15 New Video Game Heroes - Ranked From Worst To Best

9. Meat Boy (Super Meat Boy)

The nearest thing we've got to a back-to-basics retro-made-new 2D character in the vein of Mario, Meat Boy is just a simple cube of meat armed with a jump and a sprint, determined to right the wrongs of his world.

Also like Mario, his beloved princess (in a thematic sense) Bandage Girl, has been taken by the evil Dr. Fetus, resulting in some of the most brutally hard platforming you've ever played.

Thankfully, developers Team Meat continually refined the game over a very taxing development cycle (which I'd recommend checking out as part of Indie Game: The Movie), though when the end result was so authentic and still accessible as this, it was worth the meat-sweats and tears.

Mario's charms were routed in this 'everyman' (a plumber) doing the necessaries and saving the day. By proxy, Meat Boy is but a sliced-off embodiment of purely positive fatty intentions. What's not to love?