Cave Story (Doukutsu) is getting ported to the Wii with the collaboration of the original creator, “Pixel.”
If you are unfamiliar with this game, I highly, highly recommend it. It has been out for years and maybe many of you know of it, but I just discovered it via the news it was coming to WiiWare and I’m sort of ga-ga in love with it right now. lol.
Anyway, if you like pixel art, old school platform games, or just great games from the 2D heyday, you owe it to yourself to try it out. Even the chip tunes are pretty wonderful.
Don’t do a lot of research or spoil anything. There is a decent and fun story and there is a LOT of fan discussion out there that blows all sorts of stuff. It takes 4-6 hours I guess, but I just started and couldn’t stop, I didn’t keep track. (You’ve been warned.)
Here’s a fansite with the downloads.
This has been freeware from the get go and a five year project for… one guy. Amazing stuff, and I will absolutely be buying the Wiiware version when it comes out early next year, because this guy deserves my money.
That site has playing what will probably be the new Outer Wall music. And on the blog you can see this comparison of the old and new sprites for Toroko (zoomed to 800%).
They also said there will be a switch to set it back to the original music or graphics.
Thank god you included a picture of what you meant by higher resolution sprites lol. And yes an option to set it back to original graphics is a must. Has there been any word on new areas/content? Perhaps even a two player mode?
They are being secretive about things added, but there is something.
I did always think the sprite for the main character was confusing and nondescript, and the higher resolution version is much better to my eyes. It’s very cool that Pixel is doing the new art.
^^^^ That’s not really fair. The original sprites were done in a very retro styling and were done remarkably well. He limited himself to screen resolution, color palettes, etc. I don’t instantly hate the idea of higher resolution sprites, but I would argue that they aren’t necessary. It is just nice to see that there is new content and not just a direct port.
I spent a good portion of the early game play trying to figure out if he had eyes and what I was looking at. Pixel did some amazing pixel art work (what else could he do? lol) and this game would lose a lot of charm without that style, but that doesn’t change how I perceived that one sprite. BTW, it’s about the only set of pixels in the game I have a problem with.
I’m just glad I got to play through it before it hits mainstream through Wiiware. It’s much more fun than going back and finding the origin and I can look forward to playing with the new spin on it! (I do hope they integrate a better more pixel-y font in the final version though! That early version better be temp.)
BTW, I’d imagine Pixel is going to make a decent penny off of this. It’s 100% his creation. He is doing the graphics. All the rest of the work is porting code, remixing music, and marketing. If he’s not making at least 50% of the take (after Nintendo), It’d be an injustice.
With the potential of word of mouth being spread (sort of like right now) this game should tease out some pleasing numbers. Especially as a sort of tie-in to Mega Man 9 as an intentionally retro release that is seriously awesome and respected. On top of that, there will be heavy critical acclaim and pushing from the review sites.
For an original IP outside of the big boys, this has more potential than anything I can think of.
While I think the megaman 9 release was awesome! I still think cave story comes out as the better game. I hope you’re right about how much he will make from all of this. He has made a few bucks off of fan donations, and a group of fans got together and made him a special nintendo DS with his characters engraved onto it, and of course moded to be able to play cave story.
Hmm contrary to the music i can’t see a real improvement from these shots here, especially if you scale them down to a more reasonable gaming size. Yes, less jaggies but i was fine with the more abstract pixel look already.
And I’m not liking what the new music has been like so far and prefer the chip tunes.
In the end I’ll probably do all the enhanced music and graphics as I’ve already done it the other way, but nitpicking like this validates their decision to choose whatever combination of new/old music and new/old visuals you want.
I can’t wait to get the WiiWare version. It’s going to have higher resolution sprites, and remixed music.