Why is cave story so good

Before long, word spread about Cave Story , and an English patch meant that it could be enjoyed by players all over the world.

In many respects, Amaya was years ahead of his time. Ad — content continues below. Amaya may not have made much money from Cave Story at first, but its growing cult following has seen it ported to a number of other platforms besides its native PC. Publisher-developer Nicalis brought the title to the Wii in , the 3DS in , and finally Nintendo Switch in the summer of Right now, though, the Nintendo Switch version might be its definitive release.

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. Above all, though, Cave Story feels like a classic Nintendo game: inventive, imaginative, and subtly off-kilter.

Its controls are tight yet the floatiness of its jumping physics are initially disconcerting. 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. Comparisons can be drawn between Doukutsu and Castlevania , or Metroid , or Yoshi's Island, , or, well, a lot.

Yet Doukutsu is off in a genre by itself. It is something the likes of which I have never seen before; have never experienced before. More than this, it is masterfully designed. This game--it has a timeless, perfect quality to it.

Yes, it is a random piece of freeware designed and written by a random Japanese guy whose real name I do not know, but you would not be able to tell that just by looking at it.

Game development houses toss around phrases like "this works within the constraints of X hardware" or "we did what we could with that game based on what we had to work with. It'll be in the sequel, next generation! They're right. You can tell they're right, just from playing the game. You know that world map in Final Fantasy VI wouldn't have looked like it had been put in an electric chair if the SNES hardware could have given us something better; you know that Ocarina of Time would have had a Light Temple if EAD had been given more time; that Lament of Innocence would have been quite a bit better if Koji Igarashi had spent a little longer ironing things out.

That's fine. People and dev teams are human. Their plans can be cut short. Doukutsu Monogatari , though, was not cut short, I think--no, I know --that this is true. I hear the guy behind it spent five years putting it together, tweaking it, getting it right. It shows. This Doukutsu Monogatari thing is, simply put, a perfect piece of software. Everything's been thought out.

The best games, I think, feel like this--they don't feel that they were made "within the constraints" of anything. They feel good. They feel right. They weren't rushed. They weren't forced to fit the arbitrary parameters of some console's system specs. But this door has an evil eye and is actually hostile to the player, like the aforementioned bats and critters.

This playing with expectations continues throughout the game, as the tone manages to carefully toe the line between ominous and irreverent. As you explore the Mimiga village, its inhabitants all but exterminated, you come across a small pond where a rabbit person is just fishing peacefully. Even the creatures you fight are adorable, from sentient mushrooms to a cat-piloted mech boss that you encounter halfway through the game. One of my favorite characters is Balrog, a recurring miniboss that looks like a cross between an old-fashioned lunchbox and a toaster.

The first time you see him, he offers to fight, and if you decline he just leaves. Nor did it invent the 2D, side-scrolling platformer gameplay that had its heyday in the 80s. After playing it 10 years later, the game still feels fresh, and I still feel like I am discovering new secrets about it every time I pick it up.