A Story of a Cave

If Contra 3, Super Metroid and Super Castlevania had a sexy 3-way love child, and that child was an NES game, they would name it Cave Story. I found myself wondering why Nicalis didn’t just give the PC version of the game a facelift and go for a full 16-bit style. But I was enjoying myself so much, it was hard to care that much.

The 8-bit+ graphics run smoothly. It’s nice to be able to fill screen already full of enemies with bullets and not run into any slowdown. Various enemies with different methods of attacking populate the caverns awaiting annihilation. There are quite a few boss fight, all of which pretty challenging but never overly frustrating.

And what a soundtrack! It rivals some of the best of 8-bit music. The little chirps, especially of text, can be a little overpowering, but once gameplay commences, all is forgiven.

Many weapons are at the player’s disposal. From machine guns to flame throwers to bubble guns, each gun is upgradeable and a blast to blast away enemies. Like most adventure games in the 8 and 16-bit era, health and ammunition is expandable. None of the expansions to health or missiles are too far out of reach. Upgrades to armor and reload speed are also available and easy to find. Many will just be made available to you by progressing in the story. Unlike many adventure games, backtracking is Cave Story is limited, and the game never sends you too far on fetch quests.

The story in Cave Story is told the way stories are meant to be told in games: quickly, without interrupting gameplay for more than a few minutes, and it can be completely ignored without impeding gameplay too much. If you don’t just breeze through the exposition, it does get a little tough to figure out how to proceed.

Gameplay is what it is. Shoot and jump. Controls are responsive. The boy does not control his momentum in the air as well are Mario, but who does? The game at its heart is not a platformer anyhow. The map system could be a little better. As it is, the monochromatic

Cave Story embodies simple perfection: one idea, executed masterfully. Even if you have played this one before on a PC, do yourself a favor and drop the $12 on the WiiWare version.