Meme Run

Meme Run
wOuLd YoU bElIeVe ThIs WaS rAtEd E?!?!?!?
Genre(s): Platform Platform(s): Wii U Release: December 18, 2014 Developer(s): Ninja Pig Studios Publisher(s): Ninja Pig Studios Series: Meme Run Successor: Meme Run 2

Meme Run is a platform game developed and published by Ninja Pig Studios for the Wii U via Nintendo eShop.

The game features extensive use of Internet memes; for example, the player character is a stick figure with a Trollface for a head, and the levels are made up of "Lenny faces".

Why It Doesn't Swag

1. Slippery controls, because the screen scrolls too fast and you fall at a slow speed. Because of this, you will often get pushed offscreen by walls.
2. God-awful graphics consisting of random images slapped over a poor green screen.
3. Boring and repetitive gameplay that is only fun for a few minutes.
4. Obnoxious sound effects and background voices. Most of them are so loud that this would make the player want to mute the game over time. And it NEVER SHUTS UP.
5. No objectives, goal, or anything. You just run endlessly and score points until you die.
6. False advertising: On the Steam Greenlight of the game, it says "The 5th Best Selling Digital Game on the eShop", which is extremely obnoxious and false to say since it wasn't well received by most people, and it is definitely false reception-wise as the game has very low ratings on critic sites.
7. There are many outdated and stale memes, despite the fact that this was made in 2014.
8. This feels more like a mobile game that somebody greenlit for a console release.

The Only Redeeming Quality

1. This is one of, if not, the first game starring internet memes on a Nintendo console, even if the visuals and sounds are obnoxious to look at and listen to.

Reception

Upon release, Nintendo Life staff writer Lee Meyer gave Meme Run an extremely negative review, calling it possibly "one of the worst releases on any gaming platform this year" and stating that it was certainly not worth its price of $4.99. They scored the game with a 1/10.

Critics also found the copious use of memes to be unpleasant and jarring and also criticized the slippery controls. They suggested that the game's intention may have been to lampoon the proliferation of banal Internet memes, but felt that it had not succeeded.

Due to the unauthorized use of Trollface, the game was delisted from the Nintendo eShop on March 2015 (see more in the trivia section).

Trivia

• The Steam release of the game has been planned with the Greenlight system, but due to the latter being discontinued in 2017, the game never was released on the platform.
• The game was pulled from the Wii U eShop on March 3, 2015 because Ninja Pig Studios used the Trollface for their game as its main character, which they were unauthorized to use. Ramirez (the creator and copyright holder of Trollface) claimed he had sent a DMCA notice to Nintendo to take down Meme Run.

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