Oct 24, 2011  Super Meat Boy getting more free stages via Teh Internets. Super Meat Boy is celebrating its birthday with contests, sales, and new stages being added to the game via Teh Internets.

1. The Internet's Super Meat Boy Forever

The free downloadable chapter for the Xbox Live Arcade version of rock hard 2D platformer Super Meat Boy is a 'f**k you' to the system of paying for DLC, the developer has said.

The Xbox-exclusive chapters, part of The Internets package, will be free to download because of what's called Title Managed Storage (TMS), a Microsoft feature that allows developers to add new chapters to games whenever they feel like it.

'In a world where it costs $2 to unlock content in a game that you've already purchased it is nice to have the power to totally say f**k you to that system and go our own way,' said Team Meat on its site

'As we upload content there are no micro transactions to play new chapters and we can basically do whatever we want with these chapters and it costs you, our adoring fans, nothing. We love you.'

Super Meat Boy launches on 20th October on XBLA. Team Meat – made up of developers Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes - is yet to announce a release date for the free DLC, but did share some details.

'Each internets chapter contains 20 levels and can be tailored to allow all characters to play them, or lock in a specific character allowing us to create levels that only certain characters can defeat using their special abilities.'

Team Meat also explained the DLC's Xbox 360 exlcusivity.

'Before we all start to bitch and moan about this, know that in order for the game to come out on XBLA, we had to offer something exclusive and this was the best and coolest option for us,' said the tiny studio.

'Also, quite frankly, Title Managed Storage on Xbox Live took all of the difficult parts of getting this system up and running out of my hands. It literally took me a week to implement the Internets Chapter fully, that's a huge deal for what it is.'

So there you go.

Super Meat Boy is a classic tale of boy meets girl. Except the boy has no skin, the girl is made out of bandages, and they're both being hassled by a fetus in a snappily dressed mechanical suit with an endless supply of sawblades and plague syringes. You've probably heard it all before.

• 3Unused Sounds
• 4Developer Mode

Console Characters

The graphics for the Xbox 360-only characters are still present in the PC version of the game, but their code is not - hex-editing your save game to forcibly unlock them just gives you a bunch of Meat Boy duplicates.

Unused Stages

Found within the game's 'gamedata.dat' are the game's files, and some unused stages made for testing. Here is the list of files that are unused in the game (not counting leftovers from teh internet's stages on the Xbox 360 version) found in the directory [/gamedata.dat/data/levels/]. Half of these seem to be tests.

• 1-62.smbl
• 1-62x.smbl
• 1-82.smbl
• 1-82x.smbl
• 1-112.smbl
• 1-112x.smbl
• 1-122.smbl
• 1-122x.smbl
• 1-132.smbl
• 1-132x.smbl
• 2-7back.smbl
• animaltest.smbl
• assy.smbl

Level consists of a little room with a key floating in the middle. If Meat Boy touches the key, he will be killed immediately. It is possible that 'fake keys' which killed the player on contact were planned to be in the game.

• boss6test.smbl
• boss32.smbl

Early design of the Brownie boss level. Salt flows from right to the left instead of a heap of salt slowly rising from the ground. However, the salt wave only goes to the left, once it hits the wall, it will disappear and respawn on the start point again. Interestingly, the boss's intro cutscenes still has the salt flowing the way it does in this early design. The level contains a few graphical errors, and is not completable due to several broken hit boxes.

• boss52.smbl
• boss62.smbl
• boss62fix.smbl
• boss62.smbl
• boss62xfix.smbl
• bosstest1.smbl
• bossx.smbl

Early design of Lil' Slugger's boss level. Unlike in the final version, the forest in this level looks like it is actually on fire. Fire was removed from the final version, possibly due to performance issues on older hardware. The layout of this level seems to indicate that it was for the original version of Lil' Slugger, which had spider legs.

• demon.smbl

Very early design of Little Horn's boss level. It consists only of a few lines and boss object '8'. Curiously, the boss object is rotated by 45 degrees, though the rotation of boss objects doesn't seem to have any effect on bosses.

• fantest.smbl
• halftest.smbl
• rtest1.smbl
• secret1.smbl
• test2.smbl
• testr.smbl
• testr2.smbl
• testyr.smbl

Unused Sounds

Some unused sounds found in the game's gameaudio.dat:

Bandaid Girl AngryScream

Book Page Turn 12

Woooo

Underwater Fart

Hell Scream

Glass Break 01

Flywrench Typing No Beep

Female Scream Lower

Castle Port Cullis

DEATH RATTLE

Developer Mode

There are some debug tools left in the game, including an unfinished, buggy version of the level editor. Add -devmode to the game's command line parameters. Press F1 to enter the editor, and press it again to exit the editor. F3, F4 etc. open some other editors.

Note: don't use new level, the palette thing is bugged. Instead, when starting the game, add the command-line: -palette palettefile.lp

Replace 'palettefile.lp' with one of the following:

• 4bit1.lp
• end.lp
• factory.lp
• forest.lp
• gb.lp
• glitch.lp
• hell.lp
• hospital.lp
• rapture.lp
• retro1.lp

It'll start you with that palette.

Editor Key Binds

The Internet's Super Meat Boy Forever

• Mouse 1 - Place whatever.
• Mouse 2 - Clear whatever.
• Mouse Wheel - Change whatever.
• WASD - Move view.
• Q + E - Zoom out/in.
• Z - Change to 'set piece mode'.
• X - Change to 'parallax mode'.
• C - Change to 'camera mode'.
• N - Change to 'animal mode'.
• L - Change to 'lighting mode'.
• Y - Change to 'animated piece mode'.
• T - Change to 'tile mode'.
• B - Set player spawn point to where mouse is.

Character Select

Add -char # to your command line (only works in devmode), replacing '#' with one of the following:

• 2 = 8-Bit Meat Boy
• 3 = 4-Color Meat Boy
• 4 = 4-Bit Meat Boy
• 5 = Dr. Fetus
• 6 = Brownie
• 7 = Bandage Girl
• 8 = Meat Ninja
• 11 = Naija
• 12 = Commander Video
• 13 = Runman
• 14 = Goo Ball
• 15 = Mr. Minecraft (Steve)
• 17 = Flywrench
• 19 = Jill
• 20 = Captain Viridian
• 22 = Machinarium
• 23 = The Kid
• 24 = Headcrab
• 25 = Ogmo
• 27 = Ending Meat Boy
• 28 = Alien Hominid
• 29 = Auto-Running Meat Boy
• 30 = Tim
• Anything else = Default Meat Boy

Note that Dr. Fetus is selectable in this mode, which is normally impossible. Pressing the Special button makes him shoot rockets. Also note that Alien Hominid, and Tim are here which normally can't be selected in the editor without this command.

Boss Select

Add -boss # to your command line to activate boss in devmode.

• 0 = Lil' Slugger
• 1 = C.H.A.D.
• 2 = Brownie
• 3 = Little Horn
• 4 = Larries Lament
• 5 = Dr. Fetus

Please note that some bosses crash the game if some boss objects (white squares with number) are not already present in the level while loading it. Some bosses also crash the game after finishing them in devmode.