Intro
So I read this story on one of my PSP Hacking sites that Sony is going to publish this game called Cave Story on the PSP.  It's a freeware PC game made by Studio Pixel (who I thinkn is just one Japanese guy) and it's evidently extremely high quality for a home-made game.  I scoffed at Sony's attempt to make money out of nothing and Googled "Cave Story" and immediately found the page for the English translation by Aeon Genesis.  All I had to do was download the game from Studio Pixel's Japanese website, and apply the English patch.  Voila! The html manual and even the config utility was translated!  I plugged in my DualShock2 with the USB converter and gave it a try. Almost 6 hours later, I realized how late it had gotten and had to stop and go to bed.

 

Story
The game starts out a little strangely.  The first thing you see is a crazy-looking scientist-type guy who walks over to where a little green-haired lady and what looks like a giant walking lunchbox are being held in bubbles.  He then proceeds to teleport them somewhere.  Then, a totally different guy seems to be locked in a metal room and is typing messages to his sister on a computer terminal.  Then the game actually starts. 

 

You start in a little room where you figure out how to refill your health and save the game, then run a round some small caves to generally get the feel for the game.  You steal a gun from a sleeping gunsmith (who operates in the depths of an apparently forgotten cave?!) and shoot some blobby blue guys.  Once you finally leave this first area, you fall quite a long way into "Mimiga Village".  The Mimiga are cute little rabbit guys and two of them are having an argument about a key.  Just as the argument gets really heated, you fall out of the sky and interrupt them enough for the one with the key to get away.

The leader of the Mimiga, King, tells you that he needs the key to extricate a certain "outsider" Mimiga, Sue, from a house.  The Doctor (presumably the scientist from the beginning of the game) has been coming to the village for a while now, kidnapping and possibly killing the Mimiga one by one.  Now there's only six left in the village and The Doctor wants Sue, so King wants to hand her right over in the hopes that The Doctor will leave the rest of them alone.

If you think that's a pretty involved storyline for a little homemade side scroller, that's just the beginning.  Your character does have some sort of amnesia, but you find out that you're most likely a "soldier from the surface" and that these caves are all running through a large floating island in the sky.  I won't give away too many other details, but the story becomes even more convoluted as you begin to glimpse your possible role in an old war that ravaged the island and the Mimiga's role in a plot to start a war that may threaten all life on Earth.  Yeah.  Seriously.

Now, looking at the few sites about this game I saw that it was often billed as a Metroid/Castlevania-type game where you control a little guy with amnesia stuck in a cave.  After playing a good chunk of this game, I've deemed that description to be the lamest and laziest in internet history.  Sure, it's definitely got some Metroid-y elements in it (and therefore some contemporary Castlevania elements), but I also see some Mega Man influences and also possibly Contra or Metal Slug.  Especially when it comes to controls.

 

 

Gameplay
Still, it's primarily just a run, jump and shoot type of affair.  I'd imagine it might be a little tough to control using a keyboard, but with my PS2 DualShock, the controls are extremely smooth and responsive.  There was only one boss fight in which I was cursing any lack of control, and I think that was mostly the boss' fault. 

The view of your immediate area centers on your character, but scrolls ahead of you slightly when you're running.  Also, you can hold up or down to get a better view of what's above and below you.  Your little guy can jump pretty high and far as side scrollers go, and falls a little slower than you might suspect at first.  It took me a while to figure out why I had to hit down on the directional pad to go through a door or open a chest or talk to somebody...you can hold up to shoot skyward.  You can even run while shooting up, which comes in real handy at times.

Speaking of which, you end up having a nice variety of weapons at your disposal.  You start out with that stolen handgun and pick other weapons up along the way, Metroid-style.  There's also a missile launcher (the only weapon in the game that requires collected ammo) and at least four more wacky weapons (so far).  Most weapons either don't have any ammo count at all or start out at 100, refilling when you're not shooting.  Every weapon can level up to a maximum level of 3.  As you collect the bouncy golden cones that enemies drop, your weapon energy increases and each level makes your weapon stronger and gives it new powers.  At one point in the game, your main gun gets replaced with a machine gun.  Maxed out at Level 3, the machine gun can act as a jet pack when you jump and shoot downward.  This is especially useful in large vertical areas when you fall off that little platform for the nth damn time!  Enemies explode with so much weapon energy that keeping your favorite gun maxed out hardly ever becomes a problem.  As the translation team, Aeon Genesis says, it "only tends to be a issue during boss fights, and even then there's plenty of opportunities for collecting more weapon energy."

 

The level design is somewhat similar to Super Metroid, but not quite as complex and labyrinthine.  You never really have a question as to where you're supposed to go next.  The translators mention similarities to Wonderboy, but I've never played that so I can't say.  The Mimiga Village serves as a hub from which you travel out to other areas of the vast system of caves.  You activate a teleporter early on and gain new locations to which you can teleport as you defeat bosses and further the story.  Most areas (aside from the Mimiga Village) are long horizontal corridors full of various hills and obstacles.  Save points are pretty frequent and convenient.  This would be perfectly suited to a portable game, actually, so maybe Sony has the right idea.  It's possible that someone might work on a PSP port and offer it for free, but I wouldn't mind seeing Studio Pixel get some cash for their hard work.  It just won't be mine.

 

Graphics
Actually, the level design and cute/goofy bosses mostly remind me of Treasure's Bangai-O from back in the Dreamcast days.  At first glance I was turned off by the simplistic graphics, thinking this was going to be just another crappy homebrew waiting to be deleted.  Boy, was I wrong.  The more I played it, the more I realized how much detail went into these simplified graphics.  The backgrounds and enemies get more outlandish the more areas you unlock. 

Most of the characters appear very small on screen, but are still able to convey emotion.  Think of the characters in Final Fantasy 4 (2 in the US) and you'll get the idea.  It's amazing how easy it is to get attached to a group of 20 or so pixels.  In the manner of many Japanese games (especially those with cute character designs) there's often close-ups of the main characters when they converse with each other.  Even the treasure chests look flat and uninteresting at first, but upon closer inspection are revealed to have a bright and shiny luster.

It seems to be just an all around retro thing, with graphics a little bit better than the 8-bit NES but not quite as good as the 16-bit SNES.  There's definitely a lot of thought put into the visual design of Cave Story.

Sound
The music is also reminiscent of the 8-bit days.  The different themes are pretty catchy, but start to get repetitive after a little while.  Especially when you're stuck in a difficult area for a long time.  Some people must really dig it, though, because Studio Pixel offers a music file player called OrgView (also translated by Aeon Genesis).  The sound effects are quite varied and don't sound like they were lifted from other games or some sort of public domain effects library.  All in all, my ears are having a fun time in retroland.

 

 

Conclusion
Like I said, I've played this for about 6 hours. Unless it ends suddenly, I think I'm about halfway through at most.  Aeon Genesis says it would take about 4-6 hours to finish if you know exactly what you're doing and you don't look for secrets, etc., but it think that's a low estimate.  Also, they say there's three separate endings!  I had a really hard time putting down the controller last night and I definitely see myself playing through it again from the beginning at least once more.  The story never gets boring and everything's just so darn cute!  I'd recommend this game to anyone of any age.

I give it 4.5/5 Pirateninjas.

 

Don't believe me? Download it yourself and give it a try! Also, here's a very good site dedicated to the game with walkthroughs and even a Mac version!