YMMV / Mutant Mudds

• Anti-Climax Boss: Tunnel of Pain, the Final Boss of Super Challenge. It's a Rise to the Challenge where a giant living pool of Mudd carries you up while you stand on a platform. There are spikes at the arena's sides and various enemies on platforms, which means you'll be moving, but fortunately you have a lot of time to dodge everything, even during the third time the platform rises. The only problem comes from the boss summoning Sackys from the ground quite often and trying to ram you at a decent speed. The third pase also has him pop from the ceiling instead of the floor. However, with practice and good reflexes, this boss shouldn't be a problem. Also qualifies as a Breather Boss, especially considering the previous level you faced.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: The first game was considered to be hard enough by some people, so when it was announced that Super Challenge would amp up the difficulty, it unsurprisingly made a few people nervous. Fortunately, the sequel did manage to attract a lot of people.
• Awesome Music: Has its own page here.
• Contested Sequel: Is Super Challenge better, or worse than the original? Some people and critics consider it to improve on the original's formula and, while much more difficult than the original, manages to have a legitimate difficulty curve. Other people (though a Vocal Minority) think that the original game was difficult enough and further raising the difficulty was not really necessary.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Royal Mudds. They carry swords and shields and... yeah, that already doesn't sound good. They travel across the floor at high speeds, and getting too close to them will earn you a slash (which mind you, has huge range). You can't attack them from the front due to their shields; the only ways you can defeat them is to shoot them from afar or jump over them with your jet pack as they slash you and shoot them from behind - both of which are difficult to execute.
  • Pork Plops. They fly over the level and drop bombs from... somewhere in their body... these bombs have a pretty short fuse and a large blast radius of 3x3, covering everything except the ordinal directions. Finally, they're up there with Bricksworths for the highest health of any regular mook at four shots. Clash all of that and you get arguably the most grueling enemy to ward off in the game.
  • The vertical-spinning maces in Space and Temple, which OHKO you regardless of health if they hit you when they spin into the foreground. They have very little room for error when crossing them, not to mention their hitbox is HUGE, and they tend to appear in very narrow platforms.
  • Skeyes are Goddamned Bats at best, but Ghostly Skeyes? Even worse. While they inherit the qualities of the regular one, the fact they can't be shot down unless you have the Ghost Shot AND then reappear after some time multiplies their danger tenfold. You basically have an invincible version of a Skeyes that you'll have to avoid like the plague.
• Ending Fatigue: One complaint against Deluxe was that the levels were so numerous (the number of levels was ramped up from 60 to 80) that the main game began to feel like a chore.
• Epileptic Trees: The ending of Super Challenge has the meteorite that landed in the temple breaking and revealing a spaceship inside. Granny then boards the ship, saying she'll travel to the Mudds' home planet to put an end to them once and for all. This raises implications of whether you'll be rescuing a distressed Granny from the Mudds' home planet in the next game (if there ever is one) or if you'll be controlling her to combat the Mudds.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Vertical Boost power-up (press up and jump). It is basically a third jump that covers a lot of distance, and can be used after you run out of water on your regular jet-pack. This not only allows you to reach certain places faster (which is vital for speedrunning), but is capable of letting you come back to the level if you're falling down a pit or are about to touch spikes/lava... that is, as long as there are not spikes above you. Unfortunately, you need to unlock it on the original game by collecting all 1600 diamonds, but once you equip it, the rest of the levels (including the V-/G-Levels) become a lot easier. None of the power-ups need to be unlocked in Super Challenge, meaning that after the tutorial level, you can just grab it from the attic and have fun.
  • Granny from the original game. She has all the three unlockable power-ups and can use them at her leisure. Meaning she can shoot enemies from afar with the Power-Shot, cover long distances with the Extended Hover (usually the crutch power of the three) and ascend and cover an even longer distance with the Vertical Boost. She can be used on every previous level, on the ghost levels, and has also her own levels as the game's final exam. As expected of such an OP character, she's unlocked by collecting ALL 2000 golden diamonds and the 40 Water Sprites, but the kicker is that she only needs to be unlocked once. Which means any new game you start can be potentially a New Game Plus by choosing her on the select screen. No wonder why she's not unlockable in Super Challenge.
  • The playable characters unlocked in the ghost levels also qualify, being glorified versions of Granny.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Skeyes are EVERYWHERE. They comprise the most common type of Mudd in the original game and are still pretty common in Super Challenge. They fly horizontally at high speeds and have decent health, so you'll want to take care of them quickly.
  • Eye Shots aren't too big of a deal, except when they're put on stretch passages or small platforms; then they become a problem. Fortunately, they shoot at you at a slow rate.
  • All of the Invincible Minor Minions qualify:
    • Hammer Slammers are stone mallets that reside in the foreground, then pop forward to hammer you. They tend to appear in stretch passages with several of them.
    • Stompers are huge stone creatures that reside in the foreground, then jump forwards to stomp a platform on the level. They last a good while there before retiring and repeating the process, too.
    • Blowers are clouds that sit in the background and shoot a long stream of wind that automatically causes you to jump to the next layer. There is little delay between each wind blow, making passing them annoying after a certain point. They're usually put on places where they try to blow you into a pit or spikes, too.
    • Mudd Maces spin around a peg, coming back and forth on the background then the foreground. They aren't enemies as much as they're hazards, but the fact they're put on dangerous parts of the level can make them tough to deal with at times.
  • Devilish Cat Balls are the Super Challenge-exclusive, living cousins of the Mudd Maces. Like Mudd Maces, they exist to spin around and make crossing paths hell, and spin faster than Mudd Maces. But unlike them, Cat Balls can be destroyed, thus compensating for their increased speed.
  • Every single ghostly Mudd that isn't a Demonic Spider qualifies. Your shots go through them, and you'll need the Ghost Shot temporary upgrade to cause them harm. What makes them especially annoying, however, is that they respawn after roughly five seconds, meaning you can't think twice before making your move after shooting them down.
• Goddamned Boss: Mudd Mage, the Ice Cavern's boss and the second boss in Super Challenge. The problem with it resides in the fact it constantly spawns enemies to block your shots (from Sackys and Brickworths to Hammer Slammer heads AND Hammer Slammers) before it teleports to the other layer, and the only way to expose its heart is via shooting Mudd Mage himself to eventually push its back towards the spikes on the arena. It also tends to spawn raw Hammer Slammers, which spin to attack instead of hammering down, and can only be avoided by jumping to the other layer. If you can't push Mudd Mage to the spikes before it teleports, the battle will take quite a while despite being pretty straightforward.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: Averted twice. Both games are hard, but have been well received by critics, with both versions scoring totals of above 80 points on Metacritic.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The sound of all 100 Golden Diamonds/Gems collected in a level.
  • Getting a CD in Super Challenge displays a unique tune.
  • Touching a Water Sprite/Medal at the end of a level, which will likely induce a sigh of relief considering how this game is designed.
• Nausea Fuel: The less you think about Pork Plop's animation when it drops bombs, the better.^note If you don't get it, it looks like it's taking a crap when dropping the bomb.
• Nintendo Hard: Three hearts, a single refill, one checkpoint in the middle of each level. The later levels can get particularly brutal.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The icy floor mechanics in this game are highly wonky. Stepping on ice causes your friction to slow down to a halt. While this is normally not a problem, the ice's mechanics affect you even when you jump. The only way to combat this is by jumping and activating your jet pack, which is fortunatly not affected by the ice mechanics, and you'l'l be doing this a lot. This is apparently intentional, as many of the game's puzzles include the ice mechanics getting in your way.
• Sidetracked By The Golden Saucer: It's easy to enter any of the V-Land or G-Land levels and trying to clear it before clearing the main level first.
• That One Boss: Super Sacky, the Jungle's boss and the first boss in Super Challenge. It moves at a highly unpredictable pace, either hopping forward twice, jumping some distance, or leaping a long distance, AND you may never know what it will do because it happens too suddenly. Plus, as you shoot it down, it spawns Sackys for each shot landed, which is a problem since it's exactly what you have to do to expose its heart. During the second and third phases, it leaps high and creates more Sackys by landing. All of the Sackys in the battlefield, combined with Super Sacky being incredibly sturdy, will make it a huge problem even with the most indicate power-up in hand, the Power Shot. Lastly, don't even think of getting trigger-happy in the battle; if you whittle the boss to just its heart when there are still a lot of Sackys in the battlefield, you may end up shooting the heart first.
• That One Level: Too many to count, but special mention goes to Level 5-3's Ghost version and Level 5-4 in Super Challenge.
  • The former has gems placed in hard-to-reach places (especially at the beginning), vertical-spinning maces in narrow platforms, poison pools with solid balls emerging from them and, since it's a ghost level it's full of Ghostly Mudds.
  • Meanwhile, the latter has the right combination of Goddamned Bats and Demonic Spiders, poison pools with solid balls emerging from them, and during the second half, combines icy floors with both Round-A-Bouts on a single tile AND vertical-spinning maces to make it deceptively difficult to finish the level. Even the G-Land version of this level is much easier compared to how hellish the main level is.