Super Meat Boy made a bloody glorious return at today's Xbox Games Showcase with the reveal of Super Meat Boy 3D. Exactly as the name suggests, it's a 3D Super Meat Boy adventure, launching on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC in early 2026.
The debut trailer delivers precisely what it promises: fast, gory sprints through short, brutal obstacle courses filled with machinery designed to shred a little meat guy to pieces. Meat Boy bounces through the hazards, leaving a trail of, well, meat juice with every landing, showcasing slippery wall slides and tight jump timings. Crucially, shifting to a 3D world from the classic 2D perspective promises to dramatically reshape the platforming mechanics, exploration, and the types of challenges players will face.
The character debuted in a 2008 Flash game by Edmund McMillen and Jonathan McEntee, but became a phenomenon with the release of Super Meat Boy a few years later. That title is a notoriously difficult platformer cherished for its precise controls and instant respawns on bite-sized levels, encouraging relentless, rapid-fire attempts. The series is famously gory, given its protagonist is essentially a sentient lump of meat constantly hurling himself into spinning blades and grinders.
A sequel, Super Meat Boy Forever, launched in 2020 without McMillen's direct involvement. It is currently unclear if he is contributing to this new 3D iteration.
Interestingly, the trailer opened with a distinctive green Mario warp pipe, despite Super Meat Boy 3D not being announced for any Nintendo platform and the reveal occurring during an Xbox event. There's no official explanation for this cameo yet.
You can review all the announcements from today's Xbox Games Showcase right here, and follow the flood of new reveals all weekend via IGN Live here.
