.As of December 30th, 2011, the game has been made open source, mainly to allow the community to try fixing its innumerable bugs.Contrast with You Have to Burn the Rope and compare Jumper and N.
This game contains examples of:
A.I. Roulette: Dracula takes this and turns it into something from the tenth circle of hell. His randomly picked attacks range from standard difficulty (i.e. hard) to beyond good and evil, and some combinations are pretty much unsurvivable. This makes him the potentially most difficult boss fight in the game (yes, he can be tougher than the final boss!).
Hell, some would say you deserve the title for not giving up. Nintendo Hard is a standard here.
Badass Boast: "I have bested fruit, spike and moon!"
It would sound incredibly silly used in any other context. In this context, though, its badass-level is somewhere between single-handedly crushing the universe into paste and ripping out someone's intestinal tract and using it as a belt.
"I defeated The Guy" works well in real life, when you're among people who are familiar with the game. The higher the difficulty, the more badass the boast.
Badass Grandpa: The Kid's grandfather used to be The Guy.
Bait-and-Switch Boss: Near the end, the Moon that has been plaguing you appears all huge, as if ready to engage in a final showdown, and then gets smacked aside in about two seconds by the dragon from Mega Man 2. Especially misleading in that the Moon was high in the sky for the entire minecart ride beforehand, and the minecart section had "The Moon" from DuckTales playing as the background music.
In fact, the Moon does the same thing much, much earlier: throughout the Ghosts N Goblins area, the Moon appears bigger and bigger with each screen. On the screen with a Full Moon, you head under it and the Moon falls down onto you. Instead of killing you, of course, it just breaks the floor and drops you into the Mecha Birdo boss fight.
Bilingual Bonus: The Japanese on the mock-Ikaruga warning before Mecha-birdo says "I hate Dorayaki". Incidentally, it's also misspelled with the character for "jealousy" where it should say "fried", perhaps to match the quality of the English text.
BFG: The Kid claims one as a result of triumphing over The Guy.
Boss Dissonance: Bosses are usually easier than the levels themselves.
Brick Joke: In one screen you can clearly see the moon. Several later, it falls and tries to flatten you.
Bullet Hell: The game flirts with this a few times. Dracula has an attack where he shoots a spiral pattern of flaming Delicious Fruit; it's no Touhou pattern, though, as Kayin admits. Later on, the Vic Viper sequence shows Dracula how it's really done.
Also, the Tourian section plays with this in the boss room. Of course, it's really more like Rinka Hell.
Why thesaurus? Because an encyclopedia is more in depth, and a dictionary is too short on each entry. And because it's funnier.
of them.
Clipped Wing Angel: Dracula's final form. So much so that it's the only enemy that can't cause you any harm in any way. You can actually walk through it without anything happening.
Cluster F-Bomb: ...on the lips of many of those who have played.
Some LPers have gone beyond F-bombing into incomprehensible fury and gibberish (case in point: JMan, brain melted by constant death and explosion, can manage but 'hurdadurdledur'.)
More than one LPer has been reduced to sobbing and/or screaming incoherently. Not to mention that one guy had also admitted to punching a hole in his wall out of frustration caused by this game.
The moon falls out of the sky multiple times during the game. Dracula shoots it at you, complete with voice-acted "Here is TRUE POWER!" and a trail of fire.
Surprisingly, the drops themselves aren't likely to kill you. Instead, the primary cause of death via moon is it chasing you. In fact, the one time it only falls directly down, it actually doesn't kill you. This happens because it crushes the ground beneath you, sending you to the Mecha-Birdo battle
Cranium Ride: On 8-bit Link in one Legend of Zelda-themed room. Link attempts to swipe at you in the process.
Deadly Dodging: The Guy's third attack pattern renders him Immune To Your Puny Pea-shooter Bullets. You gotta bounce his shots back at him. Which is not easy, because instead of obeying rules of motion or bouncing at proper angles, the shots always aim at you when they hit a wall.
Death By Genre Savviness: Just when you think you've got the game's traps and surprises all figured out, it'll do something completely unexpected and kill you when you're doing exactly the same thing that saved your life in the last screen.
It's so common that it feels a lot worse, especially since every part of every room is a death trap. Even the things that aren't dangerous at all catch you because you're expecting something awful to happen.
There are six hidden rooms with secret collectible items. One requires going through two screens full of small and completely invisible platforms in the wrong direction. And mind you, that one is the easiest one to get. Don't even ask about some of the others...
The secret items do, in fact, do something. They unlock Boss Rush mode.
Wait long enough at the title screen. See what happens.
Easy Mode Mockery: Few people wanted to play the game on Medium because the extra save points were marked "Wuss" and The Kid gains a cute red bow in his hair... The bow remains on the screen when you explode, too.
Engrish: The scroll text near the end of the attract sequence, parodying the scroll text from the original Legend of Zelda.
The third story down on the first screen. After you've learned how to avoid the huge spiked boards that shoot out of nowhere, the third shoots out from the opposite direction.
The other obvious route on the first screen (upwards) leads to the iconic "falling apples" moment of the game, mentioned in the page quote.
Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: invokedKayin's friends briefly joke about the philosophical meaning of the game in one of his LP vids. One of them suggests that the game is about learning not to fear death, among other things.
Everything Trying to Kill You: There are maybe a few things that do not kill you. They include the floor, some water, some walls, the background, and the save points. Except one.
In the Kirby level, the floor does actively try to kill you. Freaking mobile spike pit!
Even the background scores a few kills in a way. Once when a star falls out of the sky and kills you, and again when the gravestones crush you.
Kayin's Let's Play Commentary has him and his friends wonder if it would be possible to make the cursor kill you. The unrelated but equally hard game named... well, Fangame does exactly that.
At the very end of the ending, you wind up under a tree with Delicious Fruit. Take a wild guess what happens if you don't move out the way. Yes, you can die in the ending.
Surprisingly, there is one case when something that falls directly down towards you but does not kill you. It's the moon, which breaks the ground below you sending you to the Mecha Birdo Battle
Fake Difficulty: This is sort of the point of the game. You'll spend a lot of time with the trial and error twins. That being said, the examples of this trope are all spaced out by examples of very, very real difficulty, so that even returning players will have huge troubles.
Fangame: Numerous fangames have been made, the most famous being I Wanna Be The Fangame- made by one of the few people who have beaten IWBTG on impossible.
Fission Mailed: The fake Windows XP error message, which drops down and squashes The Kid if you don't move him out of the way in time immediately after regaining control. Especially ironic since the game crashes so much that there's a decent chance of getting a real error message instead.
The Kid falling onto a giant bed of spikes at the end. In this one instance, he walks out unharmed.
There's a level which certainly deserves the Fan Nickname "The Room of Huge Laser Beams That Come Out Of Absolutely Nowhere", based on Quick Man's infamously hard stage from Mega Man 2. And frankly, it might actually be easier than the original.
Mecha Birdo's third weakpoint shoot at it's mouth as it's firing an egg is something you're probably not going to know about even after you do find it.
One of the lefthand walls in the starting screen is fake and you can pass throught it, but the only in-game clue is that your bullets pass through it instead of disappearing. And considering this is your first experience with the game's many death traps, you're probably not going to notice the clue — you're more likely to stumble on it by complete accident, or know about it already from watching playthroughs.
Note that the actual game itself is always the same no matter what level you're on. The only difference is the frequency of save points (and the Easy Mode Mockery on Medium). There are zero real save points on Impossible. You're expected to win the entire game with one life. In all literal seriousness, Impossible mode is possible, but requires quite a bit of memorization and a fair degree of benevolence from the more random luck-requiring bosses. When somebody eventually beat it, the creator's official response was "holy crap you're not serious are you".
Homage: Pretty much everything in the game is a recreation of or reference to some old famous game, including Tetris, Kirby's Dream Land, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Mega Man, Metroid, Castlevania, The Legend of Zelda, and more. Especially the harder parts. Most of the bosses are actually taken from other games, though made much harder.
Improvised Platform: in the second screen, you need to shoot one of the spikes on the wall to knock it over and use it as a platform.
Inferred Holocaust: The Kid's grandfather was killed by The Kid's father to be The Guy. The Kid's father was killed by The Kid to be The Guy. Take a guess what might happen to The Kid when he has a son. Doubles as Big Screwed-Up Family.
Lost Forever: If you don't grab the hidden item in the Metroid level the first time around, you can't get it on that play file, because the Metroid level is inaccessible after the Tourian System explodes.
Make My Monster Grow: The Guy starts out as the smallest boss in the game (but still notably bigger than The Kid). He does this to himself partway through the battle.
Malevolent Architecture: You will most likely find yourself getting killed more often by the environment than by an actual living enemy.
Masochist's Meal: People eat Delicious Fruit. According to Kayin, they have to get them out of trees with sticks, in order to keep from getting gibbed, and then they have to boil them three times to remove all the poison. The bouncing fruity engine of death seen in the Breakout section is what happens when you only boil them twice. Delicious!
Musical Spoiler: Subverted! The Minecart Madness segment has "The Moon" from the DuckTales game playing as the background music. That, combined with the full moon high in the sky, makes you think that the boss guarding the Guy Fortress will be the Moon that has plagued you so much. When it does show up, however, it's swatted aside by therealboss, Devil Dragon.
Ninja Prop: Obvious parts of the background attack the Kid.
Nintendo Near Bloody Impossible: Ironically, in order to make the game beatable, you have infinite lives and there are even save points. This is an almost unprecedented level of accommodation in the sidescrolling genre, but it's justified since, well, it really would be impossible without them (which is indeed exactly what Impossible mode does).
One Bullet at a Time: In most parts, you can only have four bullets on the screen at a time, making it important to get as close to the bosses as possible.
One Hit Point Wonder: Contact with most moving things (as well as several things that don't move) that are not platforms is instant death. If it doesn't outright kill you, it will likely bump you towards something that will.
Orphaned Series: It seems that, sadly, I Wanna Save The Kids was canceled. Considering how hard this game is, that's probably a good thing.
Painting the Fourth Wall: Like everything else in the game, used to create traps, like the Multimedia Fusion "error" in the Ryu Hayabusa room and the Evil Save Point.
Paranoia Fuel: After a while of dying to cleverly-hidden traps, you will not trust anything in the background. Of course, that's kinda the point.
Perpetual Smiler: For someone who's rarely more than a few seconds away from a bloody death, The Kid always seems remarkably happy.
Platform Hell: This isn't so much a game as it is a torture device.
Press X to Not Die: No warnings, obviously, but there are a few apparent cutscenes that can kill you such as the start of the battle with Dracula when he throws the wineglass.
Rage Quit: Many LP'ers have experienced this while playing this game.
Rain of Blood: The Kid's death animation, with a little bouncing head, to add insult to injury.
Save Scumming: It's almost impossible to complete the game without ever saving. Especially not on your first try.
Selective Gravity: A rule of thumb is: if something can inconvenience you by falling upwards/sideways, it will do so.
Sequential Boss: The Koopa Clown Car. Unfortunately, the first two forms are so easy, it's basically just an unskippable 2 minute cutscene every time you want to fight the much harder final form.
Soft Water: At one point, you jump from a very high area, fall about 3 screens downwards, catch on fire like a meteor, and if you manage to land in the "conveniently" placed pool of water, you live.
Soft Glass: The glass The Guy dislodges doesn't kill you if it hits you. Fruit yes, pictures yes, the dull bits of spikes yes, but not sharp glass.
Solid glass DOES seem fatal though, as Dracula can still kill you with his wine glass. That, or The Kid is trying too hard to stay sober.
Stalactite Spite: Most commonly done with fruits or spikes (see above), but there are some genuine stalactites in there too. Subverted at one point with ceiling spikes that tremble when you pass underneath them, but never fall.
Stand-In Portrait: Inverted with the Vic Viper, which ends up being very useful to The Kid.
Stepford Smiler: Whether The Kid traverses through spike-covered corridors or tries to avoid gravity-defying fruit for the billionth time, he always does so with a smile.
Stylistic Suck: The magnified Nintendo sprites (Tyson, Mecha Birdo, Kraidgief, and The Guy) look appropriately ridiculous.
The Tetris Effect: Don't get surprised if you start expecting traps and surprise deaths in every other game you play. Or hell, on your way back from school! Or in your lunch box, next to your sandwich!
The Unfought: The Moon despite what you may think upon reaching the first boss of The Guy's castle.
Throw It In: Word Of God says the Kraidgief bug was kept in "since it works just like kraid from Super Metroid".
Trial-and-Error Gameplay: If you look hard you might be able to find a room that doesn't do this. It is worth noting that the room seen in the screenshot at the top of this article is one of only about four or so in the entire game that lack out-of-nowhere surprises and are Exactly What It Says on the Tin. It's anything but boring.
Unique Enemy: Quite a few of them show up in their own particular places, usually to punish your perfectly logical course of action with a Big Lipped Alligator Moment.
Unskippable Cutscenes: Thankfully averted. If you don't want to go nuts from having to watch Mike Tyson rise up every time you die, remember, the "S" key is your friend. Perhaps just as well, considering Dracula can kill you with his goblet during the cutscene before the fight with him.
However, the lengthy intros to the Kraidgief and Bowser fights can't be skipped. For the former, this is actually good, as you can shoot his head for a bit once he roars, which wouldn't happen if you skipped it. For the latter, this is due to it being a three-part boss.
Unsound Effect: In the Clown Copter battle, when you beat the first two pilots, the Copter spins off with the cartoon explosion reading "Bomb!" from Super Mario Bros. 2.
Unwinnable: This can occur at many MANY parts of the game where if you fall down and can't back up or something of the similar sort, you can't progress. Luckily, the game has a suicide button... which does you no good on Impossible, which screws you over for trying to restart by wiping all your progress on the run. Also, the game makes no attempt to prevent you from saving in bad places, meaning that it is easy to unintentionally overwrite your save with an Unwinnable situation. Thanks Kayin for I Wanna Be The Fix.
Wall Jump: Can only be done off of special walls. Two different kinds, actually, resulting in two different kinds of Wall Jump.
Wasted Song: There's a ton of great 8-bit music in this game. The problem is that, with death so frequent, you'll inevitably only hear the first few bars on each life.
Weird Moon: Which then falls on you. Repeatedly. And if it's not falling on you, Dracula is flinging it at you in lieu of those bigass black fireballs.
Would Hurt a Child: This has apparently become routine for The Guy. "One more to add to my score!"
Wrong Genre Savvy: Several of the traps rely on the player being this, most (in)famously the "YOU JUMPED INTO A SWORD. YOU RETARD!" screen.
Writers Cannot Do Math: If the distance signs are to be believed, the mine cart travels 10,000 kilometres in 78 seconds. That's 286,786 miles per hour, or 373 times the speed of sound.
Year X: 200X, parodying the Mega Man games. (the game was released in 2007)
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