Super Meat Boy returned in all his gory glory at today’s Xbox Games Showcase, in the unveiling of Super Meat Boy 3D. It’s exactly what it sounds like: a 3D Super Meat Boy game, and it’s coming to Xbox, PlayStation, and PC in early 2026.
Today’s trailer sure does look like exactly what is says on the tin: it’s fast, gory gameplay through short, sharp obstacle courses full of machines that can tear a little meat guy apart. Meat Boy bounces his way through them, leaving a trailer of, uh, meat juice, wherever he lands, with slidey physics down walls and tight jumping windows. But of course, it’s all in a 3D world instead of a 2D space, which will likely dramatically change how the platforming works, where you can go, and the sorts of challenges placed before you.
Meat Boy began as a 2008 Flash game created by Edmund McMillen and Jonathan McEntee that has since grown into a sensation with the subsequent release of Super Meat Boy a few years later. Super Meat Boy is an ultra-hard platformer beloved for its tight, precise platforming and fast respawns on short maps that allow players to try again and again and again with almost no downtime. The games are notoriously gorey, given that the main character is essentially made of meat and keeps slamming into meat grinders.
A sequel to Super Meat Boy, Super Meat Boy Forever, was released in 2020 without the involvement of McMillen. It’s unclear if McMillen is involved in this 3D rendition.
Weirdly, there was a green Mario warp pipe shown at the start of the trailer, despite Super Meat Boy 3D not being announced for a Nintendo console at the moment, and this being an Xbox showcase. No explanation for that at the moment.
You can catch up on everything announced at today’s Xbox Games Showcase right here, and keep up on the bevy of new announcements all weekend at IGN Live here.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
