'I Wanna Be The Boshy' Is Actually a Thing

There is a lot of reverence for 2D platformers in the gaming community. Back in the NES and SNES days there were a lot more of them than there are now. Some of them were insanely hard. Mega Man games always come to my mind when trying to think of frustratingly hard platformers. Jumps require precise timing and execution. If you miss, you die. There is a subsection of people out there who miss these types of games.

I Wanna Be The Guy was created specifically for the people who wanted to return to the olden days of platforming. The whole game is basically one perfectly timed jump after another with some enemies that need to be shot thrown in. One misstep will leave you dead and on top of that it plays with your expectations. Platforms and enemies will react in unexpected ways so you need to be on your guard at all times. 

Game Over is seen a lot in I Wanna Be The Guy

What's cool about I Wanna Be The Guy is that it has a ton of retro game music, sprites, and references in it. It's obvious that it's an homage to the 2D platformers of old. Even more than that the way the game is played is highly reminiscent of games like Mega Man, Metroid, and Castlevania without any of the retro callbacks.

I Wanna Be The Guy is crazy on its own. So what happens when a game pays homage to I Wanna Be The Guy? I Wanna Be The Boshy is the answer and it might be even crazier.

Look at this crazy title screen!

Bosh is defined as nonsense or absurdity. From that I can only come to the conclusion that Boshy is derived from Bosh. I Wanna Be The Boshy is sure filled with what I'd call nonsense, so the name is entirely appropriate. I Wanna Be The Guy was crazy, but I Wanna Be The Boshy takes everything to a whole new level.

I Wanna Be The Boshy is more than over the top, it's maximum insanity. Like the game it pays homage to, it's filled with absurdly unfair platforming, but it's even more unfair than it should be. This game was solely created to be infuriating and it does just that. At one point I was presented with a mostly empty screen. All that I could see was a platform and a save point. Foolishly walking ahead I was greeted by a Godzilla roar as a huge spider instantly killed me.

Persevering on I figured out how to avoid the spider and his wild battle cry only to be followed relentlessly by a crazy bird. The bird followed me for multiple screens of perilous spike jumping. I got nervous and died. This was the point where I died hundreds of time. In the end I was able to dodge the spider, bird, and all the spikes to make it to the next save point. There I was faced with the games's first terrifying boss...Hello Kitty. 

Hello Kitty has a huge bow, because I'm playing on easy.

After losing a few times I decided to give up. I no longer have a huge desire to play this game, but it's cool that it exists. At first glance it seems like it's just trying to be the game it's paying homage to, but it's much more than that. While it plays almost the same as I Wanna Be The Guy it adds a few things that make it kind of funny and frustrating in a different way. For starters there is a feature called save jumping. You accomplish this by shooting a save point and then resetting your potion. This allows for you to close huge gaps, because it allows for extra jumps.

The deaths in this game are just as frustrating, if not more so than they are in I Wanna Be The Guy. The difference is that everything in this game seems impossible to begin with, so I'm expecting it. The hitboxes are extremely weird and crazy glitches and instant death happen all the time. To ease the pain of dying funny death quotes will appear on the screen before the awesome "you're dead' song plays. 

I Wanna Be The Boshy has more than a bunch of cheap deaths though. There are a ton of unlockables and secrets in the game as well. By doing things you unlock trophies to commemorate the event. Treasure chests are strewn across the world as well to try and collect. Most of the time they contain CDs, which allow you to listen to popular internet songs and other random things.

I Wanna Be The Boshy also features a ton of playable characters. With each update there are more and more available to play. A character editor is available if you want to give making your own character a shot. Some of the characters on the select screen are locked, like Sonic, Ryu, and Mario. The locked characters can all be unlocked by defeating them as bosses in the game. You can even be The Kid from I Wanna Be The Guy if you so desire.

You can even be Nyan Cat in this game!

To add to the depth and diversity of the game there is also an online co-op mode. I don't really see how having two people on the screen would make the game any easier, but it's a cool idea regardless. 

It's clear that the game's developer Solgryn has put a lot of time and effort into making it all it can be. He released version 1.00 in 2010 and is still updating it now in 2012. You can check out all the craziness for yourself by downloading the game for free from his website here. Or if you're interested in I Wanna Be The Guy you can find that for free from it's developer here.

Maybe you're like me and you find this kind of stuff interesting, but think it's too frustrating to do. There are plenty of ways to see I Wanna Be The Boshy played if you want to go that route. There are a few good let's plays of it on Youtube, and EG Floe of the fighting game community often plays it on his Twitch TV account.

This game is insane and I just wanted to let everyone know that it exists. Sadly I was not good enough to become the Boshy. So I leave you with the amazing end credits song, which may inspire you to do what I could not. It's also a good representation of how nuts the game is.

     -Manny