12 years ago I experienced what I’d consider one of the highest points of gaming for me. I opened my Christmas present under the tree and it was Cave Story 3D. My auntie has been more like an older sister to me. The gifts she’s given to me felt like some of the most major events in my life. That may seem like a stretch, but one of the many gifts before and after this was the gameboy advance SP, which was the first system I, myself, owned that was truly mine and mine alone. It’s been so long that I don’t even know if I asked for it, I have no idea how she knew but she knew to find the game I never knew would be one of the greatest immersive experiences for me. The disconnect between generations is a huge gap within a lot of variables so it’s hard to truly understand what the other is feeling. I never really felt this with her because no matter what, she understood. Gaming and music has been a huge part of my identity. This is a gaming site, so obviously I’m not here to talk about music. Playing Donkey Kong jr on a strange controller that was essentially a compact emulator with 200+ games is the second most vivid memory I have as a child, so nobody can tell me different on what the first game I truly played was. I was young, but I remember it like it was yesterday. My first playthrough of cave story will never be erased from my mind. I was so engrossed with it I felt true passion for the first time. I’m not into too many things, the typical “nerd” shit that people used to consider a couple years ago. Gaming, anime, manga, comics, reading, listening to any and every genre, etc. Thats who I am, and that’s who I’ll always be. Cave story hit a deep spot for me. The music, the aesthetic, the story, the characters, the art style, the gameplay.. everything was what I ever could’ve asked for and then some. Undeniably it’s one of, if not the biggest, milestones for indie games. It set a precedent for everything that followed it. A solo dev that did pretty much everything on its own. Nowadays Toby fox, the creator of undertale, is what the general public of gaming know that as.. but no pixel did it first and he will always be a legend to me and many others that cave story has reached. I’m not here to talk about the game or the story or the characters. I usually do that but I have no intentions or desires to. If you read up until this point I want you to experience it for yourself. It may not hit you nearly as hard as it hit me but I hope you at least enjoy it. To me it’s fun, immersive, and completely sets itself apart from any other game. Not because it really did anything creatively first in a breakthrough type of way.. but because it clearly has its own identity. It’s something to me, that you’ll never forget, and it sets itself apart from any other game ever made. Something that is meant to be played blind multiple times. You will discover things you never seen before if you do things differently, and if you play the newest version of it? You’ll be greeted with so many bells and whistles compared to the original freeware release. I can go on and on and on about the history of this game, but maybe you already know that. What you don’t know is that me and a bunch of other people have felt what I’d like to think is the vision pixel wanted players to see. I hope you give this game a chance and have fun with it, I’ll keep playing forever until I’m 6 feet under, and I hope I can get more to enjoy it even a fraction as much as I have.