They were all recovering alcoholics, drug addicts, everything else.' Which is kind of ironic, because it's coming from these born-again Christians who lived the most horrible sinful lives possible before they became Christians and saved. I'm going to go to Hell because I'm playing D&D, I'm playing Magic, and you're chastised for every little thing.

'And with that came very little Biblical talk, but a lot of more stereotypical Christianity - the really negative aspects. 'My dad's side of the family, they're all born-again Christians,' says McMillen. It seems like such a natural progression.' 'I think Catholicism is quite interesting. And if people hated what he was doing, well, that just made it all the sweeter. But, as a child growing up in a family of alcoholics and drug addicts turned Bible-thumping born-again Christians, McMillen lived for that reaction. It's a mindset that's driven McMillen since his earliest days, though he insists it's no longer about making people mad or getting attention. After and before, the development and the decay. It's life, but it's these parts that are interesting. I tend to focus on the fetal stages of birth, life and death - but mostly birth - the development process, and dying and decay. 'There's recurring themes in everything in my work, and they're usually things where I think it's so odd that people think they're gross. Yet we're all very f***ing familiar with it.' And yet it's considered so naughty and so gross and weird. Every day we wipe our asses, and we smear poop on a piece of paper in our hand. Because it's considered so gross and weird, yet everybody poops. It sounds retarded, but I'm fascinated with the idea of poop. 'I mean, most of my work really does delve into the pee-pee, poo-poo stages of development, the whys of. 'I tend to like really weird stuff,' he says, reclining in an office chair across from me. There, surrounded by a mixture of traditional game/comic geek paraphernalia and a life-sized organ-baring model of human anatomy, we talk. After meeting his wife, Danielle, and petting his hairless cats (yes, just like in the movie), we proceed into his room/workspace. It is, to be honest, a very conveniently timed line of thought, given that it's still stage-diving around in my mind when McMillen - a man who's brazenly taken on topics other developers would never touch with games such as the extremely explicit female-anatomy shooter The C Word - answers the door.

The music raises a defiant fist against society's ills and screams of fearless rebellion - and while I don't doubt that the inspiration behind those lyrics is sincere, it gets me wondering: how do people who've hit it big going against the grain and making no secret of their disdain for mainstream society actually live? Do they change once the system starts working in their favor? How do they occupy themselves day-to-day? What are their houses like? Do their cats have fur, just like ours? While driving to Super Meat Boy and Binding of Isaac mastermind Edmund McMillen's home in Santa Cruz, California, I find myself navigating winding highways to the tune of loud, aggressive ska-punk.

Super meat boy hacked