In 2004, a wonderful little indie game called Cave Story was made. You could play it on the PC using your keyboard, or a PC controller (if you knew much about button conversion). It was free and it was great. It was an open world Metroid-esque game with a variety of weapons that you could level up in pseudo RPG style. It was low res but cute, feeling somewhere in between an NES and an SNES game with serious anime style seeping through its pores. It was difficult, and felt very old school with its hard platforming, and almost bullet hell style shooting gameplay. It was a fusion of many types of gameplay with a great story, a true masterpeice of the indie gaming world. Now, WiiWare gives you the option of paying twelve dollars to experience the whole thing all over again with higher resolution graphics and sound, and a few extra modes.

Let’s start with the first problem. Twelve dollars. Maybe I am cheap, but twelve dollars? You couldn’t have set a lower price point for a game whose other option is “own me legally for free”?! Let’s get this straight, OK. Cave Story, is a masterpiece. Everyone should play this game at least once. I’m not even talking about the quality of the game here, because Cave Story has proven itself already in the eyes of most gamers. The question, really, is “are the new additions to the WiiWare version of Cave Story worth twelve bucks?” Well, let’s take a look.

The obvious advantages to having a WiiWare version of the game, is the ability to sit on your couch in front of your TV and play it with a Wiimote. This may be worth it for some people, but sitting in my desk chair playing the game with my USB PS2 controller converter felt OK to me. If you are looking for more than a comfy cushion under your butt, then we have to look to the game itself. The new high resolution graphics are pretty, but they are still basically 8-bit in style. They have more pixels to them, but they are still pixelated and they are still meant to evoke a sense of nostalgia. Fair enough, but if you are going for nostalgia, why make the game look “just a little better”. In the end, the difference in graphics is noticeable, but better graphics don’t actually make the game any better. Better music does, to a certain extent, but even that is still stuck in oldschoolville.

So then we have the other modes which are OK I guess. Boss rush mode is fun, if you are just looking to replay the game’s more epic moments. Challenge mode is also good for people who want an even more absurd level of difficulty than Cave Story already boasts. Being able to play as Curly Brace is a guilty pleasure, but it doens’t change the game all that much. In short, all these new additions are fun but not really game changing in any way.

I’m not even complaining that they did a bad job remaking Cave Story for WiiWare. In fact they did a great job remaking Cave Story for WiiWare. Better graphics and music are a treat, new modes are fun, but it’s just not twelve dollars worth of content considering you can get the whole game for free. There is an argument that anyone who liked the game this much should want to pay money for it, to support the creator. However, if you really want to support the creator, just PayPal him twelve bucks. He will make more money than he would if you bought Cave Story on WiiWare. In short, I can’t stress enough how good Cave Story is, but if you have a PC that is anything other than a glorified paperweight, just download it for free. I honestly feel ripped off by this WiiWare conversion. It shouldn’t have passed the ten dollar mark. I would pay three, five, even eight dollars for this. However, great full games like Contra Rebirth cost less than 10 bucks, and they aren’t downloadable for free elsewhere.

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