Super Meat Boy Linux Fixes

Game runs too fast on a TV

On Linux, Super Meat Boy runs at higher speed (often double) than it should. This may happen when the system is using a TV as its primary display.

Most TVs have an interlaced display mode and sometimes this is set as the default. Super Meat Boy does not handle interlaced modes correctly and will run at the interlaced framerate instead of the actual one.

This can be verified by running xrandr -q and checking if your display is running in an interlaced mode.

Check your screen settings and make sure you’re not running in an interlaced mode:

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tv@MEDIA:~$ xrandr -q
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 8192 x 8192
HDMI-2 connected primary 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 708mm x 398mm
   1920x1080     60.00    60.00    50.00    59.94    24.00    23.98  
   1920x1080i    60.00*   50.00    50.00    59.94  

Simply change your screen mode to a progressive one (replace HDMI-2 with your output name):

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tv@MEDIA:~$ xrandr --output HDMI-2 --mode 1920x1080

And verify it worked:

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tv@MEDIA:~$ xrandr -q
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 8192 x 8192
HDMI-2 connected primary 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 708mm x 398mm
   1920x1080     60.00*   60.00    50.00    59.94    24.00    23.98  
   1920x1080i    60.00    50.00    50.00    59.94  

Playing without Steam

The game has a native Linux version available through Steam. It works fine with Steam closed.