on the role of "The Kid," who is on a mission to become "The Guy." The entirety of the plot is given in a rather cryptic message during the opening credits, a parody of bad Japanese translations and broken English in early NES games.

In the year 200x on his 15th birthday... a child left home on his dangerous and epic quest to become The Guy! Many years ago, "The Guy" left world and retreat to "Dungeon of Doom". Now "Young Boy" goes to defeat "The Guy" and become "The Guy" with his gun pass handed down by former "Grandfather the Guy". Go find the "8 units". Now become "The Guy".

Gameplay

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A spike-filled screen of I wanna be the guy

IWBTG is made up of several stages split up into many screens, which are usually pastiches of well known NES games like Tetris, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Legend of Zelda, Megaman and Metroid. At the end of each stage is an oversized boss who must be defeated in order to progress. These bosses are generally rather humorous hybrids of traditional boss characters such as Bowser's Clown Car, Dracula, and Mother Brain. The first Boss of IWBTG consists of defeating Mike Tyson. Taken from Mike Tyson's Punch Out, the first Boss Stage may be a parody of bosses in general. The player must defeat each of the six bosses to advance to the final level of the game, and completion of the game unlocks a Boss Rush mode. IWBTG parodies many 8-bit era video games along with less obvious ones, like the frequent use of references and sound effects taken from the Nintendo game Mario Paint.

The player controls "The Kid," whose sprite is tiny compared to most of the objects in the game. The controls are simple and are limited to left/right movement, jumping, jumping a second time in midair, and shooting. Non-boss enemies are very rare, and thus shooting is rarely used outside of Boss Stages. There are exceptions, like the zombies found in the Ghost 'n Goblins stage, and the various checkpoint boxes scattered throughout the game, which require a hit in order to save the player's current progress. The focus of the game's controls is the traditional idea of video games: precision in moving and jumping in order to progress.

IWBTG is most famous for its difficulty. Most of the landscape is engineered specifically to kill the player. Alongside a traditional range of dangers like spikes and pits, there are dozens of less obvious threats, most of which are all but impossible to avoid without previous knowledge (such as large cherries that fall upwards ). "The Kid" has no hit points and no lives, and always dies with a single hit, where he explodes into a mass of red pixels. It is common between fans of IWBTG to call this insane level of difficulty shown all throughout the game as 'Megaman Physics.' Although each death results in a "Game Over," gameplay can continue from the player's most recent save point. The frequency of save points is the only factor changed by adjusting the game's difficulty level; save points are added on "Medium", the easiest of the difficulty settings, and some are removed on the "Hard" and "Very Hard" difficulty settings.

The game calls out the player for being a "wuss" should he/she play on the "Medium" difficulty by annexing "The Kid"'s sprite with a pink bow on his head, and replacing the word "SAVE" on all of the exclusive save points to that difficulty with "WUSS". Also included is the "Impossible" difficulty, and is aptly named, as there are no save points. The player must finish the game from beginning to end in a single session without getting a "Game Over" once. Due to the game's unforgiving nature and the incredible difficulty of its platforming, it is not uncommon for a player to die an inordinate amount of times before completing the game.

Trivia

• The title, protagonist and antagonist is based off an episode of Homestar Runner, an internet based cartoon. The episode is named Japanese Cartoon and references "The Guy" and the "The Kid". "The Kid" confronts "Stinko Man" and says "Hey, Stinko Man, everyone says you are the guy!" "I wanna to be the guy too!"

• A recurring theme in many screens of the game include spikes and delicious fruit, better known as death cherries, which by the time the player passes the first few screens, s/he can expect to fall in any direction once "The Kid" comes into close proximity. Another theme of IWBTG is that somehow 'The Moon' always attempts to kill the player in the least expected moments many times.

• The death cherries featured in the game have become a running gag with the creator, his affiliates, and the dedicated players that serve as one large community. At first impression, they are often mistaken for apples due to their unnatural size, to which O'Reilly responds with in his site's FAQ and forum signature, "They're more like giant cherries..." However, on his Youtube video of playing the game, and in the intro of said game, it's written that this fruit is called as "Delicious Fruits", and the creator claims that they must be knocked down with a ten foot pole and boiled three times to remove poison before they are eaten.

• Several other video game characters make appearances, usually attempting to destroy "The Kid". These include an oversized Mike Tyson, Bowser's traditional Clown Car & a Mecha Birdo, both from the Mario series and Zangief from Street Fighter, whom is shown as being oversized and completely covered with a green color pallet. He is given sounds obtained from the boss Kraid from Super Metroid. This game calls the combination "Kraidgeif".
• Throughout the "Dungeon of Doom", the final level of the game before the player faces "The Guy", "The Kid" goes through a part of the Castle which the game calls the "Hall of Former The Guys". Throughout this level, along with the traditional unexpected obstacles, the player can view many portraits of iconic VG personas, vehicles, and manga (Japanese comics) respectively; such as Big Boss, from the Metal Gear series, Kenshiro, famous manga character from world-wide known “Fist of the North Star”, an early 8-bit version of Bowser, a recurring enemy in the Mario series and Ryu Hayabusa, one of the main characters of Tecmo's Ninja Gaiden.

See also

• List of freeware games

External links

• Developers' Website
• Official Forum