A while back, a friend of mine, Danny Davies, brought up the Japanese game
Cave Story in casual conversation. I was intrigued, and thought that because it
was a free download, it could do no harm, and I tried it out. I expected a
meager, hand-crafted game with a few bugs and slightly choppy or unbalanced
gameplay; I received quite the opposite. The original developer, Studio Pixel,
had crafted a masterpiece in 8-bit, and didn't even set a price - though many
players (myself included) would've been glad to pay, if only to support the
creator.
How was this homemade game a masterpiece, you might ask?
Well, it all boils down to a couple of things: what makes 8-bit shooter
games endearing - simple beginning controls with a learning curve easy enough
to follow but also challenging enough to be interesting, fast-paced gameplay,
and intense music (which I was delightfully surprised by - but this I'll return
to later). Yet it also brings back an element many modern games lack that was
generally present on the true 8- and 16-bit systems: a full-fledged plotline
with twists and turns. All of these elements combined to make a wonderful game
that I was drawn to complete in my first sit-down of 7 hours.
After a cutscene showing a man in distress attempting to contact his sister,
you awaken abruptly in a cave with no idea what to do or where to go. There’s
no tutorial because the controls are so simple: the arrow keys move you, and Z
makes you jump. As you explore the cavern you’re trapped in, you steal your
first weapon from a smith you find asleep in his room, and you quickly learn
that X fires the meager pistol of yours. Your first shots are taken at the bats
that chip 1 of your 3 health away, and you eventually end up in a small city of
humanoid animals. As the story progresses, you discover that your character is
a soldier with amnesia, sent from the surface with a group of humans to explore
the island floating in the sky that you’re on. I don’t want to spoil the plot,
but the conflict is interesting, and there are many choices that affect gameplay
and the storyline immensely. The music is interesting from the start, and completely
8-bit, which I adore – it sounds as though Studio Pixel even routed an original
NES soundcard for the audio bits. Using a hand-crafted editing program, Studio
Pixel produced tunes that fit each and every scene in the game, ranging from
ambient cave percussion to intense boss battle themes.
Cave Story found its way into my heart within the first forty minutes after
I started it up, and I’m sure that if you give it a shot, you’ll love it as
well.
English Cave Story Site
Final note: remember that this game was produced originally in Japanese, and that you must install a patch to play it through with its English translation. Both the original download and said patch can be found at the site above.
Have fun, good gaming, and remember - don't feed the trolls.
-Toast
(Blogging Week 1)
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