The comparison to Super Mario All-Stars is, frankly, asinine. That game is rendered at 240i and upscaled to 480p by the Wii emulator. Super Meat Boy is a similarly expansive game with art assets rendered at 480p (and even higher on the HD platforms). The music is also quite a bit more complex; I don't know if it is already programmed in MIDI (with more channels and instruments than SNES could produce) or would have to be scripted in that format for WiiWare, which could be a very complex process.
First, you are, of course, welcome to your own opinion. I do have to partially agree, that comparing a ~20 year old game to a current game is asinine. It's asinine that the 20 year old game was, apparently, able to do things beyond what the current game can do.
But, beyond that - the pretty graphics and sounds are nice - but ultimately, game play is what matters. Just as a good graphics or music won't make a bad game good, even the best graphics and music won't make an unplayable game playable. If you've put so much focus into the graphics and sound development that your game can no longer be played, then you've obviously focused on the wrong area.
As for the music, it doesn't matter how "complex" it is - the musical tracks in the original Mario games are some of the most famous and most recognized tracks in video game history... which just goes to show that you don't need 40MB of space just for music to have great tracks to accompany your game.
All-Stars was also coded by a huge team of veteran game developers at Nintendo, some of whom were probably involved in the hardware design. Team Meat is a tiny group of independent developers using stock Wii development kits. They are not necessarily experts in file size optimization, nor should such expertise be necessary in any reasonable development environment since the advent of disc-based media and digital distribution for a freaking 2D platformer.
I'll agree with this. However, all this does is point out that the folks at Team Meat aren't "good enough".
Look, I think we can all pretty much agree that Nintendo's 40MB limit is either just bat-**** crazy (if it's an arbitrary limit that's not hardware based) or stupidly short-sighted (if it's hardware based) - but none of this changes the fact that Team Meat designed a WiiWare game that was beyond the limits of what WiiWare could do and are now sitting there scratching their heads wondering why Nintendo screwed them.
I'm going to build a house on my land that's bigger than my land and goes onto my neighbor's property. I'm sure they won't mind - I'll wait until after I've designed it and started construction on it to ask them.
Except you can play it... just not on the Wii.
You own a PC, I'm assuming? Play it there in its full glory. Otherwise, you're simply limiting yourself by insisting that the Wii receive a gutted release.
If that's the case, why are we even having this conversation? If the train of thought is "the game in on another system, go play it there", then it doesn't matter if Nintendo has a stupid 40 MB limit or anything else.
The fact is, "Super Meat Boy" cannot be played on the Wii - so adding more stuff to the game doesn't make it a better Wii game. Period. If you want better 360 or PC games, then sure, use the pros of those hardware setups to make your game better - for the 360 or the PC. Don't design a 360 game to use the Wii Remote, then wonder why no one is able to play it.