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I Wanna Be The Guy
Just one of the delightful areas in I Wanna Be The Guy

"Q: APPLES DON'T FALL UP!"
"A: They're really more like giant cherries..."
- the IWBTG FAQ.

You are The Kid.

You want to be The Guy.

To do that, you have to kill The Guy.

And standing between you and The Guy are hordes of annoying, hard-to-kill monsters, downright sadistic traps, nigh-impossible obstacle courses, and everything else that represents the worst parts of 8- and 16-bit platform gaming.

All you have are a red cape, a small gun, and a Double Jump. You also have infinite lives, and you will need every single one of them.

Get the game here, and have fun dying!

See the discussion page for a list of tropers who have become The Guy.
This game contains examples of:
  • Angrish: A side effect of players suffering repeated deaths.
  • Backtracking: Can be kept to a minimum if you choose the right paths, but there's a few parts you have to go through twice.
  • Badass Boast: "I have bested fruit, spike and moon!"
    • And, for the players: "I beat it."
  • 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, then gets smacked aside in about two seconds by the dragon from Megaman 2.
  • Beyond The Impossible: Really, it should be self-evident why this trope belongs here.
  • Big In Japan
  • Big No: You will say this many times throughout the game, and hear it many times throughout the Lets Play vids.
    • Kayin, the creator of the game himself actually does this a few times in his own LP.
      • After saying in the first of his LP videos that he isn't going to get mad/frustrated because he's [so good at it / immune to its frustrations by now].
  • Bilingual Bonus: If you have a non-English Windows installed, you may not fall for the fake Windows error message trick the game plays with you.
    • People who are playing the game on Vista may also not fall for the error pop up killer, due to the message being in the style of Windows XP.
      • Although if you're playing it on Vista, you may well get genuine errors. Frequently.
      • This troper just did, and thought it was part of the game. It wasn't.
  • Boss Dissonance: Oddly enough, the bosses are actually easier (relatively) than the stages.
  • Brick Joke: In one screen you can clearly see the moon. Several later, it falls and tries to flatten you.
  • Brown Note: Many Lets Play gamers are said to have left after playing this game.
  • Card Carrying Villain: See below. That save point has EVIL written on it instead of SAVE or WUSS.
  • Chest Monster: At one point a save point attacks you. oddly enough, it's the only save point that appears on Impossible, which should clearly tell you it's a fake. However, killing it gives you a 1-frame window to save.
  • Classic Video Game Screw Yous: Practically a thesaurus  * of them.
  • Clipped Wing Angel
  • 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: J Man, brain melted by constant death and explosion, can manage but 'hurdadurdledur'.)
      • More than one LPer has been reduced to sobbing and/or screaming incoherently.
  • Collision Damage
  • Colon Cancer: The full title is I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game. There's no movie.
    • Hell, before you know it, there will be a live action movie called I Wanna Be the Guy: The Movie: The Game: The Movie. Not to mention a tie-in game for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii called I Wanna Be the Guy: The Movie: The Game: The Movie: The Game.
  • Colony Drop: The moon falls out of the sky multiple times during the game.
  • Cranium Ride... which then kills you.
  • Crowning Moment Of Funny: Despite being really, really hard, the game has quite a bit of LOL-worthy moments, such as jumping into a sword (you retard) and getting killed by a wine glass.
    • Let's not forget the fun to be had in introducing your friends to the game...
      • Watching other people play the game is funny as a rule. As with most Platform Hell games really.
  • Crowning Music Of Awesome: Given that the entire soundtrack is basically a collage of some of the best video game soundtracks out there, this isn't really surprising. Still, it helps with the torture. A little bit.
  • Death Course: The whole game, basically.
  • Determinator: What you got to be to beat this game.
  • DVD Commentary: Kayin's own Let's Play functions sort of as this)
  • Ear Worm: GAME OVER - PRESS 'R' TO TRY AGAIN
    • That, and the first few seconds of every song.
  • Easter Egg: 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.
  • 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 Legend of Zelda.
  • Establishing Character Moment: the third story down on the first screen. After you've learned to avoid the huge spiked boards that shoot out of nowhere, they suddenly reverse their behavior.
    • The other obvious route on the first screen (upwards) leads to the iconic moment of the game, mentioned in the page quote.
  • Everything's Better With Eggplants: Not in this game. They'll kill you just like everything else does.
  • 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.
    • Well, in the Kirby level, the floor does actively try to kill you. Freaking mobile spike pit!
    • 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 fangame named... well, Fangame (seriously) did exactly that.
    • At the very end of the ending, you wind up under a tree with Delicious Fruit. Take a wild frikkin' guess what happens if you don't move out the way. Yes, you can die in the ending.
  • Excuse Plot
  • Fake Difficulty: This is sort of the point of the game.
  • Fake Platform
  • Fan Sequel: Several are available on the official forums, the most famous being I Wanna Be The Fangame- made by one of the few people who have beaten IWBTG on Impossible. Unfortunately, thanks to the release of a Game Maker template, the forums are also swamped by everyone who's ever wanted to try their hand at game design. Sturgeon's Law ensues.
    • That isn't to say they're all trash. Some of them are actually pretty good, notably I Wanna Be The Ultimatum, I Wanna Be The Tribute, I Wanna Be The GB, etc... Still, Your Mileage May Vary .
  • Floating Platforms
  • Frickin Laser Beams: There's a level which certainly deserves the Fan Nickname "The Room of Huge Fucking Laser Beams That Come Out Of Absolutely Fucking Nowhere".
    • This is based on an ACTUAL STAGE of Megaman II. Quick Man is, indeed, kind of a dick. At least Megaman had the time-stopper, though. The Kid has no such mojo.
  • Gaiden Game: I Wanna Save The Kids, which combines the sadistic death-traps we all know and love with a Lemmings-style Escort Mission. It's pretty fecking hard.
  • Game Over: Press 'R' to try again.
  • Goddamned Bats: Most of the enemies.
  • Good Bad Bugs: Some bugs that benefit the player were actually kept in the game.
    • What may very well be the most game-breaking "bug" is the fake save point on Impossible. Killing it makes a perfectly usable save point appear for exactly one frame on the screen. Killing it while having a bullet EXACTLY where the save point would appear allows you to save the game. This troper highly suspects it will be fixed.
  • Harder Than Hard: The difficulties start at "Medium" and go up.
    • 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. For comparison, this troper had something like 15 hours of playtime and 4,000 deaths when he won. In all literal seriousness, Impossible mode may theoretically be possible, but it would require skills far beyond human capability and a fair degree of benevolence from the more random luck-requiring bosses. It's certainly something that no one has ever actually done.
      • One person has done it. The creator's official response was "holy crap your not serious are you".
      • By now, quite a few must have completed it. This Troper knows of one who, while not technically cheating, beat impossible by having two game windows open at once◊, practicing a segment in one window (Normal mode, most likely) with saves, then doing it in Impossible once he knew what was going to happen.
      • Impossible mode had one small solace - While you can't technically save, in older versions, dead bosses will remain dead if you restart. Newer versions removed this ability by booting you back to the load game screen. As of this edit, only TWO people have cleared Impossible with that restriction in place to the best of this troper's knowledge, one of whom managed to save via a trick.
  • Have A Nice Death
  • Heroic BSOD: Many LP'ers have experienced this while playing this game.
  • 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.
  • Jump Physics: Including both the Double Jump and the Wall Jump.
  • Kaizo Trap: In the cruelest way possible.
  • Kid Hero
  • Leap Of Faith
  • Ludicrous Gibs: Every time you die, and it's going to happen a lot.
    • J-Man put it best: "If you so much as brush a spike, it's instant splodey-splode."
  • Luke I Am Your Father The Guy is The Kid's father, complete with Star Wars dialogue.
    • "Check your Inventory Screen, Kid. You know it to be true."
  • 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 might find yourself getting killed more often by the environment than by an actual living enemy.
  • Memetic Mutation: Slowbeef: Please Stop Let's Playing I Wanna Be The Guy!
  • Metroidvania: To a small extent.
  • Minecart Madness
  • Narm: If you aren't cursing this game's very existence the first time you die, you'll be laughing so hard you'll start sobbing.
  • Nintendo Near Bloody Impossible: Understatement of the freakin' century.
  • 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, saddly, 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 Macromedia Fusion "error" in the Ryu Hayabusa room and the Evil Save Point.
  • Perpetual Expression: For someone who's rarely more than a few seconds away from a bloody death, The Kid always seems remarkably happy.
  • Platform Hell: Perhaps still an understatement.
  • Press X To Die: This is the safest room in the game. Only Q can kill you.
  • 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.
  • Rain Of Blood: The Kid's death animation.
    • And a little bouncing head, to add insult to injury.
  • Recurring Boss: The Moon.
  • Refuge In Audacity: Basically, this game is so unfair, so filled to the brim with Fake Difficulty, so freaking impossible. That it becomes fun.
  • Running Gag: The Moon.
    • The downward-, upward-, and sideways-falling apples giant cherries Delicious Fruit.
  • Scrappy Level: Geez, what to choose? The Ghosts 'n Goblins area, which a screen with spikes that move so quickly it's nearly impossible to jump through them? The Mega Man area, which features a screen that will make you long for Quick Man's level? A section where you need to get through several screens via nearly perfect wall-jumping all the while avoiding killer apples and staying ahead of a wall of spikes? The question isn't what levels are scrappy, it's which ones are the most scrappy.
  • Schmuck Bait: 'You jumped into a sword. You retard!'
    • If we want to go Meta, the game itself is a fine contender.
  • Selective Gravity: A rule of thumb is: if something can reduce you to a crimson stain on the ground inconvenience you by falling upwards, it will do so.
  • Sequential Boss: Pretty much every boss in the game.
  • Shout Out: And how!
  • 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.
    • Otherwise, you die.
  • Spikes Of Doom: So many. So very, very many.
    • Some of which LAUNCH SIDEWAYS. WHILE STILL POINTING DOWNWARDS.
    • And at least one of them spits FRUIT at you.
  • That One Boss: All of them. The Guy himself is the worst of the bunch, though.
    • Th- those EYEBROWS...
    • Just pick one, dammit. For this troper, it's Wart: failing to blow up the Banzai Bill means you waste 30+ seconds fighting Bowser before you can fight Wart again. At this point, this troper could beat Bowser blindfolded. He should Youtube it.
      • It's even worse if you kept dying at Dr. Wily... for the same reasons listed above. This troper absolutely hates that boss fight, while he found most of the others to be pretty fun.
      • Zeta, the first person to have cleared Impossible with the No Restart limitation in effect, died the most times to Kraidgief. He also lost count at about 300 deaths total, but only a handful of them were to The Guy.
      • And then there's Cloud8745, who had a quite legendary freakout trying to take down Mecha Birdo.
      • Dracula seems to be getting a hideous sadistic kick out of tormenting Malus Calibur in his LP. The Kid got gibbed JUST AS DRACULA BECAME WADDLE DOO.
  • The Tetris Effect: Don't get surprised if you start expecting traps and surprise deaths in every other game you play. Or hell, in your way back from school!
  • This Is Gonna Suck: What you think pretty much every time you reach a new screen.
  • Title: The Adaptation: The full title is I Wanna Be the Guy: The Movie: The Game.
  • Title Drop
    The Kid: Former Grandfather The Guy! You killed him!
    The Guy: Just as you will try to kill me, or be killed yourself!
    The Kid: No! I WANNA BE THE GUY!
  • To Be A Master
  • Trial And Error Gameplay: If you look hard you might be able to find a room that doesn't do this.
    • Ironic enough, the few screens that DON'T include this are extremely boring and you wish they had it.
      • 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.
  • Unexpected Genre Change: The Breakout and Vic Viper sequences.
  • Unexpected Shmup Level
  • 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.
  • 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, it's hard (almost to the point where it has to be deliberate) but possible to save in a way that you respawn directly above a spike pit, without the jumping power to get out.
      • Significantly easier to do on Medium, where the "Wuss" save points were added on almost as an afterthought, and the game clearly was not designed around having them. Almost impossible to do on Hard and up. Which is actually somewhat ironic — Hard and up have significantly longer stretches between saves, therefore you'll die a lot more, and it really will be much, much harder, but you won't bork up your save.
      • I Wanna Be The Fix
  • Violation Of Common Sense, subverted at one point where jumping into a sword to pick it up kills you and the game notes you must be stupid to jump into a sword (several times bigger than you are). Of course, it can be argued that playing this game in and of itself is a violation of common sense.
    • Then there's the bit in the Ghosts and Goblins area where you have to jump into a cluster of three apples to make them fall sideways.
  • 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.
      • This troper thought themselves to be hallucinating the first time it happened, as it was very late and they were very tired and suddenly: "BEHOLD TRUE POWER" and lo, the Moon has taken out The Kid AGAIN.
      • How did you take the apple danmaku?
  • 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.
  • You Fail Physics Forever: 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.
  • You Kill It You Bought It: In order to be The Guy, you must kill The Guy.

Yes, this game is extremely hard; what gave you that ide— [SPLAT]-GAME OVER. PRESS 'R' TO TRY AGAIN.
Iji
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