Cave Story starts off in the tradition of a lot of Japanese games. You are a nameless amnesiac who wakes up in the middle of a <insert location here> (In Cave Story, it's... a cave!), and begins to explore his environment to find out what has happened and where he has come from. It an extremely overused cliché, but you don't really mind in Cave Story, because it's actually interesting. That's correct, it's a cliché used right!

When you start off in Cave Story, you know absolutely nothing, and I mean nothing. There is no historical explanation and no references to events or people. You literally start the game in a cave without knowing anything about the setting. All you've seen is that there's a guy in a room somewhere talking on a computer about eating cockroaches. Trust me, it makes sense later. As you begin to explore the world of Cave Story, the interactions lead you towards why you can't remember anything, what is going on, and just exactly who the bad guy is.

The game has a rather fascinating story, constantly inspired but never ripping off science-fiction, fantasy, anime, and countless other influences. It merges all of these influences into a cohesive and compelling story that makes you want to continue the game just to see what is going on.

The gameplay is actually rather simple, however. It borrows elements of Metroid, Castlevania, and Megaman into a fusion that I call Metromegavania™ (not what I actually call it). Moving around and exploring the world is fairly easy and intuitive. Blocks are placed at just the right heights to facilitate jumping and exploring secret areas, and your jump attenuates nicely based on how long you hold down the jump button. There are also many (and I do mean many!) areas for our amnesiac hero to explore, and they are linked in a Metroid-style way. In other words, as you get new movement abilities, you can explore your already cleared areas to find new routes, new secrets, and various other things of the like.

The fighting in the game is a strange mix of Megaman and Castlevania. The first weapon you get is called the Polar Star, and fires one shot every time you press the fire button. By default, it only deals 1 point of damage to whatever you hit. However, by gathering gold triangles from defeated enemies, your Polar Star will gain experience and level up, dealing more damage each time it does. This is the case with every weapon, and each weapon except for one has 3 levels of experience, usually increasing the usefulness of the weapon as it levels up. However, being hit by an enemy will remove some experience, and occasionally the game reduces you to level 1 weapons to facilitate gameplay.

The enemies themselves are a wide range of cartoony, goofy looking creatures. There are flying jellyfish, a gigantic frog, bats which make faces, sentient mushrooms, and a vast array of weird designs. It all has this strange sort of charm to it, though. The bosses are much the same way, although usually larger and far more surreal and disturbing than the regular enemies.

The graphics, framerate, and music all smack of the 16-bit days, so if you are the sort of person who would rather leave those days behind them, this is not the game for you. But for those with a keen sense of nostalgia, you will find that Cave Story reminds you of that era in all the best ways. The music is excellent and catchy while staying true to the 16-bit style, the graphics are detailed while staying within those same era limitations, and the animation is smooth without being jarring.

In the end, though, it's a game one must play for themselves. It has multiple endings (including a true, secret ending), a large amount of secrets and easter eggs, and even includes a timer to gauge the last leg of your trip to beat the true final boss (which so far has encouraged a significant amount of speedruns). It's a finely polished, superbly developed game and deserves every praise I can smother it with and more. So go download it off the fansite or even our own network and play. You will most definitely enjoy it.