Russia will be the first country to score a retail release for the PC version of super Meat Boy, and creator Edmund McMillen sends out this moving call for Russian-inspired cover art. Good thing he's okay with the Cold War.

Hopefully the Russians can look beyond Edmund's lack of knowledge about their lovely country and produce the sort of stellar Super Meat Boy box art the game deserves. I'm not sure they'll get over being mistaken for Canada though. There are some insults that can't be waved off.

Oh Canada, you know I love you guys, and I say that without mentioning the constant struggle with the giant ice spiders.

The Wii release of Super Meat Boy is looking grim, but resourceful Super Smash Bros. Brawl hackers find a way to get the blocky man of meat into Nintendo's beat 'em up.

There's not much meat to this clip showing off the Brawl hack, via Destructoid, but it goes to show you that Kirby is definitely the most flexible of Super Smash Bros. fighters. Grab said hack here, if you want more Meat Boy in your life.

The creators of PC and Xbox 360 hit Super Meat Boy have aborted the game's WiiWare release, saying they're unable to fit a quality version of the game under the size limit Nintendo imposes on titles for the download service.

Team Meat's struggles to pare down Super Meat Boy delayed its originally planned November release. The indie developer said it was able to get the file to 50 megabytes then, but 40 megabytes is the WiiWare cap, and the sacrifices made to get the game there left creators Edmund McMillen and Tommy Refenes unhappy with the game's quality.

"It's mostly music," McMillen told Kotaku this evening. "We got it close to 40 (MB), but we only have five music tracks, one retro and one boss, and no cutscene music. ... The cut scenes might as well not be there, and if you beat the game, I'm sure you know the final cutscene needs a musical score, to have any impact at all."

McMillen said Team Meat "blindly assumed we could submit a bit higher. ... We assumed we might get a 5 to 10 megabyte addition." He noted that the discussions with Nintendo were not adversarial. "We loved working with them," he said. So they're pursuing leads on publishing a retail disc, but the prospects are not good.

"So far, the three biggest [publishers contacted by Team Meat] say there's no money in third-party retail (on the Wii)," McMillen told Kotaku, "but we are still asking."

Despite the difficulty, McMillen said he and Refenes remain committed to the platform. "I will tell you, we will do a game on a Nintendo platform," McMillen told Kotaku. "That's for sure." Whether that game will be Super Meat Boy, however, remains to be seen.

Science has not told us whether notoriously hard video game Super Meat Boy is tougher than notoriously hard N+. So we must rely on a second-best method.

MTV Multiplayer's Russ Frushtick has studied the two game's Xbox Live Arcade statistics for both side-scrolling, curse-inducing games and declared Super Meat Boy as the more rigorous experience.

He has four metrics of comparison. Such as:

N+: Percent of Total Registered Users Who Have Completed The Final Level (Episode 49) - 2.20%

vs

Super Meat By: Percent of Total Registered Users Who Have Completed The Final Level (7-20X) - 1.04%

Do the laws of mathematics allow me to hereby declare Super Meat Boy as twice as tough as N+?

Which Is Statistically Harder: 'N+' or 'Super Meat Boy'? [MTV Multiplayer blog]

Super Meat Boy is getting a limited run of actual, physical boxed copies for the PC. To mark the occasion, artist Dave Rapoza handled the cover illustration, and made it appropriately epic.

Super Meat Boy is a savagely difficult platformer, and those old-school bonafides gave artist TheInfamousTheft the inspiration for this rad Nintendo Power-style beat guide to The Guy's three levels, which unlock The Kid. Spoilers? Maybe. Big size on the jump.

Super Meat Boy: The Guy Guide [TheInfamousTheft on DeviantArt, thanks Bryce F.]

Gloating that he goaded People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals into making a flash-game free advertisement for indie hit Super Meat Boy, the game's co-creator followed up with an unlockable Super Tofu Boy character for the game's PC version.

The game hit Steam just yesterday, so, that's fast turnaround by Team Meat. A tweet this afternoon says the character is unlocked by typing in petaphile at the character select screen.

Edmund McMillan, the game's co-creator, says he "repeatedly made fake user names in Peta's forum pushing the game at them in hopes something like this would happen."

"Peta is 1,000 times more well known than Super Meat Boy and the fact that they went out of their way to make a parody like this is beyond flattering and amazingly helpful," McMillan writes.

McMillan notes that he himself was once a vegetarian and has worked as an animal control officer. He disagrees with Peta's absolutist stance against laboratory testing of animals, saying that has led to medical discoveries and treatments that save lives - like that of his mother, who is diabetic.

Super Meat Boy vs Peta! [Team Meat Blog]

Do you prefer your meat pristine and untouched or vigorously beaten? Symbiote Studios has you covered either way with a pair of limited edition Super Meat Boy vinyl figures, just in time to preorder for the holidays.

Symbiote Studios, the creators behind the silly anime-styled Jessica Chobot figures, has teamed up with Team Meat to forever immortalize Super Meat Boy in vinyl. Meat Boy's charm shines through, whether you prefer the normal figure or the one painted to look like it's been mugged.

Both figures stand eight inches tall and will set you back $39.95. I hope you like your meat rare; both versions are limited to 250 pieces.

Hit up the link to preorder one for yourself or someone you love. The figures aren't shipping until April, but the promise of a big slab of fake meat is almost as sweet as the real thing.

Super Meat Boy Vinyl Toys [Symbiote Studios via Tomopop]

Team Meat's pithy riposte to PETA's meat-is-murder complaint earlier today. Via Super Meat Boy's Twitter [thanks Nerf Herder]

Few games would seem as suited to claymation as Super Meat Boy; it's a little surprising it took this long to see him in the medium. By YouTube user iheart2embalm, it's a virtuoso recreation of the game's opening cinematic.

[Via GoNintendo]