![]() You can collect mysterious yellow items from downed enemies that power up the weapon in your possession, to a maximum of three levels, but if robo-boy takes a hit it will return to its original, weaker setting. As you progress, new items become available to you, allowing you to access new areas of the map. There are traps and pitfalls to negotiate or avoid. Barely using more than the D-Pad or circle nub and one face button, there are no flashy techniques required. GAMEPLAY: This is old-school, exploratory platforming. This is rounded out with concise, functional sound effects that do the job nicely. The soundtrack is best described as modern retro, a perfect accompaniment to the action and reminiscent of some of the awesome soundtracks that you used to get during the C64 and Super Nintendo eras, respectively. SOUND: If you have played similarly stand-out platformer Super Meat Boy, you will be familiar with the work of Danny Baranowsky, who handled the music and does so here with aplomb. A few simple, colour co-ordinated bars and icons sit neatly in the top corner of the screen. The game is unencumbered by too much clutter either on the menu screens or the game hub itself. There is a real depth to your surroundings and the cutesy characters look polished whilst retaining a sense of old-school charm and not abandoning the roots of the source material. Nicalis have done a magnificent job of transferring the game into a glorious stereoscopic mode, with all the characters and backgrounds rendered in 3D. Cave Story has always been about the gameplay, yet with the 3DS version, Pixel’s vision has never looked more ace. GRAPHICS: The original Cave Story features simplistic, 8-bit style graphics with small yet functional characters that do the job nicely. Naturally, it is up to your little robot guy to negotiate the caves, discover the secret about his identity, and stop the Doctor in his tracks. Factor into the equation the fact that the island is also home to a hidden artefact of unspeakable power (The Demon Crown) and you can see why the loony Doctor is going all megalomaniacal up in this bitch. You see, the caves are actually underneath an island, an island upon which grows a mysterious red flower that, once consumed, turns the peaceful natives into uncontrollably vicious monsters. How did he get there? How the hell is he going to escape? Exploration reveals that an evil, power-hungry Doctor is attempting to enslave the friendly native creatures that inhabit the caves and use them as part of his wicked scheme. STORY: The tale begins as you take control of a silent, baseball-cap wearing robot boy, who has somehow ended up in a huge, labyrinthine series of caves. So just how good is this here 3DS version? As the inventors of the Prinny and purveyors of such classics as Disgaea, the marriage between the publisher and such a magical platform adventure would seem to be one made in heaven. Cave Story is now being published by NIS America, better known to you and I as Nippon Ichi. A Mac OS version arrived on the App Store in September 2011, with a variation due to be released onto Steam at some stage. ![]() It went down a treat, with a DSiWare version following in the United States a couple of months after. We had to wait six years for it, but in 2010 an excellent, Nicalis-programmed version of Cave Story was released for WiiWare. Homebrew types were busy putting together a DS version, but this was canned when, in the late Noughties, Pixel did a bit of a deal with Nintendo. Over the years I have had the pleasure of playing the game on not only a desktop PC but on PSP, Xbox and GP2X. Cave Story easily transcended much of the dross available as freeware and became something of a cult hit, garnering tremendous reviews and ports to other systems. Designed by indie programmer Daisuke Amaya (who prefers, like a Brazilian footballer, to be known by a single-word moniker – in this case “Pixel”) in his spare time, the game is a five-years-in-the-making labour of love and a fitting tribute to the gaming confections he enjoyed in his youth. It may sound like I am getting carried away with myself, but I assure you I am not.Ĭast your mind back to 2004, and a freelance writer, knowing what makes me tick games-wise, turned me onto the PC version of the game. Along with brilliant, slept-on PS1 delight The Divide: Enemies Within, the most accomplished take on the Metroidvania style of exploratory, RPG-tinged platformer. But like the very bestest best-kept secrets and undiscovered gems, once you have discovered it, you will want to tell the world and their extended family.Ĭave Story is many things to me. Your man in the street probably wouldn’t have heard of it. You don’t have to have been dwelling in a natural underground space large enough for a human to enter for Cave Story to have passed you by.
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