Some of the puzzles are incredibly obscure, and it’s frustrating to encounter an area where it’s impossible to move forward without talking to the exact NPC at exactly the right time in order to unblock a barrier. In fact, some of the friends you make in Cave Storyare given such a hard time that getting to the end of the game can begin to feel like a revenge mission.Īdmittedly, there are moments in Cave Story that give away its indie origins. As you explore and meet more characters, you become so engaged in the struggle between the Mimigas, the scientist, and his various underlings – including a bullying yet oddly likeable giant toaster named Balrog – that defeating the bad guys becomes a more urgent objective. Initially, your job is to simply figure out how and why you’re on the island. An evil scientist known simply as the Doctor wants to harvest a type of red flower capable of turning the Mimigas into an army of vicious monsters. As the game unfolds, it emerges that you’re traversing a huge flying island populated by a race of rabbit-like creatures called the Mimigas.
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You play as Quote, a little amnesiac robot who wakes up in a cavern with no recollection of how he got there. Then there’s the story, which seems as influenced by classic anime as the staples of JRPGs.
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Not only is it advisable to keep switching weapons depending on the enemies you’re fighting, but it’s also handy to switch to weapons you use less often while jumping through difficult areas – all the better to “protect” the guns you use most. It’s an idea that, believe it or not, adds a bit of strategy to the mix of platforms and puzzles. Collect enough of them, and the weapon currently equipped will become hugely powerful take a hit, and you’ll get a downgrade in firepower as well as health. Its apparently simple shooting mechanics belie a quite complex system of varied weapons that gradually level up as you collect the bouncing energy jewels left behind by dead enemies. Its controls are tight yet the floatiness of its jumping physics are initially disconcerting. Although it might be now lumped into the catch-all Metroidvania sub-genre, Cave Story doesn’t exactly resemble anything that came before it. The Switch version also adds a nifty multiplayer version that works so well, it could have been planned as a bonus mode right from the start.Ībove all, though, Cave Story feels like a classic Nintendo game: inventive, imaginative, and subtly off-kilter. Like Nicalis’ other releases of Cave Story, it subtly updates and polishes the backgrounds and music while leaving its mechanics otherwise intact.
#Cave story pc manual#
Not just because the physical version comes with some downright fabulous packaging (including a color manual – something Nintendo’s now abandoned in its first-party titles) but because this edition of Cave Story + feels so at home on the Switch. Right now, though, the Nintendo Switch version might be its definitive release. Publisher-developer Nicalis brought the title to the Wii in 2010, the 3DS in 2011, and finally Nintendo Switch in the summer of 2017.Īside from the slightly awkward-looking Cave Story 3D, which exchanged pixels for polygons and lost some of the charm and precision in the process, Amaya’s game shines in every format.
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Amaya may not have made much money from Cave Storyat first, but its growing cult following has seen it ported to a number of other platforms besides its native PC.