My eight-year-old son and I are completely obsessed with Spelunky, the brilliant 2D platformer-meets-Roguelike game that launched last week on XBLA. How obsessed? Yesterday, at brunch at Slappy Cakes, he asked me to make this: Tasty! The new Spelunky is a reboot of the brilliant 8-bit freeware game that Derek Yu released in 2009, still available for Windows, with an unofficial Mac port. Spelunky borrows two elements I hated back in the 8-bit era — randomized levels and no way to save progress — and makes them eminently enjoyable. Like NetHack meets La-Mulana, Spelunky is brutally hard. Like other Roguelikes, when you die in Spelunky, you're dead. There's no way to continue. In an interview with Anthony Carboni, Derek Yu said, "When you die and have to start from the beginning, it makes death meaningful, just like in real life." I'd recommend watching the interview, and Derek trying to play his own game, on New Challenger. Unlike other hard games, Spelunky feels fair to me. Every time... - Andy Baio