After ranting publicly that the iPhone is "the Tiger handheld game of this generation," Tommy Refenes saw his game removed from the App Store. He's struck back, releasing a Tiger-ized version of Super Meat Boy for a dollar.
Refenes, part of the team producing the upcoming Xbox Live Arcade and WiiWare title, apparently meant to put out Super Meat Boy HANDHELD on April Fool's Day, but it took a little longer to slide past the reviewers. It renders Super Meat Boy as a hilariously pathetic LED game (with two game modes, even) with a Tiger control-style overlay. You get a mute button to kill the plink-plonk audio and a high score button - which doesn't show you your highest score, just the highest score theoretically attainable.
The game reinforces the point he made at the Game Developers Conference: that games that sell well on the iPhone and iPod Touch - Mega Man 2, Street Fighter IV - are not enjoyable games, are not bought by gamers, and aren't made for gamers either, they're made as a brand extension for existing games on other platforms, which is what Tiger handhelds were all about back in the 1990s.
Refenes' Zits 'N Giggles was disappeared by Apple shortly after this rant, in which he revealed that to prove price and quality had no relationship, he kept raising its price every time someone bought it, getting it up to a stupefying $350. Super Meat Boy HANDHELD [opens iTunes] is 99 cents. I just bought it, so, run go get it before it surges to $1,000 and/or gets taken down.
Developer Plays a Joke on Apple with Super Meat Boy Handheld [Pocket Gamer]