Super Meat Boy is the reason why, for better or worse, the "masocore" genre of gruelingly difficult games is so popular nowadays. It turned out to be a massive success story for Team Meat, and was worthy enough to be chronicled in Indie Game: The Movie. The setup here is that Meat Boy's partner, Bandage Girl, is kidnapped by the vile Dr. Fetus. This leads to more than 100 levels of pure platforming goodness, where all you need to do to survive is run, jump, and wall jump. It starts out fair at first. Before long, though, the tricks and enemies grow especially vile, like living missiles which split into six, or murderous Meat Boy clones. There's a gargantuan amount of content up front, as each normal level also has a tougher dark side variant unlocked if you beat the normal one under the par time. There are also warp zones leading off into hidden levels, where you can unlock characters from other indie games, each of which play akin to the games they're from while still adhering to this game's physics.
The controls, meanwhile, take a little while to get used to. This is due to the speed Meat Boy moves at, and the distance he can jump. You need to be able to move precisely in order to slide between all of the death-dealing obstacles. Each stage is subtly designed to accommodate your movements while simultaneously challenging you. While later levels are brutal, very little of it ever feels truly unfair. Death occurs in just a blink and you're immediately back in action, and after beating a level, you get to see how many tries it took, with all your past attempts playing out simultaneously. It’s a cool feature that never gets old. For visuals, the characters may look cute, but the environments are quite scary in later stages, with buzz saws and fire everywhere. The music is also absolutely topgrade, thanks to Danny Baranowsky (though the Sony PS4/Vita ports have a totally different, and not quite as good soundtrack.)
The design is occasionally juvenile, such as the point where you need to race a rival made out of feces, but if you can get over its origins as a Newgrounds Flash game, you'll find the mechanics and bonuses overshadow the silliness. The style is nowhere near as gruesome as Ed McMillen's later hit, The Binding of Isaac, though it did run into controversy with PETA objecting to a character being made entirely of bloody meat. They ran a parody known as Super Tofu Boy, who later made it into Super Meat Boy as a hidden character, though only in the PC version. This is the preferable release, due to a level editor and the ability to play user-created levels.
1001 Spikes seems like your dime-a-dozen NES throwback at first glance, but playing it reveals an addicting test of thought and reflexes that is better for unashamedly reveling in its retro roots. Adventurer Aban Hawkins, who bears an unsubtle resemblance to a certain action film protagonist, braves the many perils of the Ukampa ruins and "only" gets 1001 lives to survive it. Crumbling platforms and arrow-spitting statues abound, and Aban will die many times before beating any given level. Each death leaves the player feeling like it's beatable, though. With more levels than you would expect, several game modes, and oodles of playable characters from other titles, 1001 Spikes has a lot more to offer players than just the promise of repeated death.
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