Super Meat Boy: A Quick Trophy Guide
Genre: Fast-paced 2D Platformer
Personal Difficulty rating - 7.5/10
Difficulty is highly tied to a few factors, namely, your determination, ability to adapt and learn from your mistakes, and ability to stay calm and focused in the face of failure. All of these are necessary to achieve the platinum
Time to platinum - 20+ hours
Highly skill dependent, this number will vary wildly depending on the person, but it took me about 35-40 hours to platinum the game with about 18 hours of playtime on the PC version.
Road to the Platinum
Step 1: Beat the story and reach the first ending
This one is simple enough. You'll need to reach the 6th chapter "The End" and get the first ending. You only need to clear 17 levels in the first 5 chapters to unlock the world boss. Just beat the boss and the next world opens up. For the most part, the levels should be doable with the default character, but I recommend skipping 5-16, as you'll unlock a character later that makes this level a lot easier.
Step 2: Unlock The Kid
Head to 5-7 (The Fallen), reach the retro warp Zone, and unlock The Kid character. The Kid is one of the best characters in the game due to his double jump ability. His warp zone can be one of the trickier ones, but the effort required to unlock him is well worth it. With him, a lot of the regular stages will be a breeze, and you'll almost certainly be needing him for the Iron Man runs.
Refer to the following video on how to get him.
Step 3: Complete all retro warp zones and find all bandages
Simply find and beat all retro warp zones and collect all bandages to get the collectibles part out of the way. With The Kid at your side, a lot of the previously difficult bandages and stages will now be a lot easier. Refer to the Collectibles List for more details.
Step 4: Complete all light world levels with A+
If you haven't done so already, you must get an A+ on all light world levels (except for "The End", one is enough) to unlock the Dark World counterparts. By doing the previous step, you'll have unlocked all characters, which makes this process a lot easier. All the stages are very short and last no more than a minute, so it's just a matter of trying the stage over and over until you get it.
Step 5: Complete 85 Dark World levels and reach the second ending
Now that the Dark World levels have opened up, it's time to start clearing them. They tend to be more difficult than the Light World versions, but some of them are easier. Beating 85/150 of these levels will unlock the true final battle in "The End" Dark World. Beat that stage to obtain the final ending.
Step 6: Complete at least one Dark World level in "The End" chapter
This is more of an aside, but it must be said that to obtain Golden God, you can leave 4 Dark World levels untouched. Since you'll be doing all Dark World levels except for "The End" ones for the Iron Man trophies, you can choose not to do 4 of them. Simply clear one Dark World level in "The End" if you haven't already and you'll be all set for Golden God.
Step 7: Iron Man runs
This is it, the hardest part of the game and the deal breaker for the platinum. You'll need to complete all 20 levels in each world except for "The End" without dying once. If you've done everything in the previous steps, you'll unlock Golden God along the way. See the Iron Man guide for more details.
To summarize, you'll need to do all of the following at a minimum to obtain the platinum:
Get an A+ rating on all Light World levels except "The End", you only need one A+ in that one
Beat at least one Dark World level in "The End"
Beat all Retro Warp Zones
Obtain all bandages
Beat both Light and Dark World bosses in "The End"
Iron Man the levels in all worlds except those in "The End"
Cross-Save Note
The game autosaves and automatically uploads a cross-save as long as you're online. Whenever you start the game, the game will attempt to load the cross-save. Make sure you're online at all times when playing this game, and definitely do not alternate playing this game on more than one system when going for the non Iron Man trophies, as it could potentially lock you out of certain trophies due to the way the cross-save works. As far as I know, the only way to reset your game progress if you get locked out of some trophies is to delete the game and all associated data, download it again, and start the game while playing completely offline.