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It may not seem like it now, but Super Meat Boy was one of the Xbox 360's most surprising success stories - indeed, one of the most surprising success stories of the last generation. An enhanced, expanded version of developer Team Meat's free flash game, Meat Boy, the odds were firmly stacked against it.While there's certainly no shortage of independent retro 2D platformers these days, this was not the case in October 2010, when Super Meat Boy launched. It's not that long ago, but this was still before the market got flooded with the likes of Dustforce, Axiom Verge, Ori and the Blind Forest and Guacamelee. Even Vlambeer, the master of bite-sized 2D arcade titles like Luftrausers and Ridiculous Fishing, wouldn't release its popular commercial debut, Super Crate Box, until two days after Super Meat Boy arrived on XBLA.
There were some exceptions, of course. 'Spolsion Man, Bionic Commando: Rearmed and Shadow Complex made waves on Microsoft's digital marketplace, but those still touted 3D graphics. These were expensive, cutting-edge consoles, after all. Would people really want to dedicate their Xbox 360 and HDTV to playing something that looked like little more than a Flash game?
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