I Wanna Be The Guy

I Wanna Be The Guy is an extra-hard PC platformer based on old Nintendo games.

In I Wanna Be The Guy, you take the role of "The Kid", a young man with a blue shirt, grey jeans and a perpetual smile. He barely takes up any space on the much larger game screen, and the bullets he fires from his gun are only one pixel in size. It's your job to guide him over deadly traps, past annoying enemies, and through some of the gaming's toughest bosses.

To do this, you only need two buttons: the shoot button, which fires bullets that rarely damage enemies and are mostly used to trigger save points and whittle away at bosses, and the jump button, which can be used to jump once, then twice again in midair. The player will quickly become aware of The Kid's finer details of movement – how fast he falls, how his movement works relative to moving platforms.

This is because doing so is absolutely necessary to survive in I Wanna Be The Guy. The game's difficulty is unlike almost any other game released even to date, and virtually unchallenged by other PC games (except by games based on I Wanna Be The Guy). At times, I Wanna Be The Guy is simply unfair, such as when several giant cherries are arrayed on the screen and will move at the player – in ways they can only determine by triggering the cherries' movement, probably dying, and restarting at the previous save point.

I Wanna Be The Guy is not recommended for most people, or even most gamers. However, it is quick to play, and it is easy to restart when you die. And, above all, actually getting past a screen or two of the game's downright vicious content can create thrills other games may not be able to match. Try the game, but don't be surprised if you can't beat it!

Pros

• It's satisfying to get past one of the game's many challenges
• Retro game references harkening back to the Nintendo era

Cons

• Almost unreasonably difficult at times
• Long enough that you might never beat it