Many hardcore gamers from the mid to late 2000's likely heard of I Wanna Be the Guy. First released in 2007 by Michael "Kayin" O'Reilly as a piece of indie freeware (at a time where indie games were beginning to blossom), the game was a mish-mash of game homages from the retro era with 'borrowed' assets from other games mixed with a punishing difficulty that to this day is notorious.
Now, nearly 13 years later, I Wanna Be the Guy remastered is its own release.
The news broke on Twitter earlier today by Twitter user Natsu, one of the remasters developers. Natsu, along with fellow Twitter users Renex_64, Skyfloogle, and RenkoSTG, collaborated to release this remastered version of the freeware with the blessing of Kayin himself.
The remastered version is directly downloadable through Natsu's tweet, with a link to the zip folder found here.
Those unfamiliar with I Wanna Be the Guy, players will play as 'The Kid', a young game fan who must go through a difficult gauntlet of famous game scenes one after each other to reach the end, filled with specific references to several in-game franchises. The game environment was purposefully designed to kill the player at every step, making its difficulty to complete notorious among fans of the title.
The difficulty of I Wanna Be the Guy would go on to inspire commercial game titles, in particular, the Super Meat Boy series, which would even see a cameo by The Kid. The design philosophy found in I Wanna Be The Guy would also spawn hundreds of big and small copycats, and even it's own game maker title found on Steam.
I Wanna Be the Guy original version is still playable if you want to check it out instead of the remastered version on Itch.Io.
