A: Unless your goal is 100% no compromise authenticity for historical research purposes, the Remastered version is by far the best choice.

Even if accuracy is is important to you, the Remastered dipswitches can get you an extremely accurate experience with many quality of life improvements. The original version should honestly only be used by Games Researchers/Historians and speedrunners at this point, which is why it will continue to be made available.

A: The itch.io page has a good rundown of what you can do to deal with crashes. As for other bugs, while solutions do exist for some, many of them involve tweaking deep, weird Windows settings. Do Not Bother with This. Play the Remastered version.

A: You're falling off the platform you're on before jumping. Be careful! There are no known bugs with double jump, IWBTG just lacks "Coyote Time"

A: Go to the download page and download Wanna be the Fix, which will let you reposition yourself. The Remastered shouldn't have this issue.

A: Until recently this were utterly impossible. With the Remastered, some of these are theoretically possible, but I'm sure that team has better things to do.

So in short, no.

A: Linux and Mac can get support through WINE and/or Proton, depending on the version of the game. No, I cannot help you with this, I don't use any of these platforms.

As for Steam... No?? god, why would I do that? Just download it off of itch, geez. Not everything needs to be on steam.

A: The deactivated forums are, unfortunately for security reasons, gone. If for some reason you need the old site, I have it stashed over here.

If you are a trusted member of the IWBTG community and would like to get your hands on forum backups for the purposes the archivism of old fan games, you know where to reach me.

A: I don't use other brands in a very forward manner. If you name a game like it's a sequel to popular IP, lawyers notice. If you include an asset somewhere? No one cares unless it's a sound that can be picked up by a content detector, and even it's usually only to identitfy their own games.

So while they have the ability to DMCA me, IWBTG borrows stuff lawyers don't care about and kinda falls under the radar. Remember, companies care about BRANDS not assets.

A: Oh heck yeah. IP law gives corporations a monopoly over our culture in a way where they want to dominate our lives while giving the bare minimum back. We can look at culture, we can pay for culture, we can CONSUME culture, but we're not allowed to engage with it. We don't own our mass media experiences, we're only leasing them.

I think that's crap and socially parasitic. Making dirivitive works off of the successful works that dominate our culture is taking back ownership of our own experiences. I am doing basically no tangible damage to any of these companies by doing any of this while making something that a lot of people enjoyed... somehow??

A: I think it's sick as hell. My source code is basically released under a ""license"" that says "steal from me, please". The only thing preventing me from just saying "IWBTG is Public Domain" is to prevent any larger entities from trying anything. Also because it feels very fitting and "prevents" (as in... they could do it if they weren't cowards) the open source community from making OpenIWBTG where everyone is replaced by Tux which would be lame as hell (not that I would mind if they did, of course, but I'm not going to make it easier for them!).

As for fangames, my opinions on this have been blown out of proportion in the past but the truth is... I don't like most fangames. But there is a huge huge difference between "This doesn't really do it for me" and "I don't think this fan work should exist". I am proud of the amount of fangames IWBTG has got. I am TOTALLY OKAY with the fact that many of them have eclipsed IWBTG in popularity. There are many I'm not into but are so CLEARLY well made... and even plenty that seem really good! I can respect something even if it's not for me personally.

... But it wouldn't matter if I hated every single one of them. I think an important part of being a creator is being able to love and appreciate fanworks even when they're not something you actually like. Fangame makers aren't required to make things that appeal to me. They appeal to others fans, just themselves, or no one at all and that's awesome. My ideas and tastes are not a sacred thing that must not be ever defiled. If they were, there would be less things for people to enjoy in the world.

A: I keep it simple. As a general rule, if you don't have a human resources department or do payroll or something, then I don't care what you do with IWBTG. IF you're a company, you have to talk to me, but anyone else? Do whatever. Sell fanworks, make money, I don't care (with some exceptions). But if you're a real company, we need to talk.

Fangames, I have a simple request. I Wanna Be The Guy is my name space, which is why Gaiden was not "I Wanna be the Gaiden". That's a fangame name. Will I do anything if you name your game IWBTG2? Pfft, no I don't care. You'd be like... the 5th one, probably. But consider it a polite request. All assets and source code are their for you to pilfer. If you're making a game that includes indie game characters and are a small indie... no need to ask. You CAN ask and I have provided licenses when need be, but honestly just fucking do it don't email me about it unless you just wanna show me the cool thing you made.

The one exception is crypto/NFT garbage. You can get fucked with any of that. Even ignoring all the environmental and scammy aspects of things, artificial scarcity is trash and against the spirit of everything I do. Will I stop you and file a DMCA? No, I'll let you blow your money minting shit no one will buy. But I'm definitely going to think you suck, trash talk you, and kick you in the shins if we ever run into each other.

A: I try to be nice!! I'm just trying to make a fun game for masochists! I have to help out my own kind.

A: My twitter is right Here! Following me is definitely a mistake!

They're more like giant cherries...

A whim, really. I played a 2chan flash game that was stupid-hard like this called Owata. It was incomplete at the time so I figured "I could do something like this". I needed a practice project. It just happened to grow into a big game. The best part is, King took IWBTG as motivation to finish Owata! Also pain makes the humor all the better, right? :)

No. It resulted from my friend Eric babbling random stuff. I forgot the exact conversation but I was talking about the game premise and Eric said something like "It should be Guy Quest 64"(It was a different name involving Guy) "Dude, I'm never going to let you be a Guy." "But I wanna be the Guy. :(" ... And I instantly laughed at the idea of using that for the name. But yes, I'm pretty sure both of that saw the Homestar runner clip and it is theoretical that it planted the mental seed in my brain, but I can't be sure of that and it is in no way a reference.

As IWBTG gets older, this opinion has kinda died out (especially in a post Dark Souls world), but I still hear it from time to time. The thing is, it's hard to figure out what "good level design" unless you ask what the goal is. Most games have their goal be something like "Be fun, rewarding, and fair to the player" but that's not the only goal a designer could have.

I Wanna be the Guy is a game about subversion. It's also a humor driven game. Predicting a players actions perfectly as to maximize surprise and humor/frustration is a way a game can have good level design. The level design is doing what it set out to do. The pacing of a game like this is also critical. How much the player is expected to die really influences what the next trap should be and how hard it is to overcome. Brutally murdering the player over and over again makes them apathetic. They need room to breath.

Random traps are NOT a crutch. If used wrong, they can RUIN a game's chance at popularity. It's very hard to have a brutal, mean game while still 'tricking' people to finish it. If a game is popular and brutal it probably has something else going on that makes it work and it's worthwhile to be curious about these things!

Okay, Kayin Nasaki is an OC name and I don't wanna name myself something like KayinIWBTG or TheRealKayin1 and every day I CURSE myself for not getting a twitter sooner!! I'm as white as white bread!!

I very much prefer just being referred to as Kayin and will remove the Nasaki from as many names as I can when I come up with something I like. You can use my real name, but I really do treat Kayin as a professional and personal mononym.

OH GOSH That's a whole thing that you don't HAVE to worry about but if you're curious I wrote a whole thing. TL;DR, don't worry about it too much, I'm flexible.

It's a rom hack of Battle Toads.

Shut up shut up shut up shut up!!!

OKAY OKAY OKAY! IWBTG is made, unfortunately, in Multimedia Fusion 2. Not Flash. Please stop saying Flash.

ABSOLUTELY NOT. As for Gaiden, it's made in Construct Classic. CC is a big ol' trap to use right now but C2 and 3 might be good. I don't plan on using them, though. I'd just use Game Maker or something at this point.