TheRetroArcade
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Joined: Feb 2026
Joined: Feb 2026
The move to 3D feels pretty good in the hand, but the original's distinctive visual qualities are emphatically lost.
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This week: In addition to playing through Super Meat Boy 3D, Shaun is also playing the new game by the creators of Chasm, and something else that's still a bit secret.
Super Meat Boy can take all the credit for rekindling my love for the action platformer. I bought a secondhand Xbox 360 in 2010 just to play it. In that era of cinematic brown shooters it was a welcome reminder that Hollywood gravitas and exorbitant polygon counts are surplus to requirement when what this medium really excels at is making you pull off extraordinary, often ridiculous technical feats with your fingers.
Since then the classic 2D platformer has flourished to the extent that Super Meat Boy, despite still being really good, isn't something I think much about anymore. I played a bit of the autorunner Super Meat Boy Forever but bounced off it because I don't like autorunners, and while Super Meat Boy 3D is mostly pretty fun, I'm not enamoured with it either.
Not much has changed in the move to 3D. Meat Boy has a jump that can be tight or hugely extended depending on momentum and the duration of your button press. He can wall run and dash. He makes a disgusting squelching sound when he's killed, by dint of being raw meat. He leaves blood trails. There are deadly saws and spikes galore. The objective is to get to Bandage Girl at the end of each level, where she's invariably stolen anew by Dr. Fetus.
Super Meat Boy 3D has a load of niggling problems that are overshadowed by one huge existential problem: Super Meat Boy 3D looks bad. It doesn't look ugly in the charming, deliberate way Super Meat Boy did. That old 2D platformer had a rugged visual identity that mixed excessive gore with 1990s cartoon whimsy and a modern, jagged take on pixel art that is still immediately recognisable. It looked kinda like the evil game you might accidentally encounter when shoving an NES cart in the wrong way around. It probably would have caused a moral panic in the '80s.
On the other hand, Super Meat Boy 3D just looks like a run-of-the-mill 3D platformer, albeit with a bit more blood t...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?
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GTA 6 O'clock
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Every Thursday
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This week: In addition to playing through Super Meat Boy 3D, Shaun is also playing the new game by the creators of Chasm, and something else that's still a bit secret.
Super Meat Boy can take all the credit for rekindling my love for the action platformer. I bought a secondhand Xbox 360 in 2010 just to play it. In that era of cinematic brown shooters it was a welcome reminder that Hollywood gravitas and exorbitant polygon counts are surplus to requirement when what this medium really excels at is making you pull off extraordinary, often ridiculous technical feats with your fingers.
Since then the classic 2D platformer has flourished to the extent that Super Meat Boy, despite still being really good, isn't something I think much about anymore. I played a bit of the autorunner Super Meat Boy Forever but bounced off it because I don't like autorunners, and while Super Meat Boy 3D is mostly pretty fun, I'm not enamoured with it either.
Not much has changed in the move to 3D. Meat Boy has a jump that can be tight or hugely extended depending on momentum and the duration of your button press. He can wall run and dash. He makes a disgusting squelching sound when he's killed, by dint of being raw meat. He leaves blood trails. There are deadly saws and spikes galore. The objective is to get to Bandage Girl at the end of each level, where she's invariably stolen anew by Dr. Fetus.
Super Meat Boy 3D has a load of niggling problems that are overshadowed by one huge existential problem: Super Meat Boy 3D looks bad. It doesn't look ugly in the charming, deliberate way Super Meat Boy did. That old 2D platformer had a rugged visual identity that mixed excessive gore with 1990s cartoon whimsy and a modern, jagged take on pixel art that is still immediately recognisable. It looked kinda like the evil game you might accidentally encounter when shoving an NES cart in the wrong way around. It probably would have caused a moral panic in the '80s.
On the other hand, Super Meat Boy 3D just looks like a run-of-the-mill 3D platformer, albeit with a bit more blood t...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?