Genre: Action platformer
Developer: Daisuke "Pixel" Amaya
Publisher: Independent

Deliberately, Cave Story looks roughly like a VGA-era DOS title, what with low resolution and limited color pallete. Animation and artwork quality is quite high, character portraits are memorable and endearing, and the overall visual approach melds with the throwback gameplay and audio quite well.

Like the graphics, Cave Story takes a retro approach. Sound effects are simple yet effective, and the soundtrack is a real treat; multi-tone PSG-esque, NES era samples and some extremely catchy melodies are an oasis given the typically poor quality of modern day video game musical selections.

While the game is a bit more linear than other titles in the genre, Cave Story is successful composite of the action platformer and Mega Man. Level design is well thought out and makes clever use of the gameplay engine and player capabilities, without losing fluidity or getting bogged down with complex puzzles.

Besides being one of the best examples of the genre I have played, Cave Story is one of the most polished and complete independently developed and published games of all time. The narrative, artwork, soundtrack, and level design puts most big budget commercial titles to shame, and perhaps even raises the bar for the genre a bit.