Even if you haven’t played it yourself, you’ve probably heard of Cave Story. Developed by Daisuke “Pixel” Amaya over the course of five years, this 2D pixel platforming game slowly gained popularity on the Internet after its release. Today we have two videos for you – a normal run with commentary from Games Done Quick 2015, and a TAS run with caption commentary by Nitsuja. The TAS is about ten minutes quicker and features tricks very difficult to pull off normally. Pick your preference, or watch them both for comparison. We’ll show you the normal run first.
One of the most useful tricks employed in Cave Story runs is the damage boost. Because the player’s weapon can also take damage from enemies, managing the hits you take is even more important, and it’s easy for something to go wrong. In fact, about halfway through the run, Draculantern is forced to go slow as a result of taking too much unintended damage. It makes for a fascinating watch.
Headphone users might want to turn their volumes down for this Cave Story TAS run. The audio is a bit loud. And you’ll definitely want the captions on, they’re full of information on the tricks, how to do them, and exactly what benefit they are to the player.
For those interested, the fastest times on Cave Story are: 40:33 for bad ending, 50:44 for normal ending, and 56:32 for the best ending, all by Magmapeach. All official runs must be played on the original Japanese version without using turbo and have different end-time triggers depending on which ending the player goes for.
The original Cave Story for PC is freeware, while the remake, Cave Story+, is premium. But if you’re looking for even more old-school games, feel free to torture yourself with our special feature speedruns of the worst games for the Phillips CDi system.