I was pretty hyped about the WiiWare release because that was in my Linux only phase and the Linux port was a bit janky on my computer.
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Cave story came to me at a moment in my life I had become disillusioned with games by New Super Mario Bros. and Twilight Princess, it reminded me of what I had loved in old games while providing a new way forward.
I almost quit video games being a big thing in my life and Cave Story turned that around.
I still don’t know if that was a good thing or not, really, but it happened, and it was incredible itself that it changed my outlook on a medium.
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Cave Story is basically the whole reason that I’m even here in the first place, and that’s no exaggeration.
I first became aware of the game when I saw a tiny screenshot of it on 4chan’s /v/ board in late 2004 or early 2005. After the title was revealed to me there, I did a search, found the old IC forums, and got to know many new people.
A weird side-effect of that is that I more or less quit browsing the Something Awful forums almost immediately. The IC/SB crowd was/is much more pleasant and interesting to me.
Knowing that the game was the work of a single person convinced me that independent game development was a viable concept. I have since gone on to be a lazy, inept bum with all the theoretical skill set needed to do the job but none of the motivation. ~:3
To date I’ve never beaten Ballos. I’m just not very good at Cave Story or platformers, I guess. I’ve whipped through the game with all manner of configurations several times but I’ve never been able to get past that final hurdle. Still, I don’t feel particularly bad about it. I love the game despite my own ineptitude.
Cave Story was also the reason that I began seeking out good game controllers for PC. I first played the game on one of those grey Gravis gamepads, and the d-pad on that thing was not ideal for the sort of precision movement needed to properly pilot the Booster 2.0. I think I had the best luck with a Playstation 2 controller mated to a dodgy adapter from Radio Shack.
Alas, haven’t played Cave Story in decades now. It was a mainstay of my early college years but I haven’t revisited it much since then. I did try some weird ports of the game for Genesis and Playstation though. They’re very interesting.
Here’s a question: What’s the best alternative engine for playing Cave Story these days? I’m aware of several but I can’t really decide which one would be best. May just have to take them all for a spin and see which one is the best-behaved on my setup.
I think I’d like to play it again in 2025. Maybe stream it on Twitch if I can get it to cooperate with OBS.
It’s strange to think how much of a shaping effect the game had on my life in myriad, subtle ways. It has had that effect on many people, I suspect.
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omg me too maybe actually. i mean i didn’t actually use the forums until sb1 but
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i have found this to be neat
it has a few good options for controlling frame-pacing and such to play out at the same speed as the original 50fps/tps version, but interpolated rather than sped up for higher framerate displays, unlike the ‘official’ remakes
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I played and loved this back in the day but I remember very little about it.
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I got I think medium-far (fighting Misery I wanna say?) years ago but then started finding it unbearably melancholy and had to quit. Might be worth trying again just to figure out why on earth I felt that way.
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i learned about it from people already remembering it fondly on rpg maker forums in what must have been 2007. i would’ve been eleven-ish? so it was inevitable that it’d be my whole personality for a while
the whole ost is great but special shoutout to the hidden track White, which still fucks me up. “congrats on your speedrun. here is one of the saddest songs ever written. as a reward 
”
i really bought into Indie Games as an awkward autistic kid, which is kind of embarrassing to look back at. im glad CS accidentally inspired a bunch of people to make stuff but getting put on a pedestal probably diminished what was special about it a little (nicalis grifting off of it didnt help). it’s hard for me to separate it from all that other stuff, which sucks.
i once downloaded a hack from the cave story fan forums that dropped you directly into ballos’ room, but with the floor replaced by fans and the background replaced by the Outer Wall parallax. i put a lot of hours into it as a bored teenager and theres a decent chance i became the only person to beat it… then i beat it without the life jar the hack starts you with. the main game never makes you contend with the fan physics that much but theyre as fun and eccentric as the rest of the platforming. i tried to remake the pretty simple hack after i lost my copy and the mediafire upload went dead, but i couldnt figure out the level editor tools.
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god the soundtrack really is one of the greats hey
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It didn’t make my top 100 because for how many times I’ve started it, I think I’ve actually been engaged and beaten it once.
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La Mulana was released just 5 months after Cave Story… What a period
I haven’t played the game in 19 years and still remember every note from the hell track
Worst part about Cave Story is weapons levelling down upon getting hit. And Kero Blaster feels like a reaction to it. Weapons in Kero Blaster are busted and stay that way
Now I just want to replay Kero Blaster
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That really was a heady time! I was in high school and I’ll never forget how cool it felt to download a complete, free game by a single developer that felt as polished and compelling as any SNES game.
This thread inspired me to replay Cave Story. I actually kind of like the tension introduced by weapons leveling and de-leveling. I think it’s kind of fun the way it forces you to scramble around during boss fights, switching between weapons as they de-level, and trying to level them back up while also managing the boss. I do wish you could sustain more hits before deleveling though. When you’re just out in the world doing your thing, it’s a bit miserable to constantly have to farm back up after sustaining damage.
I’m not crazy about the number of back and forth fetch quests. Right now that’s the aspect that’s making it hard to return to the game. But the music, visuals, and characters are so completely charming that I find myself happy just to hang out in this world, even if it means collecting a lady’s seven dogs.
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One funny thing about the later Cave Story releases is that they allow you to carry an arbitrary amount of dogs at once on your back, each on top of another.
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i think its one of those games where my strongest memory of it was how i first played it, on a shitty laptop handed down to me from my dad (that i had to remove 293857382 viruses from before touching anything) with broken speakers. despite playing through the whole game and immensly enjoying it i didnt actually hear the soundtrack until years later when i replayed it with sound on at someones request lol.
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perhaps/probably blasphemy but while i do quite appreciate many of the tunes, i find the original music engine to be quite grating at times. something about the mixing and the instruments
this iteration of the soundtrack is divine to me, though:
very possible i prefer every version from this one to the original, tho i haven’t compared exhaustively
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I gave dokutsu-rs a whirl, and it’s really wonderful! So many amazing options and customizations! Only thing I really wish it had was the ability to run in 1080p like a modern application but with letterboxed sides and the original 640x480 resolution zoomed in to fit the screen w/ the proper aspect ratio. Alas, might be asking a lot with that. Might take a peek at the other custom engines just to see what I can find.
This is still fantastic though! Very enjoyable and easy on the eyes.
I’m toying with some ideas for alternate methods of running the unmodified original or just dokutsu-rs in windowed mode with an integer scaler. I’ll report back when I do a few more tests but I’m having interesting results running some other, older games using the Magpie scaler from GitHub. Thus far it seems like a really great tool! It works so seamlessly and without a whole lot of fuss, plus it plays nicely with OBS from what I can discern.
I bet it’ll work with doukutsu-rs or even the original Freeware Cave Story application without difficulty! It even keeps your mouse free to move between different monitors, which is great for streaming!
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i think this is only game i’ve played on pc, psp, 3DS, and genesis
still haven’t beat it
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Ballos is no joke. I’ve never gotten the best ending.
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Do you have the Spur, or just Machine Gun? You can get through Form 2 pretty fast with full Spur charges, and form 3’s orbiting eyes are best taken out with backshot Nemesis (if I remember correctly).
Interesting. I recall trying several weapon combinations over my various playthroughs but honestly I think I just lack some fundamental skill that I haven’t been able to identify. I’ve attempted it with machine gun, spur, snake, all sorts of weapons but the stupid cherubs usually whittle me down to a toothpick well before I ever get close to Ballos, or so I recall it.
When I revisit the game I’ll definitely give it another shot with the Spur.