[Mac Sirloin]

Well, I've been playing more things than just anime sims about murdering teenagers. I've been playing Super Meat Boy!

I love Meat Boy because I look like him. I looked like him before he was even released, and I still look like him. I could shave my head, paint it red, cover my nose and dangle some bevelled rectangles from my ears and chin and look like headmasters Meat Boy.

I also love Super Meat Boy's music, very much so. It's just great, diverse music. It's good for driving, it's good for working on projects and most importantly it's good for Super Meat Boy.

They released SMB on the Playstation store this month, free for PSPlus subscribers along with the surprisingly enchanting Broken Age and some shitty, otherwise overpriced indie games. You could imagine my delight in finding out I could play one of my favorite games again, on a portable and for free, no less. It's a small download, so I spent a few minutes debating about whether my fingers were worth smelling and then booted it up.
'Wow, it looks great! Just as good as it did on my Xbox half a decade ago! But wait! Something's wrong...something's...different...'

They changed the music. They couldn't get the rights to the original soundtrack, so they got some people to rerecord it. Most of these redubs are underwhelming, sounding more like noise than music. Luckily Scattle (the guy who did the whoop-de-doop song from Hotline Miami, you know the one) covered The Hospital and another world, so not every meaty realm has been corrupted.

Some of this music though, sheesh. I remember Forest Funk. I remember it very clearly, I can hear it at will. I listened to a lot of the Meat Boy OST, and Forest Funk was this uniformly appropriate song. Now it sounds like something from Banjo Kazooie. It sounds like Yosemite Sam sca-doodlin' on a banjo with his great red moustache on bongos. I hate this new, different music and I wish there was some way I could pay just to have it in the game anyway. Release it as DLC with some fresh new licensing, for example.



Broken Age is okay. Oftentimes it's like watching a really original, cleverly written cartoon which is extremely cozy. There are missing pieces, though. Little bits and bobs feel incomplete, but the overall product is very nice.


Most importantly, and pay attention because this applies to all of you and not just me, Megaman Legends is finally on the PS store. Megaman Legends is a great game, and there are few like it. It introduced me to 3D games. Back when people were crapping their pants about Master Chief and Mario now having real-tme moisture graphics, I was playing Megaman Legends. It's like an RPG mixed with a dungeon crawler with some Zelda/Conker/SM64/DK64 etc... thrown in. I love me some Megaman.

It's aged alright, a lot easier than I remember. The Clozer woods boss (a trio of robot dogs) were particularly underwhelming, but everything about it retained that charm. I maintain that there is not and will never be anything quite as lovingly crafted as Megaman Legends in the realm of gaming. It's absolutely sublime, anime bullshit and all.