The Big Adventure of Owata’s Life, the instant-death Flash game that inspired “I Wanna be the Guy,” is back as a free browser game 

Japanese developer King re-released three of their free-to-play browser games on November 19. The re-released titles include The Big Adventure of Owata’s Life, The Big Adventure of Owata’s Life 2 and Rokko Chan. The Big Adventure of Owata’s Life is known as the game that inspired I Wanna Be the Guy, and can now be played once again via the developer’s site.

The Big Adventure of Owata’s Life is a 2D action game in which you navigate through stages full of “instant-death” gimmicks. The actions you can perform include jumping, the long-range attack “Owata Buster,” self-destruction, etc. By using these actions to your advantage, you aim to advance through the stages. The character you play as and the stages are all created using ASCII art style graphics. 

The game has traps laid out all over, and aside from the visible spikes and enemies, there’s also the traps that are invisible until activated. The protagonist, Jinsei Owata, dies instantly from any enemy attack or trap, so you basically need to “die” your way through the stages, figuring out the stage layouts and enemy attack patterns by trial and error.  

Aside from The Big Adventure of Owata’s Life, King has also re-released Rokko Chan, a 2D action game based on the classic Mega Man series, and The Big Adventure of Owata’s Life 2, which first launched in August 2020. 

The original Big Adventure of Owata’s Life was released as a Flash game around 2007 and was quite popular as a super difficult browser game, even influencing other titles such as I Wanna be The Guy: The Movie: The Game. But with the end of 2020, support for flash was discontinued, which meant the game could no longer be played officially. Now, the developer has made the game available once again using the open-source Flash emulator Ruffle.

The creator of The Big Adventure of Owata’s Life is Japanese developer King. According to King’s X/Twitter account, at the time he created the game, he was just a college student aspiring to work with Flash, and created the game while studying the program. Apparently, the game suddenly rose to popularity after it was posted on a Flash game compilation site. Inspired by the great response, King decided to make a sequel, and various derivative games appeared too. At the moment, King works as a freelancer in the game industry. 

The Big Adventure of Owata’s Life, The Big Adventure of Owata’s Life 2 and Rokko Chan are currently available via King’s official website. 

Written by. Amber V based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2023-11-18 14:41 JST)